who, in a seeming act of gratuitous cruelty, was "Introduced to his brother on the day that brother was departing the institution for a foster placement. "At a conference following the release of the report in Melbourne in 1997, an Aboriginal speaker recalled how he, along with an older boy, was summoned one day to the office of the institution in Ballarat where the two of them had lived for several years, introduced to an Aboriginal woman and told she was their mother.
And you didn't have to be stolen to experience the effects of the practice:
"Every morning our people would crush charcoal and mix that with animal fat and smother that all over us, so that when the police came they could only see black children ... We were told always to be on the alert and, if white people came, to run into the bush or run and stand behind the trees as stiff as a poker ... and hide ... And if the Aboriginal group was taken unawares, they would stuff us into flour bags and pretend we weren't there. We were told ... if we sneezed ... we'd be taken off and away from the area ... During the raids on the camps it was not unusual for people to be shot - ... in the arm or the leg. You can understand the terror that we lived in ... "
The pace of removals increased through the 1950s and 1960s. Despite the difficulty in establishing precise numbers (partly because of lack - or falsification - Of documentation, partly because many removals were illegal even under the various racist laws in operation) the inquiry concluded that between 1910 and 1970, between one in three and one in ten children were forcibly removed, and "[I] n that time not one Indigenous family has escaped the effects ... ". p> One of the most heart-rending aspects of the report is reading about the Indigenous parents who blamed themselves for the loss of their children. The NSW branch of Link-Up (an organisation which works to reunite separated families) reported to the inquiry:
"... we found that Aboriginal women were unwilling and unable to speak about the immense pain, grief and anguish that losing their children had caused them ... We see that they judge themselves harshly, never forgiving themselves for losing their children - no matter that they were part of ongoing systematic removal of Aboriginal children ... They were made to feel failures; unworthy of loving and caring for their own children; they were denied participation in the future of their community. "
The accounts of those who observed this pain show clearly how the lives of the parents, and the wider Indigenous community, were shattered.
"I remember my Aunty, it was her daughter that got taken. She used to carry these letters around with her. They were reference letters from the whitefellas in town ... [saying that] she was a good, respectable woman ... She judged herself and she felt the community judged her for letting the welfare get her child ... She carried those letters with her, folded up, as proof, until the day she died. "
Such accounts also show how the practice of stealing their children is at the root of many problems experienced by Indigenous people today, particularly substance abuse.
"My parents were continually trying to get us back. Eventually they gave up and started drinking. They separated. My father ended up in jail. He died before my mother. On her death bed she called his name and all us kids. She died with a broken heart. "p> Non-Indigenous families who adopted children were also lied to - Told that mothers who were searching for their child were dead, or had refused to take responsibility for them. Some of these families told the inquiry they are wracked with guilt and regret that they were unknowingly complicit in such barbarism.
"We would never have deprived any mother of her child, or any child of its mother ... The doctor told me how this child's mother was very young [she was actually 20] ... plus the baby was never wanted right from the start. If this was true, why did she take her poor frail baby home ...? He would not feed. She took him back [to the hospital] and it was the last she saw of him. She said they would not give him back ... "
"In 1960 my wife and I applied to adopt an Aboriginal baby, after reading in the newspapers that these babies were remaining in institutionalised care ... Later that year we were offered a baby who had been cared for since birth in a Church run Babies Home ... We were told, and truly believed, that his mother was dead and his father unknown ... "
Despite the love of his adoptive family, this child, Ken, grew up feeling isolated and alienated, subjected to constant racism, and several times attempted suicide.
"... When Ken was eighteen he found his natural family, three sisters and a brother. His mother was no longer living. She died some years earlier when Ken was four. Because of the long timesp...
