amundra ... was very strict and cruel ... 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 the body or where she was buried ".
A key aspect of the assimilation project was to prevent the children speaking their own language. No effort was spared on this, because it was one of the most effective ways to permanently separate the children from their parents and communities.
"Y'know, I can remember we just used to talk lingo. [In the Home] they used to tell us not to talk that language, that it's the devil's language. And they'd wash our mouths with soap. We sorta had to sit down with the Bible language all the time. So it sorta wiped out all our language that we knew. "
This meant that even when children and parents were subsequently reunited, they often couldn't speak to each other except through an interpreter.
The accounts given to the Stolen Generations inquiry also abound with examples of sexual abuse of both girls and boys, which fits with the revelations about sexual abuse in churches and institutions everywhere (though the report notes that for girls in particular, "the risk of sexual assault in a foster placement was far greater than in any other "). Almost one in ten boys and just over one in ten girls reported that they were sexually abused in a children's institution, while one in ten boys and three in ten girls reported the same for foster placements.
"There was tampering with the boys ... the people would come in to work with the children, they would grab the boys 'penises, play around with them and kiss them and things like this ... It was seen to be the white man's way of lookin 'after you. It never happened with an Aboriginal. "p> Girls who reported sexual assaults were told to stop telling lies and often beaten.
"... my foster father molested me. He would masturbate in front of me, touch my private parts and get me to touch his. I remember once having a bath with my clothes on 'cause I was too scared to take them off. I was scared of the dark 'cause my foster father would often come at night. I was scared to go to the outside toilet as he would often stop me on the way back ... So I would often wet the bed ... I once attempted to tell the local Priest at the Catholic Church and he told me to say ten Hail Mary's for telling lies. So I thought this was how 'Normal' non-Aboriginal families were. I was taken to various doctors who diagnosed me as 'uncontrollable' or 'lacking in intelligence'.
A young Koori woman, with the help of an employer, tried to have a former employer who had raped her charged with the offence. Although two medical examinations confirmed the rape, the Protection Board officials to whom the matter was reported first accused the victim of being a "sexual maniac" and then had her committed to Parramatta Mental Hospital where she remained for 21 years.
A total of 777 people and organisations from all over Australia provided evidence or submissions to the inquiry. This chapter provides only some samples of the experience of the stolen generations and their communities. The total picture is a devastating account of racism and the attempted destruction of an entire people and its culture.
"We may go home, but we cannot relive our childhoods. We may reunite with our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles, communities, but we cannot relive the 20, 30, 40 years that we spent without their love and care, and they cannot undo the grief and mourning they felt when we were separated from them. We can go home to ourselves as Aboriginals, but this does not ease the attacks inflicted on our hearts, minds, bodies and souls, by caretakers who thought their mission was to eliminate us as Aboriginals. "
Bringing them home utterly refutes the claims made by the likes of Howard and Hanson, as we shall see below. That's why Howard and Minister for Indigenous Affairs John Herron have gone to such extraordinary lengths to undermine it, before and after its release.
Howard claimed, for example, that the inquiry President, Sir Ronald Wilson, was "biased" because, in his capacity as a church representative, he had offered an apology to Indigenous people for the church's role in the treatment meted out to Aboriginal and Islander people. It is crucial that those who support Indigenous rights equip themselves with the facts and arguments, and disseminate them as widely as possible.
Indigenous children were forcibly taken from families well into the seventies - merely twenty years ago. The Broken Hill Aboriginal Legal Service told the inquiry "there were children removed from Wilcannia in the 1970s in much the same way [as] in th...
