News Stories

Source: ABC

Harry Bennett has just turned 100 years old but he was not meant to be born at all.

"I was born in Tennant Creek at Old Telegraph Station," he said.

"My mum and dad had a feeling for one another, you know what I mean? And I'm the result."

Mr Bennett's father was white and his mother Aboriginal.

But when his mother got pregnant, his grandmother told her to kill the baby because she did not want her family to be shamed for having a black child.

"They said when you have the baby you kill him ... so my parents said alright, instead of going back to Helen Springs they went to Tennant Creek and I'm the result."

Children buried in sand to hide them from troopers
At the time it was a crime for a white man to be with an Aboriginal woman, so Mr Bennett's father left to avoid going to jail for seven years.

But his mother faced more obstacles.

She was forced to protect him from police troopers looking for Aboriginal children of mixed descent.

"When the troopers used to come through, my grandma and granddad, along with all the parents, used to bury the children in the loose sands," said Bernadine Hooker, Mr Bennett's daughter.

"They had a straw from a bush sticking out and that's all they had to breathe through.

"[The kids] were terrified actually but it had to be done otherwise the troopers would have taken them there and then," she said.

This method worked until Mr Bennett was four and he was finally taken away.

He is the oldest living member of the Stolen Generations and now lives in Katherine, about 600km north of Tennant Creek.

'My mum would have had it worse than me'

"I was told that he was put in an old blitz-truck-type thing ... with a lot of other children and they were just taken away from their parents," Ms Hooker said.

"But he told me about his mum and how she hung onto that truck and how she was dragged for quite a few miles in the dirt and she couldn't hold on anymore.

"She let go, she was wailing, screaming out for him but that's as far as he could tell me ... he couldn't tell me anymore. It was too hurtful."

Harry Bennett never saw his mother again.

"I was worried about my mother. What am I being taken for?" Harry said.

"She would have been worse than me thinking about me and how I was growing up.

"She'd be thinking about me getting bigger and wondering if I was getting tall or fat or what.

"I haven't seen my mother since that day."

Deaf from being boxed in ears

He was taken north to a mission in Darwin then down to Pine Creek and ended up at The Bungalow in Alice Springs for children who had been taken away.

"I know my dad was ill-treated there by a certain person," Ms Hooker said.

"Every time he used to walk past my dad, he'd box his ears for him and my dad ended up going deaf altogether because of this."

Mr Bennett now has three children, 13 grandchildren, and 24 great-grandchildren.

They have to use a small whiteboard to communicate with him.

'I don't think I'm that old'

Although the injustices are from so long ago, Ms Hooker said they still hurt the family.

"It's affected the whole family ... there's a lot he doesn't talk about, there's a lot we'd like to know about," she said.

"There's still a lot out there we'd still like to know and the biggest hurt of all is not knowing any of my dad's side of the family."

But Mr Bennett is anything but bitter despite a life riddled with tragedy.

"I don't worry about anything, nothing worries me," he said.

"When I wake up in the morning it's another day, just an ordinary day.

"I don't even think that I'm that old!"

Source: Queensland Government

Minister for Local Government and Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships
The Honourable Mark Furner

20th Anniversary of Bringing them Home

A minute’s silence has been observed on the Speaker’s Green of Parliament in support of the Stolen Generations on the 20th anniversary of the Bringing them Home report.

The report, documenting the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were stolen from their families and communities, was tabled in the Federal Parliament in 1997.

Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships, Mark Furner led the minute’s silence on the eve of National Sorry Day to encourage Queenslanders to reflect on the Stolen Generations and our state’s reconciliation journey.

“This is a significant year for reflection on decades of reconciliation progress and our commitment to a fair go as Queenslanders and as Australians,” Mr Furner said.

“National Sorry Day 2017 marks the 20th anniversary of the Bringing them Home report and the ongoing healing of the Stolen Generations.

“This year also reflects on the 25 years since the High Court’s Mabo land rights decision and the 50th anniversary of the referendum to include Indigenous Australians in the national census.

“National Sorry Day is a reminder of what we’ve achieved and what’s still to be achieved.”

Students from the Murri School presented 20 handmade purple paper flowers on the Speaker’s Green symbolising native hibiscus and the resilience and healing of the Stolen Generations­.

The Healing Foundation’s Chair of the Stolen Generations Reference Committee, Florence Onus said the practices of the past have had a generational impact on families.

“The research shows us that the people affected by the forced removal of children - the Stolen Generations, their children and grandchildren - are 50 percent more likely to be charged by police, 30 percent less likely to be in good health, and 10 percent less likely to have a job.”

Link-Up (QLD) provides members of the Stolen Generation with free, professional and culturally-sensitive support.

“Each year we assist many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who have been separated from their families and cultures due to forced removal, fostering, adoption or institutionalisation,” CEO Patricia Conlon said.

“Reconnecting with family, culture and the past is an emotional experience, but Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples don’t need to embark on this healing journey alone.”

The National Sorry Day event on the Speaker’s Green was coordinated in partnership with Link-Up (QLD) and the Healing Foundation. 

Source: NITV

It's been two decades since the landmark Bringing Them Home report was tabled in Federal Parliament, and many members of the Stolen Generations are still struggling with the impacts of unresolved trauma. Today, they handed the Prime Minister a new action plan to help break the ongoing cycle.

Australia's ageing Stolen Generations are still struggling with the impacts of unresolved trauma, and need a new policy approach to assist them and their families to heal.

That’s a key finding of a major new report launched today by the Healing Foundation. The launch marks 20 years since the landmark Bringing Them Home report was tabled in Federal Parliament.

Called Bringing Them Home 20 Years On, the new report sets out an action plan to overhaul Australia’s Indigenous policy landscape.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull acknowledged the pain and suffering of previous government policies.

"We acknowledge that this removal separated you from your families, lands, languages, cultures of 50,000 years your ancestors had protected and cared for," he said.

He says the government will carefully consider the recommendations.

"There is much unfinished business and today's report will guide us on the progress we are yet to make. As our stole Jenkinsration's members age, your needs are changing. We'll carefully consider the recommendations."

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said the current generation of parliament need to do more than just commemorate.

"It is our turn to address inequality. It is our turn to address poverty. It is our turn to address the violence which is still breaking-up families and communities. Less paternalism, more empowerment. Less rhetoric, more action," he said.

He said the recommendation of a redress scheme needs to be taken up in Parliament.

"It's right and important both Labor and Liberal governments in New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania are showing leadership on reparations, recovery and reconnection. And it's long past the time for us to have that conversation in this place too."

Healing Foundation Board Chair Steve Larkin said the failure to implement the recommendations of the original Bringing Them Home report has made matters worse for all Indigenous Australians.

“Our Stolen Generations haven’t been able to heal because Australia has failed to address their needs in a coordinated, holistic way.  As a result, their grief, loss and anger is being passed onto their kids and grandkids.”

Prominent Stolen Generations member, Florence Onus, and Steve Larkin, offered Malcolm Turnbull the new report, emphasising the need for a bi-partisan approach to tackle inter-generational trauma in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

Unresolved trauma amongst the Stolen Generations is being passed on to their children and grandchildren, increasing the incidence of crime, ill health and social disadvantage.

The Healing Foundation found the most pressing needs highlighted by the report are for:

Federally coordinated financial reparations similar to the Commonwealth Redress Scheme provided to survivors of child sexual abuse
a full analysis of the Stolen Generations changing needs as they age
a national study on intergenerational trauma, its impacts, and the best ways to address
ensuring all professionals who work with the Stolen Generations and their descendants – from police to mental health workers - are trained in recognising and addressing Indigenous trauma
Chair of the Healing Foundation’s Stolen Generations Reference Committee Florence Onus is one of four generations of women who have been forcibly removed from their families

“I embarked on my healing journey when at 21, my mother attempted suicide.  With family support I became her full time carer and together we began the journey of healing,” said Ms Onus.

Florence is passionate about breaking the cycle of trauma through healing, education, cultural identity and spiritual nurturing.

Gamilaroi and Wailwun woman Lorraine Peeters was forcibly removed from her family in Brewarinna in central-west New South Wales at the age of four.

Along with hundreds of other girls she was placed in the Cootamundra Home for Aboriginal Girls.

"We were brainwashed to act, to speak, dress and think white and we were punished if we didn't," she says.

"We were not allowed to talk in language or about culture or about our families. It wasn't until I was in my fifties that I suffered a mental health issue, trauma. There was an Aboriginal person inside, screaming to get out."

Today, Aunty Lorraine runs her own trauma healing program, Marumali Journey of Healing, to help other members of the Stolen Generations begin their own healing journey. She's also played a key role in the 2008 Apology to the Stolen Generations and hopes the government listen to the recommendations this time around.

"There's too many of us that are passing on now. We live in hope that things may happen but nothing has. We we still live in hope," she told NITV.

"[Trauma] is passed down the next generations, and that's behaviour that's known and we need to break this cycle, and to help families to heal."

Uncle Michael Welsh is a Wailman from Coonamble in New South Wales. He was eight when he and his brother were taken from his mother and five of his siblings.

They were taken to the notorious Kinchela Boys Home near Kempsey on the New South Wales mid-north coast.

"When we got there, they stripped us of our clothes, they shaved our heads, threw powder all over us, and they took us into a room, handed us some new clothes and said you are no longer Michael, you are no number 36," he remembers.

He says its important that the government helps rebuild the family structures that they took down.

"They need to talk to us and help us rebuild our family structure," he says.

"I took that horrible place into my own house, unknown what was going on, and when I seen the same thing that was happening to my children, I said this is not right. I gotta go and find help somewhere." 

Source: Australian Human Rights Commission

Twenty years ago this week, the Australian Human Rights Commission tabled in Federal Parliament a report into the forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families.

Between one in three and one in ten Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities between 1910 and 1970, the Bringing Them Home report found.

Those findings remains significant because many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families continue to experience trauma as a result of past state and territory government policies to remove children from their families.

The National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families informed the Bringing Them Home report. The inquiry heard from 500 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, as well as from Indigenous organisations, foster parents, state and territory government representatives, church representatives and former mission employees.

The Bringing Them Home report, tabled in Parliament on 27 May 1997, includes 54 recommendations to support healing and reconciliation for the Stolen Generations, their families and the Australian public.

The family traumas reflected in that report continue to affect members of the Stolen Generation and their successors.

“Understanding the intergenerational impact of child removal is critical to addressing contemporary issues for our people,” said Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner June Oscar.

“The overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the out-of- home-care system is directly related to the trauma experienced by the Stolen Generations.

“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are 9.5 times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be in out-of-home-care and the trend is accelerating.

“The out-of-home-care system is often a fast track for our children and young people to enter into the justice system. We need to reverse this trend.

“We can do this be ensuring our people are meaningfully engaged in decision-making, and by paying closer attention to the work being done by Aboriginal-controlled health organisations to make families safer and to keep families together.

“There is no doubt in my mind that we need to focus on adequate funding, prevention and accountability measures to support our families,” Commissioner Oscar said.

A new report released this week by the Healing Foundation outlines four priorities to achieve long-term change. Bringing Them Home, 20 Years On, urges the Federal Government to:

• Conduct a comprehensive needs analysis to inform the delivery of more effective services for Stolen Generations members
• Establish a national scheme for reparations to ensure equal access to financial redress and culturally appropriate healing services,
• Co-ordinate compulsory training around Stolen Generations trauma so that the organisations working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are better equipped to provide effective and appropriate services.
• Initiate a comprehensive study of intergenerational trauma and how to tackle it.

Later this year, the Australian Human Rights Commission will launch an updated version of its Bringing Them Home schools resource, mapped to the Australian school curriculum.

Source: AAP

When indigenous campaigner Mick Dodson looked around the Great Hall in Parliament House he saw familiar faces.

Some of those gathered, members of the Stolen Generation, had shared their stories with him 20 years ago.

Two decades on, at a parliamentary breakfast attended by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Labor leader Bill Shorten, they are still waiting for progress.

"I'm just trying to imagine how they must feel 20 years down the track," Professor Dodson told the gathering on Tuesday.

"Please folks, let's not fail them again."

Professor Dodson described his work on the original Bringing Them Home report as the most challenging thing of his professional life, but it was also rewarding.

There is not an Aboriginal family untouched by the experiences of the Stolen Generation, he said.

One of them is Florence Onus, whose mother was taken at the age of four.

She herself was then one of five children taken from her mother at the age of five.

"Today feels like a new beginning and an opportunity to address unfinished business," Ms Onus said.

Mr Turnbull thanked the Healing Foundation for its new report, which shows many of the 54 original recommendations from Bringing Them Home have never been implemented

He again spoke in a local indigenous language and said 'sorry' to those hurt by the policy of forced removal.

"Over the years many of you here have bravely told your stories as Mick reminded us," he said.

"You stepped forward to hold a mirror up to our nation."

Mr Turnbull said the government would carefully consider the fresh recommendations, which include:\* A financial redress scheme.

• A national study into intergenerational trauma.
• Analysis of the changing needs of the Stolen Generation as they age.

Mr Shorten said the Stolen Generation was a gross violation of human rights.

"We need to guarantee it can never happen again."

He later told reporters it is time for the parliament to discuss reparation.

"This parliament is capable of having a rancour, blame-free conversation," he said.

The Healing Foundation's chair Steve Larkin said the Stolen Generations had not been able to heal because their needs have not been addressed in a coordinated way.

"As a result, their grief, loss and anger is being passed on to their kids and grandkids."

Source: Speech in Canberra

Good morning everybody.

I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people.

I pay my respects to elders past and present.

I want to start with some of the evidence from the report 20 years ago.

They put us in the police ute and said they were taking us to Broome.

They put the mums in there as well.

But when we’d gone about ten miles they stopped, and threw the mothers out of the car.

We jumped on our mothers’ backs, crying, trying not to be left behind.

But the policemen pulled us off and threw us back in the car.

They pushed the mothers away and drove off, while our mothers were chasing the car, running and crying after us.

We were screaming in the back of that car.

When we got to Broome they put me and my cousin in the Broome lock-up.

We were only ten years old.

This is the truth-telling that we commemorate 20 years on.

I acknowledge the Prime Minister this morning, the other speakers; Aunty Matilda, Steve, Lawrence, Mick.

I'd like to acknowledge the first Australians who serve in this parliament; Linda Burney, Ken Wyatt, Pat Dodson, Malarndirri McCarthy and Jacqui Lambie.

But in particular, I want to acknowledge the members of the Stolen Generation who have come here today.

I acknowledge you and all of those who are no longer with us, who summoned the courage to tell stories such as the one I briefly read out.

Today we commemorate hundreds of voices who filled the pages of a report which brought the hard truth of history to the home of democracy.

Bringing them Home spoke for the trauma inflicted on three and four generations: parents who were robbed - and children who were stolen away from community, country and connection.

It told of the added pain of years of having their history denied, the truth of what had happened questioned - your very identity and existence arrogantly dismissed.

Nine years ago, the parliament of Australia exorcised the ghost of that discriminatory fiction.

We said: We believe you.

We said: Sorry.

And – to the eternal credit of the first Australians – you grasped the hand of healing.

You were bigger than bitterness, stronger than suspicion - you found it in your hearts to accept the apology in the spirit in which it was extended.

The apology was a momentous day in our history – but it wasn’t the end of the journey.

I know many members of the Stolen Generations still live with the painful consequences of their forcible removal.

As Steve has said, it’s right and important both Labor and Liberal governments in New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania are showing leadership on reparations, recovery and reconnection.

And it’s long past the time for us to have that conversation in this place too.

I acknowledge the previous accomplishments of previous parliaments in this place - and members of the Stolen Generation should be heartened that there are so many members of the current parliament here.

But history is not something that is consigned to the history books - it is what this current generation of parliamentarians must contribute to.

It’s time we talked of reconnection, recovery and reparations.

Let us call the Stolen Generations for what they were: a gross violation of human rights.

And we need to guarantee that it can never happen again.

This is the question and we should be smart enough as a parliament and as a nation to make that guarantee.

It is always difficult to decide how much is blue sky and how much is tough.

Where do you draw the line between commemoration, the celebration and the strength which is all part of the story - but in telling the truth, recognise the journey still to go.

This morning, as we come here, too many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children woke up away from their family, culture and country – in out-of-home care.

This morning, too many young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men have woken up in incarceration for not much more of a reason other than the colour of their skin.

This morning, too many of our first Australians have woken up still receiving a  lesser deal than is extended to other Australians merely because of the colour of their skin.

This current generation of parliament, if we are to truly commemorate what was done 20 years ago, it is now our turn to do more than just commemorate.

It is our turn to address inequality.

It is our turn to address poverty.

It is our turn to address the violence which is still breaking-up families and communities.

Less paternalism, more empowerment. Less rhetoric, more action.

So that the next generation, the emerging elders, the leaders who will Close the Gap can ensure that first Australians grow up happy, resilient and surrounded by the people they love.

The test I set for myself is: until mothers do not live in the fear of their children being taken away from them, then the journey isn't complete.

The happy morning that mothers no longer wake with the fear and the anxiety of their children being taken for them, then we will have brought justice and reconciliation home.

Thank you very much.

Source: Speech

I want to thank Aunty Matilda for her welcome to country and acknowledge we are on Ngunnawal and Ngambri land and pay my respects to elders past and present.

Thank you Professor Ngiare Brown for your leadership today and as a member of the Indigenous Advisory Council.

I want to acknowledge Senator Nigel Scullion, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, the Honourable Ken Wyatt, Minister for Aged Care and Indigenous Health, Bill Shorten, Leader of the Opposition and all other Members of Parliament, ministerial colleagues, and especially the Honourable Linda Burney, Member for Barton, Senator Malarndirri McCarthy, Senator Pat Dodson and Senator Jacqui Lambie.

I want to also acknowledge Richard Weston, the Chief Executive of the Healing Foundation and of course Mick Dodson, one of the authors of the Bringing Them Home Report.

This week we honour those milestones that helped the nation chart a course towards reconciliation - the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum, 25 years since the Mabo High Court decision and 20 years, as Mick reminded us, since the Bringing Them Home report.

Today, we again acknowledge the Stolen Generations - those Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were forcibly removed from their parents simply because they were Aboriginal.

Again we say sorry.

We acknowledge that this removal separated you from your families, from your lands and your languages and cultures that for 50,000 years your ancestors had protected and cared for.

We acknowledge the continuing deep personal pain that affects your lives and those of your families.

This is a period of our history where loss and grief almost consumed a people.

As Prime Minister, I had a window into both this loss and grief, but also the survival and resilience, in a very real way early last year.

In preparing the first Closing the Gap speech that I gave as Prime Minister I wanted to show my respect to the original inhabitants of this land by speaking in language. I wanted to show the richness and diversity of the culture of our First Australians – something of which I believe we should all be proud of.

While working with the Bell family and the Ngunnawal language group here in Canberra, and one of the linguists from the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, I was told: “We have lost many words. Only fragments remain, but those are cherished and they’re being recovered, drawn out from all of that loss and built patiently together, rebuilt with research.”

And so for the first time as Prime Minister I was able to speak in the House of Representatives in the language of the original inhabitants of this place.

Yanggu gulanyin ngalawiri, dhunayi, Ngunawal dhawra. Wanggarralijinyin mariny bulan bugarabang.

I realised that not only had Aboriginal people been denied the right to their families, but we had denied them the right to their stories, their songs, their culture, their language.

And all Australians lost from that.

The Ngunnawal language group here in Canberra have recovered enough language to write some children’s and other short books in language.

One of those remnants was a lullaby, an old Aboriginal woman remembered more than a hundred years ago.

And this is some of what the old lady remembered:

Nudula nindi wurula bulu i bulu gun wurula bulu nura dula...nuru wurula guni

I am rocking you slowly skyward...singing.

It is heartbreaking to read those words - to speak them - knowing that a little baby was rocked to sleep by a mother who wanted no more than that her baby should be safe, comforted with a lullaby in her own tongue.

But that little baby was far from safe - nor was her mother, nor was the language in which she sang.

Yes, loss, but this is also a story of survival.

And over the years, many of you here have bravely told your stories, as Mick reminded us, including to the writers of the original report.

You stepped forward to hold a mirror up to our nation, for truth is the first step towards healing.

So I want to acknowledge the hard work, the emotional work, of co-commissioners Mick Dodson and the late Sir Roland Wilson, their staff and so many others.

Thank you to the Healing Foundation’s Stolen Generations Reference Committee for your work on the action plan for healing being presented today, two decades on from the Bringing Them Home report.

In 2008, Prime Minister Rudd delivered the National Apology to the Stolen Generations and their families. Your stories were no longer questioned. Your pain was acknowledged, recognised.

On behalf of the nation we said sorry - you graciously held those long awaited words in your hearts.

But there is much unfinished business. And today’s report will guide us on the progress we are yet to make. As our Stolen Generations members’ age, your needs are changing.

We will carefully consider the recommendations, and I want to thank you, all of you who contributed.

In acknowledging the trauma of the past, we also look to the future with hope and optimism.

We have Indigenous scholars, doctors, pilots, politicians, ministers. People proud of their identity.

Together, we are building a country where our Indigenous children are limited only by their imagination.

Tomorrow we will welcome 50 Young Indigenous Parliamentarians into the building.

We can show Indigenous children from Cape York to Ceduna, from La Perouse to Broome that they can be anything they set their mind to. That the equality denied to you, the Stolen Generation because of your Aboriginal identity, will not be denied to the children of today.

And as Prime Minister, I will continue to acknowledge that being Aboriginal and a Torres Strait Islander Australian means to be successful, to achieve, to have big dreams and high hopes, and to draw strength from your identity as an Indigenous person in this great country.

So thank you for this report, thank you and above all, thank you for the gracious way that you have walked with us to heal these wounds as we build a reconciled nation.

Thank you.

Source: ABC

No transcript available.

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Source: Newspaper

The Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls’ Training Home had little use for the frivolous. Its austere exterior suited its grim role as a place where Aboriginal girls were trained as domestic servants under the authority of the Aborigines Protection Board.

One day in 1956 the most famous Aboriginal person of the time, the Alice Springs artist Albert Namatjira, visited and later gave the girls at the Home a painting. The girls, many of them from the Stolen Generations, understood the painting was for them, not the Home, not the Protection Board, and not the State government.

When the Department of Community Services took over the Girls’ Home in 1969 the painting was taken from its place above the dormitory doors and disappeared. But the Girls, as they still prefer to be known even though many are now grandmothers, never forgot their Namatjira painting and never stopped looking for it.

In 1994 came a breakthrough. One of the Girls, Lola Edwards, was at a meeting with DOCS in the lead-up to the inquiry into the Stolen Generations when the department’s records manager, John Sharman, said he had found where the painting was: upstairs in the executive meeting room. ‘He brings the painting out and I almost fell over in shock when I saw it,’ Lola told Sally Pryor of the Canberra Times.

After ten years of what Lola described as ‘soul-searching’, the Girls decided that the appropriate place for their Namatjira painting was the National Museum of Australia. Curator Jay Arthur from the Museum’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Program arranged for the painting to be taken into the Museum’s collection.

At the handover the Director, Craddock Morton, noted that it was a special occasion marked by both sadness and joy. ‘Sadness at your suffering at the hands of both Church and State, sadness at the pain and loss inflicted on your families.

‘On behalf of the National Museum I would like to say sorry for what we have done to you. Personally, I feel deep sadness and shame – a feeling that is shared by many Australians, including those who thought it was the right thing to do at the time.

‘But joy too. Joy that you are here today at the Museum, joy that you have given each other the strength to come through these experiences. Joy at your capacity for forgiveness. Joy at your generosity in donating this precious object to the National Museum of Australia.

‘Let me make this pledge today; with your help, the National Museum will use this wonderful painting as a means of telling your story, accurately and honestly.

For that is the least that a National Museum can do. We need to tell our full history, the history of all Australians, and to encompass the different perspective that comes with it. For too long we have been prepared to use the official record only and to ignore that there is much beside that official record which needs to come out,’ said Craddock.

The Canberra Times reported that the handover was ‘an emotional ceremony, marked by poems, tears and difficult memories’.

Lola Edwards still had vivid memories of the day of Namatjira’s visit – ‘My oath I do! We all remember the visit.’ Matron call us all up there and said, “One of your people is here”. When I walked in, my first reaction was –“Gosh, he’s black!” I’d never seen a man so black.’

But while the painting had found a home, it still presented an intriguing puzzle – why did Namatjira visit the home and why did he give the Girls the painting?

To the delight of the Museum and the amazement of the Girls, the answers came in a letter to the Canberra Times from a retiree from Bathurst,

In the 1950s, Miss Barbara Underhill, later Mrs Webb, worked in the then Bank of New South Wales in Alice Springs and became a close friend of Namatjira, spending many weekends sitting in the river sand with Namatjira and his family as they painted.

She was transferred by the Bank to Bathurst but took some leave with friends at Cootamundra. Albert Namatjira planned to visit Sydney for interviews about his art and Barbara remembered ‘the promise of a new refrigerator!’

Barbara suggested a detour to Cootamundra and was thrilled when Namatjira arrived with his son. She arranged a lunch.

‘I told him of the Girls Home and together we decided to donate one of his paintings to the home – all this was recorded in the local paper in 1956.

‘I am pleased the painting is at the National Museum of Australia and that my suggestion ended in a happy result,’ Barbara told the Canberra Times.

Albert Namatjira’s painting, so important to the Girls of the Cootamundra Home, is now at the National Museum of Australia, finally and forever.

Dennis Grant
Manager, Public Affairs

Source: Newspaper

Former Australian governments and administrators are guilty of genocide. That's the finding in the long-awaited stolen generations inquiry report, which has called for apologies and monetary compensation as part of the reparations process for the thousands of indigenous people taken from their families.

The 700-page report, titled 'Bringing Them Home', has sparked nationwide debate and anger and dominated events at the Australian Reconciliation Convention held last week in Melbourne.

The report from the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families followed months of consultation with families and victims as well as governments, churches and other groups.

The Federal Government has rejected the genocide finding, with Prime Minister John Howard saying Australians need not feel guilty over 'sins of the past'.

But report authors Sir Ronald Wilson, who is chairman of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, and Social Justice Commissioner Mick Dodson, stood by the finding.

The report rejects the notion that Aboriginal children were removed from their families to 'help them'.

'They were removed because their Aboriginality was a problem. They were removed because, if they stayed with 'their group', they would acquire their habits, their culture and their traditions,' it said.

The report says the removal of children with the aim of making their culture and ethnic identities disappear was genocidal under international conventions.

In developments resulting from the report during the past fortnight:

• Prime Minister John Howard was jeered at the National Reconciliation Convention when he failed to make a full apology for the assimilation policies of the past.
• The Federal Government was forced to back down on an earlier claim that there were legal barriers to a full apology.
• The Government refused to pay compensation to stolen generations victims.
• The South Australian and West Australian parliaments made full apologies, but Northern Territory Chief Minister Shane Stone said no apology was required.
• Independent MP Pauline Hanson said that many children were 'taken for their own good'.
• In a statement from the Reconciliation Convention, Australians were urged to stand against the 'insidious evil of racism'.

Source: Newspaper

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission president Sir Ronald Wilson has called on the Federal Government to implement all recommendations of the 'Stolen Children' report.

The recommendations, released late last month during the Australian Reconciliation Convention, include making reparation with all indigenous people affected by the policies of forced removal.

'Laws, policies and practices of assimilation, and the forced removal of our children, have devastated the lives of indigenous individuals, families and communities for over a century,' Sir Ronald said.

'An open acknowledgement and a sincere recognition of this history is vital if reconciliation is to have any  meaning in this country.

'A commitment to the implementation of both the spirit and the letter of these recommendations is essential to the future unity, justice and peace of our nation.

The 689-page report, 'Bringing Them Home', was released by Sir Ronald and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick Dodson.

Findings of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families include:

• Nationally, between one in three and one in 10 indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families an dcommunities between 1910 and 1970.
• Indigenous children were placed in institutions, church missions, adoptered or fastered, and were at risk of physical and sexual abuse. Many never received wages for their labour.
• Welfare officials failed in their duty to protect indigenous wards from abuse.
• Under international law, from about 1946 the policies of forcible removal amounted to genocide; and from 1960 the continuation of distinct laws for indigenous children was racially discriminatory.
• The removal of indigenous children continues today. Indigenous children are six times more likely to be removed for child welfare reasons and 21 times more likely for juvenile detention reasons than non-indigenous children.

The report recommends compensation fo rall indigenou speople affected by policies of forcible removal. Reparation would include an acknowledgement of responsibility and apology from all Australian governments, police forces and church institutions which implemented policies of forcible removal; guarantees against reptition; restitution; rehabilitation; and the provision of monetary compensation.

It recommends a national compensation fund should be established to provide a lump-sum payment to a person who was forcibly removed as a child. In addition, further compensation should be made available if a perosn can prove particular har mreuslting from forcible removal.

"Reparation is about much more than simply monetary compensation,' Mr Dodson said.

'Reparation is not a privilege. It is a recognition of the great wrong that was done to generations of indigenous children and a requirement to compensate for that wrong.'

The report also calls for full domestic implementation of the Genocide Convention, an international treat which Australian ratified in 1949.

'The repugnant policies of forcible removal were an act of genocide and a basic denial of basic common law rights,' Mr Dodson said.

'The convention defines genocide as including the forcible transfer of children of one group to another with the intention of destroying the group.

'Historical records of the time show that the clear intent of these policies was to absorb and assimilate indigenous children so that Aborigines, as a group, would disappear.

'Whether or nor this was thought to be in the best interest of the individual child is immaterial. Genocide is genocide.'

Other recommendations from the Bringing Them Home Report include:

• A national 'Sorry Day' to commemorate the history of forcible removal and its effects.
• Primary and secondary school education about th ehistory and continuing effects of forcible separation.
• Funding for indigenous communities to develop regional language, culture and history centres.
• Funding and estbalishment of indigenous agencies to record ,preserve and administer testimonies of forcible removal provided by indigenous people.
• An indigenous family information service to operate as a 'first-stop sho' for people seekin ginformation about and referral to records held by government or church bodies.
• Improving access guidelines to allow indigenou speople access to their personal information and records, and that the Northern Territory Government introduce Freedom of Information laws on the Commonwealth model.
• Family tracing and reunion services and parenting and family development programs
• National standards legislation for the treatment of all indigenous children.

The national inquiry, established in 1995, held hearings in every capital city and may regional centres between December 1995 and October 1996.

It received 777 submissions, including 535 from indigenous individuals and organisations, 49 from church organisations and seven government submissions.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

The NSW Attorney-General, Mr Shaw, yesterday undertook to refer serious crimes alleged to have been committed against members of the "stolen generations" to police and the Director of Public Prosecution.
The Human Rights Commission's report, Bringing Them Home, "contains disturbing allegations of criminal conduct" against Aboriginal children who had been removed from their families, he said.

"Some of them are sufficiently recent - in the 1950s and 1960s - to be capable of investigation and prosecution and I will take every step open to me to ensure justice is done," he said. Mr Shaw made the move after the president of the Commission, Sir Ronald Wilson told the Herald it is now "open" to Australia's Attorneys-General to pursue charges against individuals alleged to have committed crimes by witnesses to the "stolen generations" inquiry.

In 535 submissions from indigenous individuals and organisations, the inquiry uncovered widespread allegations of pedophilia and was told of scores of other serious crimes, including physical assault and rape.

"The Commission discussed this during the conduct of the inquiry and we were conscious that what was being said to us reflected serious criminal conduct, but we decided not to make any direct appeal to the criminal authorities because we were not authorised to," Sir Ronald said. A Commission source said the report was "the tip of the iceberg" and a massive amount of evidence - much of it given in confidence - was available. The Commission would need to check first with individual witnesses before releasing it to legal authorities, the source said. An adviser-consultant to the NSW "stolen generations" body Link-Up, Ms Carol Kendall, said she personally believed Attorneys-General should seriously consider criminal prosecutions, although her organisation had no policy on this yet.

"There were some horrendous things perpetrated against people and in any other situation there would be some belief they would be brought to justice," she said. Although some people would find it emotionally impossible to re-live their experiences to the extent needed to back up criminal charges, some "stolen children" were already taking civil action, she said. Almost one-in-five witnesses removed as children reported being physically assaulted and one in 10 alleged they had been sexually abused in an institution. One in 10 boys and three in 10 girls alleged they were sexually abused in foster care or other placement, the report said.

"Witnesses to the inquiry were not specifically asked whether they had experienced physical abuse. Nevertheless, 28 per cent reported that they had suffered physical brutality much more severe, in the inquiry's estimation, than the typically severe punishments of the day," the report said.

A NSW woman who was removed to Parramatta Girls' Home aged 13 in the 1960s and then placed in domestic service said, "They put me with one family and the man of the house used to come down and use me whenever he wanted to ... Being raped over and over and there was no-one I could turn to." The Commission still believed the best recourse was for Federal, State and Territory governments to pay reparations through a national compensation board, as its report recommended, Sir Ronald said.

Because many victims were too fragile to be involved in trials and many of the alleged crimes occurred so long ago, criminal prosecutions would be difficult in many cases, he said.

A spokesman for the Federal Attorney-General, Mr Williams, said the Government was still considering its response to the report.

WHIPPINGS, RAPE, DEATH - STOLEN CHILDREN ALLEGATIONS

COOTAMUNDRA GIRLS HOME:

• Girl beaten to death early this century.
• Girls in the home strapped naked to chairs and whipped, 1940s.
• Girl removed there in 1940s alleged sexual assault and physical abuse by female staffer.

IN HOME PLACEMENT:

• Girl aged 13 removed in 1952 belted naked "repeatedly" by Narromine woman she was placed with.
• Girl removed in 1946 aged three sexually abused by foster father.
• Girl removed to Parramatta Girls' Home aged 13 in the 1960s, then placed in domestic service alleged "the man of the house" raped her repeatedly.
• Boy in Kinchela Boys' Home at Kempsey in 1950s alleged massive scale of sexual and physical abuse.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald (accessed via The University of Sydney Library)

The Federal Government has formally rejected the central recommendations of a report into the separation of Aboriginal children from their parents and has blocked an Opposition motion describing the removals as a "national shame".

For the second day running, senior Labor leaders were reduced to tears while discussing the report in Parliament, with the Opposition Leader, Mr Beazley, forced on several occasions to interrupt his speech while trying to contain his emotions.

The Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Senator Herron, presented the Government's response to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission's report, Bringing Them Home, which details years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse of Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families.

Senator Herron has rejected the possibility of national framework legislation, as recommended in the report, to regulate current police, judicial and/or departmental functions in relation to child welfare, adoption and juvenile justice.

Senator Herron said this would represent a "significant interference" on the part of the Commonwealth in State and Territory responsibilities.

He also reiterated the Government's opposition to compensation - saying there was no "equitable or practical" way to do it - and backed a previous claim by the Attorney-General, Mr Daryl Williams, that the report was flawed in its legal analysis.

"It should also not be forgotten that in the midst of this tragedy there were a large number of very dedicated people and organisations, including the churches, who genuinely believed their actions were for the benefit of indigenous Australians," Senator Herron said.

Immediately after the three-day Reconciliation Convention ended yesterday in Melbourne, members of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation called on the Government to reconsider its statement that it will not pay compensation. The council's chairman, Mr Patrick Dodson, said Australia's poor human rights record at home would "go up like a blimp" for the rest of the world to see.

After Senator Herron presented his response, the Senate voted for an apology on behalf of the Parliament to be included in the Government's response to the report.

Last night Senator Herron said an apology on behalf of the Parliament would only occur if it was "warranted" after close examination of the report and if the nation supported it.

In another development yesterday, a lecturer in constitutional law at the Australian National University, Mr George Williams, said there was "a strong chance" the High Court would rule that the "race power" in the Constitution could only be used for the benefit of Aborigines, and not to their detriment.

The court will have its first chance to rule on the issue in the Hindmarsh Island appeal, which was lodged yesterday. The Government is also relying on the race power to enact Mr Howard's 10-point Wik plan, which will effectively extinguish native title.

Mr Williams said the Chief Justice, Sir Gerard Brennan, and Justice Mary Gaudron had already made it clear in judgments that this was how they viewed the race power, giving it "strong weight on the court".

The appellants will argue that the law, which overrides the Racial Discrimination Act to allow the bridge to go ahead, is unconstitutional because it discriminates against Aboriginal people, contrary to the purpose of the race power.

Mr Williams said the strong backing by the Governor-General, Sir William Deane, for the Gaudron/Brennan view of the race power "is consistent with his strong advocacy for indigenous rights".

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

BROTHERS Pat and Mick Dodson hail from the Kimberley region in north-west Australia. Their spiritual home, the land near Broome where they would otherwise perform ceremonies integral to their Aboriginality, is contained within two pastoral leases and off limits.

It is a common story of dispossession stemming from the late 1930s when their mother and her two older sisters were chained up in the back of a truck and sent off to be Christianised in the government settlement at Moola Bulla, 16 kilometres from Halls Creek. There the mother married and started a family before moving to Katherine.

The brothers found themselves back together in Halls Creek recently. Mick Dodson, lawyer and Aboriginal social justice commissioner, was there as a member of the inquiry into the lost generations, or the separation of Aboriginal children from their families. Pat, a former priest and chairman of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, was there to observe.

The taking of evidence from hundreds of people - children forcibly removed from their mothers by whites who called themselves "protectors", and parents who have had no knowledge of their children for decades - has been a harrowing experience for the four commissioners assigned to the task.

It was even more harrowing for the Dodsons when the inquiry took them into their own back yard to hear the stories of their own people.

"I saw my brother abused because the procedure required him to be fair to everyone," Pat Dodson recalled this week.

"An Aboriginal man so hurt by the events of his life took exception, believed my brother was being unfair and attacked him."

Mick Dodson has confirmed that at times he has found the whole affair so emotionally draining that he has undergone counselling. Pat says he is tough enough to cope with his own dislocation from his ceremonial land, but he felt deeply for so many of the lost children still seeking their identities.

"They don't know who they are or where they come from. They have no means of making the connection to their people and their land. It's worse than being a refugee," he said.

"In an indigenous community people ask who are you, where you come from, who your mother is, who your father is, what country you belong to. They are the sort of introductory things you do.

"It gets back to land, to ceremonies. It gets back to the separation from your people and the opportunities to fulfil your cultural entitlements, to grow up speaking a particular language that belongs to a certain customary law tradition with responsibilities for certain tracts of lands and obligations for the care of people. It has put people right outside all of that."

What amazes Pat Dodson most is that the Australia-wide separation of half- caste children over more than eight decades was the work of the good guys - governments, welfare workers and missionaries who thought they were doing the children a favor by Christianising and Westernising them and, particularly, by discouraging the girls from marrying Aboriginal men.

"This is about those of us who were an embarrassment to the white people because they were the offspring of the local pastoralist or the local policeman or the local welfare bloke or itinerant prospectors.

"They were classified as pagan, lacking in morals and all the stereotypes you find in the record books.

"So out of the goodness of their hearts the good people took the children away and gave them the benefit of their society," he said.

The bad guys came earlier. They were the ones who poisoned the water holes and seized the land to build cities and create farms, the ones that the High Court's Mabo and Wik rulings relating to native title were about.

The work of the commissioners is complete. Over two years they have received 1000 submissions which have been rolled into Bringing them home, a 690-page narrative of Australia's great shame.

An Aboriginal child care organiser, Mr Nigel D'Souza, describes it as more tragic than anything written in fiction.

"It is harrowing but those who take the time and trouble to read it will find it engrossing."

Others stick to the United Nations definition of the forced removal of people from targeted ethnic groups and call it genocide.

Dr Denise Cuthbert, of the Centre for Women's Studies at Monash University and an expert on the exploitation of Aborigines, said: "Australians think genocide occurs only in other places at the hand of Pol Pot and Hitler. They regard 'ethnic cleansing' as some legacy of Baltic insurrection but it existed in Australia right up to the late 1960s, and in some states to the early 1970s."

Mr D'Souza, executive director of SNAICC, the Secretariat National Aboriginal Islander Child Care, said it had long been known that children were systematically removed from parents, and that many had been used and abused by their white "protectors", but there had been no understanding of the impact on Aboriginal society.

Then in August 1989 Australia was jolted by newspaper pictures of James Savage, an Aborigine who faced the death sentence in Florida for the murder of a wealthy socialite woman. Savage had been taken from his mother in northern Victoria at three weeks. His foster family moved to the United States, where they abandoned him as a young teenager.

SNAICC campaigned successfully to have the death penalty commuted to life imprisonment. Mr D'Souza described the case as a watershed. His organisation and the Sydney-based national Aboriginal organisation Link-Up embarked on a five-year campaign for a government inquiry into the assimilation policies.

They argued that the general level of ignorance of the history of the separation policies was not helping the victims. Their needs were not recognised and this was hindering in the provison of services.

He said the initial responses were poor but the evidence was becoming compelling. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Deaths in Custody reported in 1991 that 43 out of the 99 cases investigated had been removed children. An Aboriginal health services study revealed that 60 per cent of psychiatric patients had been removed children. The Going Home conference in Darwin in 1994 found the key that ultimately persuaded the Keating Government to act. Representatives from each state and territory chronicled the history of separation and its effects in their jurisdictions.

The inquiry was set up with a $1.2 million budget in May 1995 under the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. The four-member inquiry team led by the commission's president, former High Court judge Sir Ron Wilson, was assisted by 15 state and regional commissioners during the evidence-taking process in their own areas.

The inquiry started on Flinders Island in Bass Strait in December 1995 and it visited every state and territory.

By its close last October, there had been 1000 submissions, of which 400 were given by Aboriginal people in confidence. The open submissions were made by individuals, indigenous groups, the churches and seven governments.

But the report it produced seems to be at best an inconvenience and at worst an embarrassment for a Federal Government of a different persuasion to the one that ordered it.

The recommendations call for acknowledgement and apology from all who participated in the removal of the children, then for compensation, and finally for the means by which the victims can trace their origins and where possible reconnect to their cultural origins.

The initial reaction of the Prime Minster, Mr John Howard, to reject financial compensation has dismayed the Aboriginal community.

Mr Brian Keon-Cohen, the barrister who has represented Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in the Mabo, Wik and Yorta Yorta cases, was scathing.

He said a modern civilised community found separation abhorrent but the Government was seeking to continue the policies in its 10-point plan to solve the Wik native title impasse.

The denigration of Sir Ron and Mick Dodson ahead of the tabling of the report has heightened the anger and sense of frustration.

Mr D'Souza said the Aboriginal community had high hopes that the report would set the scene for a true reconciliation. State and territory governments, non-government agencies and the churches had all got behind the inquiry and were ready to take action, but he described the Federal Government's attitude as callous.

"They have taken no account of the feelings of the people who gave evidence. People are feeling confused, angry and let down. They thought it would be respected by all the parties and governments in Australia, but the Federal Government is trying to undermine it by denying it. Its dismissive statements don't augur well for the formal response."

Pat Dodson was angry that the Government had played the man in an attempt to denigrate the report.

"So why can't we have the bigness of heart when it comes to the indigenous people? Why do we begrudge it in the face of the enormity of what was done here? Why do we have to be so mean-spirited about it? Is it because Pauline Hanson will say Aborigines are getting too much money?"

THE COMMISSIONERS

Sir Ronald Wilson:

President of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission for seven years, 75, former High Court judge, former Western Australian Solicitor-General, and former president of the Uniting Church. Trenchant advocate of state rights and passionate about indigenous affairs.

Mick Dodson:

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner since March 1993. Lawyer, 47, former director of National Land Council and former counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

Chris Sidoti:

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity commissioner since 1995 and previously its foundation secretary, 46, lawyer, commissioner of Australian Law Reform Commission and long-term human rights activist. Former national secretary of the now defunct Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, former deputy president of the Australian Council of Social Service, and former Acting Race Discrimination Commissioner.

Zita Antonios:

Federal Race Discrimination Commissioner since 1994. A fluent Arabic speaker, 41, she has been closely involved with issues affecting ethnic communities. A former member of the NSW Immigration Review Tribunal, former chief concilliator with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and currently on the Sydney Olympic Games multicultural advisory committee.

• They were assisted in compiling evidence by 15 state and regional commissioners.

WHAT THEY SAID.

• Money should be provided to record the testimonies of indigenous people affected by the forcible removal policies.
• National compensation fund to be established by Commonwealth and states.
• Reparation be made to:

All individuals who were forcibly removed as children.

Family members who suffered as a result of their removal.

Communities that, as a result of the removal of children, suffered cultural and community disintegration.

Descendants of those removed who, as a result, have been deprived of community ties, culture and language, and links with and entitlements to their traditional land.

• All Australian parliaments, police forces and relevant churches to officially apologise to indigenous people.
• A national Sorry Day be arranged to commemorate the history of removals.
• Governments to ensure that schools include substantial compulsory modules on the history and effects of removal.
• Compensation to be provided to people affected by forcible removal under the following headings: racial discrimination, arbitary deprivation of liberty, pain and suffering, abuse (including physical, sexual and emotional), disruption of family life, loss of cultural life and fulfilment, loss of native title rights, labor exploitation, economic loss and loss of opportunities.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Heart-wrenching stories of mistreatment mark a report on Australia's "genocide" that the Government has been reluctant to reveal, reports DEBRA JOPSON .
"MUM remembered once a girl who did not move too quick. She was tied to the old bell post and belted continuously. She died that night, still tied to the post. No girl ever knew what happened to her body or where she was buried."

Auschwitz? Belsen? Dachau? No, Cootamundra.

The words are those of "Jennifer", who was among 535 indigenous people who gave evidence to the Human Rights Commission's inquiry into the removal of Aboriginal children from their families during 11 months of gruelling hearings.

"Jennifer" and her mother before her, were just two of hundreds of Aboriginal girls taken from their families and placed in Cootamundra Girls' Home, one of a score of institutions in which the "stolen generations" were placed.

The words of some of the survivors of these institutions have been distilled in the Human Rights Commission report the Federal Government has been afraid to table - Bringing them Home.

Almost one in five of these witnesses reported that they were physically abused there. About one in 10 said they had been sexually assaulted.

"Indigenous children have been forcibly separated from their families and communities since the very first days of the European occupation of Australia," says the report.

It was common "simply to remove the child forcibly, often in the absence of the parent but sometimes even by taking the child from the mother's arms".

"Training" institutions like that at Cootamundra were designed to ready girls for domestic work, providing cheap servants doing exhausting work thought to "curb the sexual promiscuity attributed to them by non-indigenous people".

Jennifer's mother was taken to Cootamundra in about 1915; Jennifer and her sister Kate in 1952. The home closed just 28 years ago.

"Some of the staff were cruel to the girls. Punishment was caning or belting and being locked in the box-room or the old morgue," Jennifer recalled.

"Matron had her 'pets' and so did some of the staff. I look back now and see we were all herded together like sheep and each had to defend themselves and if you didn't you would be picked on by somebody that didn't like you; your life would be made a misery.

"My mother sent us a new outfit every change of season. We only received one parcel. The matron kept our clothes and distributed them to her pets. In winter it was icy cold and for the first time in my life I didn't have socks to wear to school."

She can't see why they were taken from home. "We were not neglected. We wore nice clothes. We were not starving. Our father worked hard and provided for us and we came from a very close and loving family."

Jennifer's story is part of a broader picture - of a society which from the 1890s to the late 1960s through its Federal and State governments had policies designed to erase Aboriginality. The report calls this genocide.

"In institutions and in foster care and adoptive families, the forcibly removed children's Aboriginality was typically either hidden and denied or denigrated," says the report.

"Their labour was often exploited. They were exposed to substandard living conditions and a poor and truncated education. They were vulnerable to brutality and abuse. Many experienced repeated sexual abuse." In NSW, children were sent to two other major homes, the United Aborigines Mission home at Bomaderry, on the South Coast, which received babies and young children, and Kinchela Boys' Home at Kempsey, in the north.

"The (Aborigines' Protection) Board regularly received complaints about the conditions in these institutions," said the report.

"Kinchela was a place where they thought you were animals ... it was just like a prison," said "John", taken as an infant to Bomaderry Children's Home and transferred aged 10 to Kinchela.

"If we answered an attendant back we were 'sent up the line'. Now I don't know if you can imagine 79 boys punching the hell out of you - just knuckling you. Even your brother, your cousin.

"They had to - if they didn't do it, they were sent up the line. When the boys who had broken ribs or broken noses - they'd have to pick you up and carry you right through to the last bloke." This happened "every day".

In 1935, the Aborigines Protection Board decided to tell Kinchela's manager not to tie boys to fences or trees, nor to use hosepipes or stockwhips on them, the report says.

But there was institutional cruelty of another kind. "The lack of funding for settlements, missions and institutions meant that people forced to move to these places were constantly hungry, denied basic facilities and medical treatment and as a result were likely to die prematurely," said the report.

One witness removed to Kinchela in 1950 aged nine recalled: "You know what we got to eat? Straw and buns. That was our tea ... Quite naturally you're going to pull the straw out and chuck it away. You do that and you get caned. You're supposed to eat it."

Lola McNaughton, a research case-worker with the Aboriginal "stolen generations" organisation Link-Up, recalls the notorious "box-room" at the Cootamundra home with no light or air, in which girls were locked at night as punishment.

She remembers one staff member as particularly cruel about Saturday morning floor-cleaning.

"We used to get on a mop and polish it up till we could see our little black faces on the floor and she said,'It's not shiny enough,' and threw a bucket of water on the floor and said,'Do it again'."

Her parents travelled from their hometown of Tingha in New England to south-western NSW to see their children.

"They got two miles away to the Cootamundra Showground and never made the rest of the journey." She never knew why.

According to the report: "In the pursuit of assimilation, Aboriginal parents were prevented by law from contacting their institutionalised children. It was an offence to try to communicate with any ward 'who is an inmate of such home' or to enter the home."

The girls supported each other and McNaughton considered her older sister, Alice, a "surrogate mother". Alice left the home when she was 18. "I was devastated by that because my 'mum' had left. I'd just turned 13 ... I never saw her again." Actor and businessman Burnum Burnum, now 62, recalls a worker at Kinchela who masturbated in front of the boys at night.

He recalled breaking a window at Kinchela accidentally. "... I had to take my trousers off and bend over a chair and have 10 lashings of a stockwhip, so I couldn't sit down for three months. The experience has been indelibly written on my spirit."

Yet, last year, Burnum Burnum met a white missionary from Bomaderry and he says their "reconciliation" in which she said sorry has brought him peace. He wants no monetary compensation - although he believes other victims should get it from non-government sources such as churches.

Apart from all governments "acknowledging" her pain, McNaughton wants very little, too. "I just think of all my relations who have passed away and no amount of money could compensate for that. (But) I'd like to be compensated to fix the little graveyard where my father and sister are buried. That's all."

SECRETS AND LIES

"PEOPLE used to say we could be sisters," said Jackie Bedford.

"We are so alike," said Carol Kendall. The two women finish each other's sentences. They share quick smiles and a dry sense of humour. Six years ago, when they first met, they became friends.

A year later, when Kendall was giving a talk on being a member of the "stolen generations" at the University of Western Sydney - where Bedford worked in the Aboriginal studies unit as a receptionist - the two realised how many relatives they had in common from the Bourke area.

Both were grand-daughters of the famous Aboriginal activist, Fred Maynard. Kendall, 46, had been taken from her mother at six weeks of age and adopted out to a non-Aboriginal family in Sydney where she grew up believing she was an only child. Bedford, 51, stayed with her mother.

"I don't know whether or not to open a can of worms with you," Kendall told Bedford. "Well, you can't leave me hanging like that. You have to tell me now." They were sisters, Kendall told her. For five years, the two have been "catching up." "We reckon we're up to about age 15 now," they joke.

Kendall, who is now an adviser-consultant to Link-Up, the indigenous organisation which reunites families fractured through policies of separation, points out that not knowing who your relations are can be dangerous.

"When I was 20, I came home with an Aboriginal boyfriend. It threw my family into turmoil because they didn't know if we were related. So that is how I found out I was Aboriginal. "I was 35 when I met my mum. I came to Link-Up and it was one of the hardest decisions I'd ever had to make because of my fear of rejection," she said. However, it was the "most wonderful experience". She does not want monetary reparation, declaring: "If I change one person's attitude to Aboriginal people, it's compensation for me."

She is sad that the descendants of Fred Maynard are still fighting for justice. He wrote to the NSW Premier in 1927 asking "that the family life of Aboriginal people shall be held sacred and free from invasion and interference and that the children shall be left in the control of their parents".

Said Kendall: "I want the Federal Government to acknowledge what's happened to us."

Jackie Bedford, 51.

Stayed with parents in Bourke.

Carol Kendall, 46.

Taken from mother at six weeks and adopted out.

1991 became friends.

1992 After chatting about relatives, they realise that they are sisters.

"People used to say we could be sisters."

Source: Sydney Morning Herald (accessed via The University of Sydney Library)

Sir Ronald Darling Wilson had adversity thrust on him 72 years ago at the age of three, when his mother died, and again at seven when his father suffered a stroke.

He lived in a hospice for the next five years. An older brother became a father figure to him and Sir Ronald recalls going to the local greengrocer and asking for leftover vegetables. A fond memory the president of the Human Rights Commission shares is the lemonade and ice-cream drink - a "spider" - which he had just once a year as a Christmas treat.

According to those who know him, this tough childhood, which culminated in him leaving school at 14, has produced the gumption, the humility and empathy for society's strugglers which has now put him offside with the Federal Government.

His friend, the Uniting Church national director for mission, the Rev Dorothy McRae-McMahon, said yesterday he would be "devastated" by an attack from an un-named government source on the credibility of the report he had written.

The source claimed in yesterday's Herald there were concerns Sir Ronald was biased because he apologised recently on national television for running a church institution which accepted Aboriginal children removed from their families.

Rev McRae-McMahon said: "It would be one of his major concerns to have the report taken seriously and if the Government did not because of his personal life, he would be deeply hurt.

"As he has stayed open to the pain of others, he has kept his own vulnerability.

"He is giving a lead which other leaders have failed to give to this country. He's a deeply respected ex-president of the Uniting Church and has the grace to be sincerely sorry about things for which the Church was responsible in its past."

Sir Ronald is a former West Australian solicitor-general and Liberal-appointed High Court judge who was a trenchant States-rights advocate. He became president of the Human Rights Commission seven years ago when the Coalition was considering closing it.

A short, unassuming man not given to power-dressing, he is easily overlooked at the many conferences he attends - until he speaks of some human rights violation, when his voice quakes with passion.

Sir Ronald is particularly passionate about indigenous issues. Last October he warned of "timid governments" and labelled the practice of removing indigenous children from their families as "genocide".

Recently he has opposed any extinguishment of native title, and to the Government's plan to deny unmarried women access to fertility services.

He has upset Labor, too. In 1995, he branded the Federal Government "cowardly" for not assisting East Timorese refugees.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald (accessed via The University of Sydney Library)

Sir Ronald Darling Wilson had adversity thrust on him 72 years ago at the age of three, when his mother died, and again at seven when his father suffered a stroke.

He lived in a hospice for the next five years. An older brother became a father figure to him and Sir Ronald recalls going to the local greengrocer and asking for leftover vegetables. A fond memory the president of the Human Rights Commission shares is the lemonade and ice-cream drink - a "spider" - which he had just once a year as a Christmas treat.

According to those who know him, this tough childhood, which culminated in him leaving school at 14, has produced the gumption, the humility and empathy for society's strugglers which has now put him offside with the Federal Government.

His friend, the Uniting Church national director for mission, the Rev Dorothy McRae-McMahon, said yesterday he would be "devastated" by an attack from an un-named government source on the credibility of the report he had written.

The source claimed in yesterday's Herald there were concerns Sir Ronald was biased because he apologised recently on national television for running a church institution which accepted Aboriginal children removed from their families.

Rev McRae-McMahon said: "It would be one of his major concerns to have the report taken seriously and if the Government did not because of his personal life, he would be deeply hurt.

"As he has stayed open to the pain of others, he has kept his own vulnerability.

"He is giving a lead which other leaders have failed to give to this country. He's a deeply respected ex-president of the Uniting Church and has the grace to be sincerely sorry about things for which the Church was responsible in its past."

Sir Ronald is a former West Australian solicitor-general and Liberal-appointed High Court judge who was a trenchant States-rights advocate. He became president of the Human Rights Commission seven years ago when the Coalition was considering closing it.

A short, unassuming man not given to power-dressing, he is easily overlooked at the many conferences he attends - until he speaks of some human rights violation, when his voice quakes with passion.

Sir Ronald is particularly passionate about indigenous issues. Last October he warned of "timid governments" and labelled the practice of removing indigenous children from their families as "genocide".

Recently he has opposed any extinguishment of native title, and to the Government's plan to deny unmarried women access to fertility services.

He has upset Labor, too. In 1995, he branded the Federal Government "cowardly" for not assisting East Timorese refugees.

Source: The Age

The forced removal of Aboriginal children from their parents left many with significant psychological and emotional disorders, with most suffering physical or sexual abuse once in foster care, the report into the "Stolen Generations" has found.

The report by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, titled Bringing Them Home, concluded that separation had caused significant trauma for indigenous people, causing long-lasting disorders and forcing many to become dependent on alcohol.

"Subsequent generations continue to suffer the effects of parents and grandparents having been forcibly removed, institutionalised, denied contact with their Aboriginality and in some cases traumatised and abused," the report said.

The institutionalisation of children taken from their parents led to behavioral disorders and emotional instability, which had made it hard for them to fit into society and form relationships with others.

"The effects of forcible removal and institutionalisation persist into adulthood, appearing indeed to be lifelong," the report found.

Once in foster homes, the children were often sexually abused, leading to drug and alcohol abuse, criminal behavior, self-mutilation and suicide.

"Children's Aboriginality was typically either hidden and denied or denigrated. Their labor was often exploited," the report said. "They were exposed to substandard living conditions and a poor, truncated education. They were vulnerable to brutality and abuse."

The criminal behavior and alcoholism resulting from separation was often passed on to children.

Aborigines separated from their parents also had virtually no chance of exercising their native title rights because they had no connection with their land or culture, the report found.

"The removal of 'Stolen Generations' . . . has, in the majority of cases, prevented them from acquiring language, culture and ability to carry out traditional responsibilities," it said.

The learning abilities of separated Aborigines was also affected, with many blacks becoming "permanently regressed".

Forced separation also made parenting difficult for Aboriginal adults.

"Most forcibly removed children were denied the experience of being parented or at least cared for by a person to whom they were attached," the report said. "This is the very experience people rely on to become effective and successful parents themselves."

Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics quoted in the report show that Aboriginal children removed from their parents obtained virtually no educational or lasting socio-economic benefit from separation.

THE MAIN RECOMMENDATIONS

• The Council of Australian Governments ensure funding for indigenous agencies to record, preserve and administer access to testimonies of Aborginal people forcibly removed from their parents.
• Compensation for forced removal be redefined as reparation. Reparation should consist of an acknowledgment and apology, guarantees against repetition, measures of restitution, measures of rehabilitation and monetary compensation.
• Reparation be made to all individuals forcibly removed as children, family members who suffered as a result, communities that suffered cultural and community disintegration and descendants of those removed.
• All Australian parliaments and police forces acknowledge their role, negotiate with ATSIC on the wording of an official apology and make appropriate reparation.
• Churches and other non-government agencies involved in the forced separation make formal apologies.
• ATSIC and the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation arrange a national `Sorry Day' to be celebrated each year.
• Governments ensure that schools include substantial compulsory modules on the history and effects of removal.
• Monetary compensation be provided to people affected by forcible removal under the following headings: racial discrimination, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, pain and suffering, abuse (including physical, sexual and emotional abuse), disruption of family life, loss of cultural rights and fulfilment, loss of native title rights, labor exploitation, economic loss and loss of opportunities. Compensation should not infringe on the common law right to seek damages.
• The Council of Australian Governments establish a joint National Compensation Fund.