Stolen Generations A Film by Darlene Johnson 2000

Summary

The 2000 documentary "Stolen Generations: A Film by Darlene Johnson" is a powerful narrative detailing the forced removals of Aboriginal children from their families in Australia. The film addresses the painful policies initiated by the government, which aimed to assimilate Aboriginal communities into white society by separating children based on their skin color. Through personal testimonies, the documentary vividly captures the traumatic impact on the children, families, and cultures affected. It also highlights the fight for recognition, compensation, and an official apology for these historical injustices.

Highlights

• The documentary provides an intimate look into the lives of the Stolen Generations and the policies that led to their suffering ✨.
• Personal accounts illustrate the psychological and cultural damage inflicted by separating children from their Aboriginal roots 🌍.
• The film stresses the need for an official government apology and recognition of these historical injustices 🏛️.
• It highlights the ongoing impact and struggles faced by those affected as they seek healing and justice 💔.
• The documentary serves as a poignant reminder of the need for cultural sensitivity and historical awareness 🌿.

Key Takeaways

• The film exposes the traumatic history of the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal children in Australia 🎥.
• It sheds light on how government policies aimed to assimilate Aboriginal children into white society by removing them from their families 🏛️.
• Personal stories reveal the lasting impact of these actions on individuals and communities 💔.
• The documentary calls for acknowledgment, compensation, and an official apology for the injustices committed against the Aboriginal people ✊.
• It underscores the importance of understanding and reconciling with past wrongs to heal and move forward 🌿.

Overview

In "Stolen Generations: A Film by Darlene Johnson," the harrowing experiences of Aboriginal children removed from their families under assimilation policies are brought to the fore. This powerful narrative digs deep into the systemic efforts to erase Aboriginal culture and identity by forcibly assimilating children into white society. Through heart-wrenching testimonies, the film paints a vivid picture of the trauma and disruption caused to countless lives.

The documentary navigates through personal stories of individuals like Bobby Randall and Daisy Howard, whose lives were irrevocably changed by these policies. It shows their painful journey of loss, identity crisis, and the emotional scars carried into adulthood. Their voices, along with those of others, serve as a testament to the resilience and strength of Aboriginal communities fighting for justice and recognition.

The film not only highlights the injustices faced but also calls for a national acknowledgment of past wrongs. It emphasizes the importance of healing through recognition, apology, and compensation to the Stolen Generations. This documentary is a crucial piece in understanding the deep-seated issues stemming from these historical injustices, urging us to learn from the past and foster a path towards reconciliation and healing.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction and Acknowledgment of Trauma The chapter titled 'Introduction and Acknowledgment of Trauma' opens with a warning about distressing content, setting the tone for a discussion on historical actions and policies. It emphasizes that current generations should not bear guilt for past wrongdoings but acknowledges the painful and dark aspects of history, such as murder and the forced removal of children. The chapter seeks to address these issues with candor and an intent to acknowledge the trauma caused.
• 01:30 - 02:30: Personal Reflection of an Aboriginal The chapter is a personal reflection by an Aboriginal individual, specifically from the Dungari tribe in eastern New South Wales. The narrator discusses their childhood experiences with identity as a fair-skinned Aboriginal, hoping their freckles would make them look more like a 'proper' Aboriginal. The reflection touches upon the contemporary issues of Aboriginal rights, emphasizing that these challenges are not just historical but ongoing and relevant today.
• 02:30 - 05:00: Historical Context of Aboriginal Child Removals The chapter delves into the historical context of the enforced assimilation policies in Australia. It discusses how the authorities attempted to erase the Aboriginal culture and identity through systematic child removals, with the goal of integrating them into white society. The underlying objective was to absorb Aboriginal people into whiteness and phase out the Aboriginal race. The chapter reflects on the severe impact these policies had on the Aboriginal community and their cultural heritage.
• 05:00 - 07:30: Early 20th Century Policies and Consequences The chapter discusses the early policies of removal in Australia, which began as early as the 1790s and continued through the early 20th century. It highlights the instances where Aboriginal children were taken from their families shortly after settlement in New South Wales and Tasmania. These actions are traced back to the initial years of European settlement in the region.
• 07:30 - 10:30: White Society's Assimilation Views and Practices The chapter discusses the views and practices of European societies towards Aboriginal people, particularly focusing on the 20th century when governmental assimilation efforts became more pronounced and widespread. There was a prevalent belief among Europeans that Aboriginal populations were declining, which seemed to affirm their scientific theories and assumptions about evolution and racial hierarchy. This belief drove policies based on the expectation that Aboriginal people would eventually disappear.
• 10:30 - 12:30: Impact on the Aboriginal Community The chapter titled 'Impact on the Aboriginal Community' discusses the reasons behind the high mortality rate among Aboriginals during a certain period. Contrary to some beliefs that evolution was the cause, the chapter explains that the real causes were gun violence, poisoned water sources, and diseases introduced by settlers. This account is supported by historical records, such as newspapers, parliamentary documents, and diaries, which clearly document the Australian narrative.
• 12:30 - 17:30: Specific Stories of Removed Children This chapter discusses the historical context of frontier violence against Aboriginal people in Australia, emphasizing the widespread awareness among white settlers of the large-scale murders. It highlights specific stories of removed Aboriginal children, set against the backdrop of early 20th century Northern Australia, a time when there were few white women in the region.
• 17:30 - 21:00: Government and Society's Response The chapter discusses the response of government and society to racial interactions in Northern Australia, particularly focusing on the relationships between white men and Aboriginal women. Policymakers were concerned about the development of a mixed-race population, which they viewed as a security risk, fearing that such individuals might sympathize with Asians in the event of an invasion. Additionally, they perceived this as a moral issue, reflecting societal attitudes towards race and integration during that period.
• 21:00 - 26:30: Individual Stories of Survival and Reflection This chapter examines the historical perspective of racial hygiene in Britain, focusing on the 1920s. During this period, the British society began to perceive the increasing population of half-caste individuals in North Australia as a threat to racial purity. The chapter details concerns about the growth rate of the half-caste population outpacing that of the European population, highlighting societal anxieties about demographic changes.
• 26:30 - 30:00: Conclusion and Call for Reconciliation The chapter discusses a policy from the 1930s aimed at integrating half-caste Aborigines into the white population by marrying them off and absorbing them biologically. This involved removing children from their families, with the so-called protectors of Aborigines having extensive legislative power to control marriages and take children away.

Stolen Generations A Film by Darlene Johnson 2000 Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 s warns that the following program contains material that may be distressing to some viewers australians of this generation should not be required to accept guilt and blame for past actions and policies over which they had no control we committed the murders we took the children from their mothers represents the most flemish chapter in our history there has been a disregard for human
• 00:30 - 01:00 rights we are dealing not with far past history we are dealing with contemporary history i'm an aboriginal of the dungari tribe of eastern new south wales as a fair-skinned child i used to look in the mirror hoping that one day my freckles would join up and i would be a proper aborigine over the years i discovered how white
• 01:00 - 01:30 authorities in australia tried to make us go the other way towards whiteness [Music] how they attempted to systematically wipe out the aboriginal race forever [Music]
• 01:30 - 02:00 so [Music] well removals began from the very beginning that is by individuals um right back in the 1790s in new south wales in the 1810s in tasmania within you know 10 or 20 years of settlement there were aboriginal children who in one way or another had been taken from their families and were living with
• 02:00 - 02:30 with europeans it didn't become really a government process until the 20th century when of course it was much more serious on a much larger scale [Music] governments had assumed that aborigines were dying out that evolution had dictated that they would eventually disappear the number of what they call full-blooded aborigines was declining it appeared to be proving their scientific theories
• 02:30 - 03:00 it was true aboriginals were dying in great numbers but not because evolution had determined it it was from gunshots poisoned water holes and diseases brought by the settlers the newspapers the parliamentary hansards the diaries which set out the australian record plainly and clearly in black and white
• 03:00 - 03:30 show beyond doubt that most whites on the frontier were well aware that aboriginal people were being murdered in very large numbers [Music] in the early 20th century in northern australia there were few white women
• 03:30 - 04:00 and because there were no white women sexual liaisons were conducted between white men and aboriginal women that was a problem for the policy makers who did not want a a mixed race population developing in northern australia which they perceive to be not only a security threat that is people who might be more sympathetic to asians should they invade but also a moral
• 04:00 - 04:30 threat a racial hygiene threat to british society by the 1920s they came to the realization that the half-caste population was increasing rapidly now in north australia that began to worry them very greatly because it looked as though eventually and often within a short space of years the half-caste population would outnumber the european population which wasn't growing quickly at all
• 04:30 - 05:00 one of the policies that was quite clearly decided in the 1930s was to solve this problem by marrying half castes into the white population and absorbing them biologically to do that they wanted to take the children away the so-called protectors of aborigines got sweeping power through legislation to control marriages and to take children away
• 05:00 - 05:30 any child of any aboriginal mother could be taken away by the state and kept for good [Music] the new legislation would change the lives of aboriginal people across the whole of australia some were placed on government-run reserves and church missions others were taken to remote cattle stations often hundreds of kilometers
• 05:30 - 06:00 from their traditional country from then on their lives became the property of the state bobby randall was one of those children when i think of love i see a young black mother holding a brown-skinned baby over a burning smoking fire she's trying to darken its skin so that the baby will not be taken away from her although she used charcoal
• 06:00 - 06:30 dirt and the smoke from the fire it didn't do any good because the day the policeman came it just happened to rain and the light-skinned baby skin shone out like gold amongst coal here my brown skin baby they take him away bobby randall comes from the pidenjata
• 06:30 - 07:00 tribe from the central australian desert he was taken from his mother at the age of seven and placed in a mission station at alice springs he told me about his removal as the story was passed on to him by his family bill mckinnon came as a protector picking us colored kids up and my case was he came across here and he said i want to take that boy he grabbed you and you put it on the camel
• 07:00 - 07:30 and your grandpa then pick up that fist beer one of the spearing but everybody jumped on him you know stopped him from putting a spear through bill mckinnon because they would have been all killed if he did that you know when i was picked up at angustown station and then taken towards alice spring and placed in the bungalow there where so many other kids were all sad and sorry states [Music]
• 07:30 - 08:00 i was fed because i did eat i was given a bed to sleep in which i didn't like you know because remember i just come from the bush a bush baby in bush kid into this dormitory system i hated the clearing of clothes i put ice to try and get out of them didn't wear clothes out in the bush it felt really uncomfortable and the stories my older sisters told me about that when i was even in the bungalows forever bearing
• 08:00 - 08:30 my clothes and getting into lots of trouble over that [Music] but you have to get used to not having the stars not feeling the wind and not the neither the warmth or temperatures of the climate as it takes so you lost those abilities of living in that natural environment i started to shrink and became smaller and smaller because i was no longer a part of what was out there
• 08:30 - 09:00 and it was totally really a traumatic experience you know things that people think is good for them is it necessarily good for me you know as a child because i had everything i wanted just having my family around me that's all where all i wanted was my family well i couldn't understand the english remember i was a just didn't speaking boy who couldn't understand english
• 09:00 - 09:30 until you slowly pick up through watching and copying more than understanding you got no power you got no nothing you just do this do that you just do what you're told to do at that moment you're told to do it if you didn't do it quick enough you got smacked [Music]
• 09:30 - 10:00 when bobby was 11 he was taken from the bungalow mission in a cattle truck to another mission off the tropical north coast of australia [Music] i remember landing in darwin because he
• 10:00 - 10:30 was this huge expanse of water i've never seen in my life you know and the car pulled up on top and just had to go down this cliff and there was all this beautiful water and of course when you're hot and dusty and you're seeing water for the first time you straight in you know and my time was i just grabbed it [Laughter] and i think all of us did that
• 10:30 - 11:00 eventually we were taken by a small ship to the croaker island this program was just being prepared for us children we had a routine that you went to school as well as you worked and so you had to learn to be self-sufficient in growing your own food so what were the missionaries like what kind of people were they they were absolutely beautiful people who who had
• 11:00 - 11:30 the calling the what they used to tell us they had the calling of god to look after us kids and they've given up so much to come there and we'd better look after them we could never understand why you know if they had it so good what they bother coming you know but um so there there were mainly single women there were seven or eight cottages and each of these would have one of these women who was cottage mothers you lived in these until you became uh
• 11:30 - 12:00 stud you know when you started chasing girls boy you wanted to sleep with girlfriend then you have to get into what they call the boys house with their padlocked at 9pm you know that's the time you start hunting girls he wasn't allowed to do that and there's a lot of them there you know they use outnumbered five to one you know so there's no shortage of beautiful girls to play with at the age of 16 bobby was thrown off croco island for challenging the
• 12:00 - 12:30 superintendent back on the mainland he began the search to find his mother the childhood memories were quite strong to me right throughout my life in fact one of the key things which helped me go back and retrace and find my family was the name of my mother because oh you wouldn't believe it when i left darwin to look for my family people started to claim me 300 miles out of darwin
• 12:30 - 13:00 at catherine and from there on it was at every native camp i visited every cattle station i went to i said where are the aboriginal people they said oh they're over there they're over there and so i'd go six dozen women would come up and say you're my son you're my son i had no idea how enormous that policy was implemented [Music]
• 13:00 - 13:30 when i was working for a airways and i was way up in the clouds flying over arnhem and just looking down and then all of a sudden this voice said i've got a song for you really soft sweet voice and i looked around possessing me and the pilot we were doing freight run this day we had no passengers and i looked and i realized i said that's my mother because i was feeling
• 13:30 - 14:00 really funny and then this being sat beside me and she said i've got the words for the song and she she gave me those songs [Music] i picked up my pen and paper and i wrote pranksting baby in five minutes after years of searching for his mother bobby found out she had died soon after he was taken upon [Music]
• 14:00 - 14:30 this luxurious melbourne home is a fairy tale come true for three aboriginal girls from melville island 180 miles from darwin mr and mrs deutscher visited the island last year and adopted three aborigines
• 14:30 - 15:00 to bring up with their own three children christine is four and for the first time in her life she has a mother and father two-year-old faye was rescued by a territory policeman who found her abandoned they've been cared for by the methodist mission and now they live in a 15-room mansion mr deutsche says he believes it's possible to integrate aboriginals into white families christine certainly seems to be proving that mr deutscher is right and so does faye it's also new to them and they're still a little wide-eyed a long way from
• 15:00 - 15:30 melville island but at last a home and the love and affection of a family of their own sleep tight children because you know that dreams do come true don't you how do you determine what is a good intention i mean there were certainly people who said particularly if they saw light-coloured children and said these children shouldn't be allowed to grow up in the aboriginal camp they should be bought into white society uh and and their level of civilization raised that that was the sort of view there were
• 15:30 - 16:00 also people who thought that the conditions in camps were bad and as they were i mean because the social medical conditions of many aboriginal people was very very poor and so people thought well it's better if you take the children away they'll have a better life and many individuals adopted aboriginal children on this assumption we can give them a better life so good intentions were there but behind that particularly in the 1930s and right through into the 1940s was this
• 16:00 - 16:30 this quite deliberate plan to breed the aborigines out norman b tyndale the physical anthropologist wrote the theory of race in australia and it looks like a stud book it looks like a breeding manual for animals if you mix one full blood with one half cast equals a three-quarter cast
• 16:30 - 17:00 one three-quarter cast mixed with one quadrant equals one half caste and that's published in a scholarly journal in an anthropological journal eugenics was an idea which was extremely important in most western countries and the idea was that through breeding you would improve the race or the nation you would breed out bad characteristics with large-scale plans that is you would
• 17:00 - 17:30 sterilize the unfit and that happened widely in many western countries and in australia it took the form of trying to breed out the color [Music] [Applause] [Music]
• 17:30 - 18:00 daisy howard is a jaru woman from hall's creek in the kimberley area of western australia daisy was only two when she was taken from her family and placed on a mission station called mullabulla
• 18:00 - 18:30 we drove with her from broome to hall's creek to meet her full blood sister mae even though daisy has gone back to visit may and her family before daisy has never heard the story of how she was removed patsy a local interpreter is helping us to find maybe [Music]
• 18:30 - 19:00 there she is we've been we've been around all over for a year where you went we go in the car come on all right then i want you to come in here now with us no no come with us here right you tell them a little bit story for us okay which way do we go
• 19:00 - 19:30 i'm going to say caroline pool we'll go caroline paula yes okay what more now we're going to go down here look at this place that's where i'm going wagon there now i'm going to see in that corner with that tree right in that corner where that tree there yeah plenty of people used to live rania now we come from old town [Music]
• 19:30 - 20:00 and quebec afternoon sunday picnic beginning here government been coming on in a long time holidays and we didn't know you know we've been fighting uh top manina we've been riding we've been running away from government you know waiting on the go school and these two open go gotta go well you know mr woodland will come and pick me up thinking about these two and even more
• 20:00 - 20:30 changing every day they've been going around big mobile kids was strictly forbidden may and her family would often camp out on the riverbank near the station so they could meet daisy secretly we've always come here in the bush uh you know and but you know that kadia
• 20:30 - 21:00 never let me wanna do she must have had good looking mother and father because she got very handsome face i found out that mae and daisy had the same mother but different fathers daisy you never saw your mother again never i never had that life with them
• 21:00 - 21:30 where is that place where's that place where daisy was taken is it nearby or a suite or a lifespan old horse creek now just a pile of rubble was once a thriving mining community daisy and may's mother worked at the local hotel well she's saying it was happy day we must probably was happy because we were together all of a sudden so you were happy when you were all
• 21:30 - 22:00 together really happy brother and two sister and little brother you've been happy organized grandmother play you know peace in one another see him may is now taking daisy back to the site from where she was removed 63 years ago so beautiful from up here
• 22:00 - 22:30 so when mum was working yeah you and daisy and brother play down here yeah that's when policemen come yeah i must have been too young or i just forget i think you know really because i can remember if i were to remember running around playing here i
• 22:30 - 23:00 would remember them taking me that would be the thing but don't remember see drove to nearby mullabula station to where daisy was first taken though she grew up on the property she hasn't been back there since when we arrived we found the gates were locked because of a number of recent cattle killings by trespasses no one is allowed onto the station
• 23:00 - 23:30 i wondered whether this had anything to do with the native title claim placed on the area by the traditional owners [Music] not far from the hill that's the hill there for malabola this is where we were taken when they took me from my mother me and my brother took us to malabola that's where they left us in the 30s mullabulla was a government-run cattle station
• 23:30 - 24:00 aboriginal children who had been rounded up from all over the kimberleys were brought here to be part of the local workforce there were heaps of half-cast children there and we just brought up believing that we didn't have families and that's what they were telling us that we didn't have you know mothers or we were often more likely to say we used to work very hard
• 24:00 - 24:30 we're children but we used to babysit for mothers when they used to work for the white people in the big house is to get up early in the morning run down to the milky cold yard and do some milking there we had to have the place clean we'd just work all day work work many of these children ended up working on cattle stations for the rest of their lives often without pay many australians
• 24:30 - 25:00 believe that aboriginals have never contributed to the economic wealth of this country the truth is that without the forced unpaid slave labor of aboriginals the australian cattle and farming industries would never have been established [Music] [Music]
• 25:00 - 25:30 in all of these institutions whether they were missions or government half caste institutions all of them were high security areas they were fenced they were policed and to move in and out of those institutions people had to have permits and they had to go from that place to a designated place on the permit which was basically a letter from the
• 25:30 - 26:00 administrator or they were forcibly removed to another location under the orders of the administrator daisy was 11 when she and other malabula children were taken by road to beagle bay mission this time it was a much longer journey [Music] at some of the stop-offs along the way many children had the strange experience of actually discovering their real mothers none however were allowed to stay with
• 26:00 - 26:30 them [Music] all the children ended up at beagle bay ah [Music] do i be talking to you it was part of our life on the mission
• 26:30 - 27:00 you know we used to come to church every day when you're small you don't really know you don't understand really like what they were doing so you know in a way we was happy to come here getting on the truck and coming you know for a long drive somewhere but we didn't know that that long drive gonna last for you know like this
• 27:00 - 27:30 it'd end up you know for a lifetime really what made it hard was we had people controlling us all the time telling us this and that we didn't really have our own mind to speak what we wanted to say we had someone saying it for us or what you know but it wasn't us speaking when daisy was 16 she married a man who was also on the mission
• 27:30 - 28:00 other stolen children were afraid of falling in love their aboriginal names had been replaced with english names they knew how easily they could end up marrying their own brother or sister some didn't find out until it was too late after many years on the mission all of daisy's links with her family had been lost i really feel for me you know i know she's my sister i
• 28:00 - 28:30 really love her but it took so long for us to get together like that's the first time yesterday like we ever talked properly we never ever talk like that before so in all those years that's what i was missing out on [Music]
• 28:30 - 29:00 rations are supplied by the welfare branch and its staff instructs natives in food preparation no one needs to be taught how to eat and table manners come later few people appreciate the selfless devotion of settlement superintendents nursing sisters teachers and missionaries they leave the comforts of cities and devote their lives and their talents to the difficult task of helping these people towards assimilation
• 29:00 - 29:30 things were done with the the best of intentions in the sense that the sisters looked after the children and i put it back to the fact that we didn't realize that the spirit was at work and the aboriginal people long before we came it was always at work god is present everywhere and it was present in the aboriginal people
• 29:30 - 30:00 the one thing where the missionaries by and large tried to have a real impact was to take the children away that just to set up dormitories where the children would live and they by in that way they endeavoured to break the link the cultural link between parents and children that was almost universal in missions um from the late 19th century until well into the 20th century it was considered that the the aboriginal people would die out and you'd have to be as kind and
• 30:00 - 30:30 nice to them as you can you know that kind of thing and again that was in harmony with christianity but it was it was a dreadful mistake because we didn't realize the damage that was being done to tour people um take them away from their own people and particularly one of the strengths of the aboriginal culture is this sense of community and it would be bad enough in my own
• 30:30 - 31:00 culture but to an aboriginal culture that was extra difficult by the end of the second world war there was a worldwide revulsion against racial theories this came with the realization that these ideas had led directly to the holocaust in australia the authorities now had to rethink their racial policies in the 1950s and 60s the policy was of
• 31:00 - 31:30 assimilation now the idea there was not that you would absorb aborigines biologically that is by taking them away from their communities and marrying them in by the 1950s it was a matter of cultural absorption that is you would raise the status of aborigines you would improve their standards you would take away all the discriminatory legislation you'd give them education and you would thereby encourage them to become like other australians and culturally they would slowly be absorbed
• 31:30 - 32:00 so the methods to be used were quite different that is biological absorption became cultural absorption but the end product the the end aimed for was the same that is the eventual disappearance of the aborigines as a people as a recognizable group children were still taken away for adoption ostensibly for their own good well into the 60s and 70s
• 32:00 - 32:30 cleoni quail was born at ivanhoe in a very hot and remote desert area of new south wales she was raised by her family till the age of four when she was removed under the child welfare act the reasons given were neglect and incompetent guardianship rather than on the basis of skin colour ivanhoe is a little country town out near will kenya it's um probably about
• 32:30 - 33:00 two hours from broken hill and the population's 500 so it's a really really small country town but my father was a tapper on the railway and we lived in a railway cottage out there we weren't allowed to go near non-aboriginal people because we you know the whole community always had that fear of the welfare coming in and taking little kids away so later on we moved down to balrano and i remember
• 33:00 - 33:30 we only had one room a big double bed and we all used to sleep in the bed and you know i just felt so secure and safe sleeping with mum and dad and my brothers all in the big bed together and getting beat in the head by one of the boys but it was just really beautiful you know you could smell your mother next to you or your father and just knew you were safe i don't have any bad childhood memories of growing up i
• 33:30 - 34:00 have really happy ones of freedom and but i do like remember the welfare coming in and and a big black car pulling up and the the man the woman you know putting us in the car and um yeah i remember mum standing on the porch of the house and me being silly you know because i had a great imagination you know that we're going off on a holiday and i'm there waving up to my mother and
• 34:00 - 34:30 you know it was horrible because i saw the tears running down her eyes and then the boys started crying in the car next to me because i burst into tears but i never knew why i was crying because nobody told me what was going on all i knew was i was being taken away from my mother who i loved very much my father but dad wasn't there that day he went out to work so it was just mummy so you know that's the last time i ever saw my mother and that's the image that
• 34:30 - 35:00 sticks in my mind is waving goodbye to my mother while she's standing there crying cleoni was taken to a home called badura in a suburb of sydney badura was an institution for children at risk i joined cleoni on her first return visit in nearly 30 years a witch hated this twice
• 35:00 - 35:30 yeah the clinic was in there where they used to go and check your teeth and check you out for vdd or you know i remember you know being that petrified that night that i wet the bed you know and they came and ridiculed me because i said oh four year old girl you know wetting the bed she'll be toilet trained by now so they took me and put me in the cot
• 35:30 - 36:00 and i didn't understand what was going on but i remember all the bars around me now you know being in a cot with the bars directly around you and i cried that night because i was so used to being in a big double bed with mum and dad and suddenly you know just being in total isolation you know it's equivalent to being locked up in jail when you don't understand what's going on and and all the coldness no one cuddling you or kissing you good night no familiar smells or sounds you know
• 36:00 - 36:30 could have been in mars for all i knew [Music] i remember the first time when i was brought here all my belongings were taken off i mean my dolls and all that and then of course when i came around the second time you know they just had one of my old dolls on the floor and i wanted to run up and grab my old doll and take it but um you know what was the point
• 36:30 - 37:00 they'd probably take it off you again so yeah it was really sad to see your belongings just sprawled out and it was everybody's belongings they weren't yours anymore yeah i remember going to have a shower and you know because i'm bleeding and i just screamed i thought i was dying because no one told me what that was about and being so young and you know went down the clinic i'm dying i'm dying i'm dying
• 37:00 - 37:30 and i'm then saying don't be so stupid just handing me a pad you know like i said i thought it was a band-aid and just put it there and everything you know it'll go away after a while like a saw yeah so um nobody sat down and told me what was happening to me it just seems really smaller they'd dress you all up nicely you know because every soft and the foster parents would come
• 37:30 - 38:00 around and pick a child just felt like you were being a product to be sold you know if you had a small defect they didn't want you or you had to be this you know image of a happy outgoing bright little child and and you were dying inside i was then taken by a family and it was really strict i remember my foster mother hitting me a lot because i was you know fairly active but
• 38:00 - 38:30 also um know because my foster father started sexually abusing me i became quite rebellious so i started mucking up and lashing out and breaking things and yeah just showing probably all the signs of a child being sexually abused and getting up to a lot of trouble so my foster mother was forever hitting me with a feather duster
• 38:30 - 39:00 and that's when i became you know i started being scared of the dark started seeing eyes come out of the wall you know just forever feeling like someone's watching me or because he used to hide in places certain places and wait for me if i went to the toilet he'd hide outside the toilet and if i went somewhere where i wanted to go you know and he turned up i didn't want to be there anymore so i just felt like you know i couldn't understand
• 39:00 - 39:30 why i was being taken from my parents and placed in this so-called good christian family you know and i tried to sort it all out in my mind because she didn't talk about sexual assault back then my foster mother couldn't understand was becoming such a horrible little child the welfare organized for me to go and be assessed check my iq out and
• 39:30 - 40:00 i saw a psychiatrist and you know reading about my file it says that the reason why she's lashing out is probably because of repressed memory and that this could have happened when she was growing up with a mum and dad who knows what sort of parents they were smell still smells the same after years of being shifted between various institutions and foster homes cleoni was placed in the good samaritan
• 40:00 - 40:30 girls home this time she found a warm and sympathetic figure a nun called sister regina who organised a reunion between cleoni and her family when we pulled up and i met my father i was just in total awe of him and because he grabbed me and he said hello dort and cuddle me and i finally felt like i was home i felt like i i was loved all those years i didn't feel loved and
• 40:30 - 41:00 you know i've got an identity and i know who i am and i'm so proud of being here and this is where i want to be yeah because these people laugh and tell jokes and talk and you know i was just so inaudible it was really hard for me to go back then because i i didn't have family or even in the hostel like there wasn't any aboriginal
• 41:00 - 41:30 kids and i wanted to be around aboriginals i wanted to be around my people and the only thing the media ever did positive was said that aboriginal people lived in redfern so i was on my way to redford [Music] [Applause] [Music]
• 41:30 - 42:00 when the curry lads walked up to me he said oh you're not from around here yes oh no no no no you know who you and because we started talking and then he told me about the clifton hotel where all the you know couriers used to drink in the 80s and he said oh you know she'd come down the clifton that's where all the quarries are anyway i lined up with one of my friends you know that we'd go into the clifton that night
• 42:00 - 42:30 and just all these black faces and i thought i'd died and gone to heaven you know i i didn't realize there were so many black people that could get together all at once you know it was really good to be with my own people because i never ever had to worry about colour [Music] that's katy with an aboriginal flag that's supposed to be out on his face
• 42:30 - 43:00 not all at once though my mother died a tragic death you know she was drinking and smoking and the house went up in flames and i know where my poor old mum was at because i look at how she was as a mother you know she got her children taken off her you know she was virtually told she could never have a children back yeah so i i can relate to anybody who drinks
• 43:00 - 43:30 who've had their kids taken [Music] up until the mid-60s removals were governed by state law in 1967 a referendum removed that power and transferred it to the commonwealth even though racial policies had ceased aboriginal children were still being removed for all those children it would take
• 43:30 - 44:00 years before their stories would be told it may take a while longer before they are believed [Music] [Applause] by the 70s and 80s the aboriginal movement became stronger and more visible politicians could no longer ignore
• 44:00 - 44:30 we brought the diseases and the alcohol we committed the murders we took the children from their mothers paul keating was the first prime minister to acknowledge the past wrongs in 1995 his government established an inquiry into the removal policies after two years of gathering evidence
• 44:30 - 45:00 from the survivors the bringing them home report was published the report described the removal policy as genocide and recommended compensation it also recommended an official apology like all such reports the new conservative government showed little interest in the recommendations john howard would only go as far as expressing his personal sorrow
• 45:00 - 45:30 personally i feel deep sorrow for those of my fellow australians who suffered injustices under the practices of past generations towards indigenous people we must not join those aboriginal leaders wanted more than his personal sorrow they wanted john howard as prime minister to say sorry on behalf of the australian nation exploitation and racism [Music] government is an ongoing institution
• 45:30 - 46:00 it inherits the achievements the responsibilities and the mistakes of its predecessors it's only people like the prime minister and others that want to knock the report that talk as if we are peddling guilt we have never mentioned as part of our inquiry the word guilt we have emphasized listening and understanding nearly three years later john howard
• 46:00 - 46:30 would still not give an official apology expresses its deep and sincere regret that indigenous australians suffered injustices under the practices of past generations he said that so he wouldn't have to say sorry and therefore it can't just be taken at face value it's got to be seen as a deliberate wriggling on the pin squirming and finding a way to say something
• 46:30 - 47:00 while refusing to say sorry and ultimately that won't work there are a few times in my life only two or three when i've been ashamed to be an australian and that was one i think it's an atrocious mistake absolutely mistake in south africa there was the truth and reconciliation commission which enabled the families of the disappeared to find out what happened
• 47:00 - 47:30 it would be unconscionable for anybody to say that the findings of the truth and reconciliation commission are exaggerated but in australian society it is considered to be eminently sensible to deny any of the recorded history about the suffering of aboriginal people and i think it's a national psychosis the denial of the history of aboriginal
• 47:30 - 48:00 people in the last 200 and something years is a national psychosis like bobby like daisy like cleoni i found that looking back through the eyes of white authorities the hardest thing to comprehend was why they did not consider the horrific consequences of their actions many aboriginal people are still living out that legacy it is not a thing of the past both victims and perpetrators are still
• 48:00 - 48:30 very much alive it always hurts me when people say oh but what about the non-aboriginal women in the 60s who had their kids taken away what about the little kids from england who are imported out here and used to slavery i do care and yeah we're only two percent of the total population for goodness sake and we've only we've had so much injustices done
• 48:30 - 49:00 to us that you know i can only fix me as a person yeah so i hope we get compensation hope we get a sorry you know speaking for myself i'm i miss that on my culture i miss out on growing up with this my family you know my full blood every little family for what they gave me in mulabola i would give everything back to them to be out in the bush
• 49:00 - 49:30 i mean i didn't care what they would give me there but if i'd ever if i would have the choice i would say that i would rather be out in the bush with this family because family today is very important
• 49:30 - 50:00 what surprised me is how long the government got away with it a terrible criminal offence like that was allowed to happen for all those time and so much unnecessary hurt and you know for what for what what they gave us in clothes and so-called better conditions they could have given it to our people our parents as well and would have been a lot
• 50:00 - 50:30 cheaper easier with not as many heartbreaks and heartaches and terrible memories of that terrible experience which we all carry today [Music]
• 50:30 - 51:00 i was taken away so where's my family [Music] is
• 51:00 - 51:30 [Music] [Music] is was taken away [Music]
• 51:30 - 52:00 is [Music] you