During a time of great pain, a group of Aboriginal children at the Carrolup River Native Settlement Camp produced world-class paintings. After being hidden away in the United States since the 1960s, the work by these stolen generation children is coming home to Noongar country.

The story starts at the Carrolup settlement (near Katanning in Great Southern), which was run by the Native Welfare department and housed Aboriginal children who had been removed from their families.

In 1945 a teacher called Noel White came to teach at the school.

"The young boys were trained as farm hands and the girls were trained as domestic servants," Chris Malcolm, director of the John Curtin Gallery at Curtin University explained.

They were living in fairly harsh conditions. These children were part of the stolen generation and so they were almost incarcerated in Carrolup.

When Noel White arrived to teach at Carrolup, he introduced an art program.

"Noel White and his wife Lily were just blown away by the visual acuity that the children had.

"They were going out on bushwalks and he encouraged them to paint what they saw.

"Their work is incredibly sophisticated for children aged between nine and 13.

"They are very topographically accurate; they are very realist landscape paintings."

Noongar elder Ezzard Flowers, of the Mungart Boodja Art Centre in Katanning, believes the art would have been vital in helping the children maintain a connection to their culture.

"Art is a medium that has a healing focus," Mr Flowers said.

"I'm sure that when the children started doing their artwork back in Carrolup back in those days that they were not only focussing on what they were doing in regards to art but they were reconnecting to country through those scenes.

"There are scenes of corroborees, of hunting, and the environment. They were connecting back to culture and totemic symbols."

Outsiders also noticed the children's talent.

In 1949 an English woman, Florence Rutter, heard about the talents of the indigenous boys and girls at the Carrolup settlement and went out to visit them.

"She was given many of the works and she was telling them that should would take them to London and New York and try to sell them to dealer and collectors and try to bring back the funds to help them," said Chris Malcolm.

"The children were very generous in giving their work to Florence Rutter and she did promote their work internationally.

"There were some exhibitions in the early 1950s in Europe.

"It was quite a spectacle that these works had been produced by such young children."

It's not clear whether any money came back to the children but in 1956 a New York art collector, Herbert Mayer, purchased all 119 of the paintings.

In 1966 Mayer donated the works to Colgate University in upstate New York, one of the oldest colleges in America. There, they sat in a box until they were discovered in 2004 when a lecturer from the Australian National University, Howard Morphy, was given a tour of the university gallery and the box containing the pictures was pulled out of storage.

Since their rediscovery, Malcolm said, Colgate University have been trying to figure out the best thing to with the art works and have now signed a memorandum of agreement with Curtin University to return them to Australia.

The full collection will return in July.

"It became apparent to Colgate that the best thing to do was bring the works back here, and Curtin was chosen as the most appropriate place,"

Chris Malcolm says they are determined that the work won't simply be placed in another box. "It is up to Curtin to reach out to the great southern community to work out where the best place for these artworks is."

"The artists still have living relatives.

"The spirit of the agreement is access for the Noongar people and furthering reconciliation and healing.

Ezzard Flowers visited Colgate in 2004 when the work were rediscovered and is delighted that they are now coming home.

"When we first came back in 2004, we had to sit down with the elders, everyone's question was - when are they coming back?" he said.

"I thought we might be lucky to have them in my lifetime. But the beauty of the relationship that we had with Colgate University was that we had the students coming out, through Curtin, and down to country, and we took them around and to meet with the elders.

"From these years of partnership we've developed a long friendship.

"It's an amazing story and journey for the Noongar people, being reconnected to their history and this homecoming will not only benefit the Noongar people but also the wider community, who will learn the history of that little school that has been forgotten."

Chris Malcolm says the return of the paintings has attracted international attention.

"This happens so rarely that collections of this significance and size is returned.

"An NBC film crew has filmed a segment for the Today program in the US at Carrolup."

For Ezzard Flowers it is a momentous occasion.

"This journey, and this story, is based on trust and respect," he said.

"These artworks are coming back home and we don't have to spend a dollar on them.

"They have been gifted, just like they were gifted all those years ago, from the boys to Mrs Rutter."