Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

The Inquiry is aware that many other people did not have the opportunity to telltheir stories, were not ready to speak of their experiences or chose not to do so in theforum provided by the Inquiry. Healing and ultimately the reconciliation processrequire that testimonies continue to be received and recorded. This must be done in aculturally appropriate manner with recording and access determined in consultationwith the person who wishes to provide his or her history.The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) recommendedto the Inquiry that, ‘Support be provided for the collection and culturally appropriatepresentation of the stories with the approval of those who experienced separationpolicies’ (submission 684 page 18). Link-Up (NSW) called for the establishment ofan Aboriginal Oral History Archive. This Archive would be ‘modelled on the ShoahFoundation set up to record the oral histories of Jewish victims of the Nazi holocaust’and would ‘fund and facilitate the collection of oral histories of Aboriginal survivorsof our holocaust’ (submission 186).The Aboriginal Oral History Archive will testify to the atrocities committed against ourpeople through separation laws, policies and practices, and will ensure that the genocideagainst our people cannot be denied (submission 186).The Inquiry supports the establishment of such a national archive. In theimmediate future, however, the primary need is to enable people to tell their stories, tohave them recorded appropriately and to enable the survivors to receive counsellingand compensation. The experience of the Shoah Foundation and of this Inquiry is thatgiving testimony, while extraordinarily painful for most, is often the beginning of thehealing process. For this reason the recording of testimonies needs to be done in ornear each individual’s community and by expert Indigenous researchers. Counsellingor ready referral to counselling services must be available. Therefore appropriateagencies are likely to include Indigenous family tracing and reunion agencies and thelanguage, culture and history centres proposed elsewhere in this report.Recording testimoniesRecommendation 1: That the Council of Australian Governments ensure theadequate funding of appropriate Indigenous agencies to record, preserve andadminister access to the testimonies of Indigenous people affected by the forcibleremoval policies who wish to provide their histories in audio, audio-visual orwritten form.Implementation of the recommendationsThe Inquiry was urged to make recommendations for monitoring theimplementation of our recommendations.ATSIC believes it is important that the Inquiry recommend a process for monitoring theimplementation of recommendations flowing from the Inquiry … The Council for AboriginalReconciliation recommended that there should be statutory avenues for monitoringimplementation of RCIADIC [Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody], whichwill provide mechanisms for indigenous communities, organisation and individuals to drivethe reform processes. ATSIC commends this approach to the Inquiry.