Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

profound disadvantages (‘other life-stressors ’) including exclusion and control,racism and poverty which would have acted as severe stresses compounding theirgrief and trauma. They could generally find no meaning in the forcible removal.A Western Australian mother of two boys was working as a nurse and well ableto fit her sons out for school. Yet they were made wards of the State in the late 1950s.It has left me sick, also my son sick too, never to be the same people again that we werebefore, being separated from one another, it has made our lives to be nothing on thisearth. My sons and myself went through a lot of pain and heartbreak. It’s a thing thatI’ll never forget until I die, it will always be in my mind that the Welfare has ruined mythinking and my life.I felt so miserable and sad and very unhappy, that I took to drinking after they took mysons. I thought there was nothing left for me.Confidential submission 338, Victoria.I’m not under the influence of alcohol anymore, you know. Because then you used tosort of deal with it more or less in drink and I thought I could solve my problems in abottle, you know. That’s the only way I could deal with my feelings for my kids notliving here … My kids are with me today, but I’ve lost a lot. I’ve lost that motherhoodwith my kids, you know.Confidential evidence 208, Victoria.Because ‘mixed race’ children were particularly targeted for forcible removal,non-Indigenous parents and families also lost children.In some circumstances the non-Aboriginal parent actually believed that they could have donesomething to stop what happened. In some experiences that I’m aware of, that has led tolong-term ill health of that non-Aboriginal parent. In some circumstances it has led tobreakdown in those relationships [between the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal parent] … Buthow do you tell your father that it’s okay; that it wasn’t their fault; and that his whiteness andmaleness in a patriarchal society that should have been enough to protect any person’s familydid no good because of the nature of the relationship with his partner? (Joanne Selfe, NSWAboriginal Women’s Legal Resource Centre, evidence 739).Parenting roles, nurturing and socialising responsibilities are widely shared inIndigenous societies: ‘relatives beyond that of the immediate family have nurturingresponsibilities and emotional ties with children as they grow up’ (Dr Ian Andersonevidence 263). When the children were taken, many people in addition to thebiological parents were bereft of their role and purpose in connection with thosechildren.Aboriginal life was based on the sharing of all resources for the good of the group. Thefamily unit was not the restricted modern nuclear family but an extended family of sharingand caring. Everybody was related and all relations were important, individual interests weresubordinate to the lore. Aboriginal society was an all-inclusive network of reciprocalobligations of giving and receiving, which reinforced the bonds of kinship (Elvie Kelly,Victorian Koori Kids Mental Health Network, submission 758).