Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

I often used to ask my foster mother who she was, this old lady who would come to the gate,and the answer I always got was, ‘She is some silly old black woman’.Confidential evidence 56, Tasmania: man removed 1930s; his grandmother died before he was able to findher.I was there for 16 years and I was brainwashed every day of the week. You never go nearBlacks. Your people don’t want you anyway. They’re just dirty. They don’t want anything to dowith you … We were playing in the schoolyard and this old black man came to the fence. I couldhear him singing out to me and my sister. I said to [my sister], ‘Don’t go. There’s a black man’.And we took off. It was two years ago I found out that was my grandfather. He came looking forus. I don’t know when I ever stopped being frightened of Aboriginal people. I don’t know when Ieven realised I was Aboriginal. It’s been a long hard fight for me.Confidential evidence 10, Queensland: NSW woman removed 1940s and placed in Cootamundra Girls’ Home