Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

I felt different. I’d had an education – without trying to put them down. I lookedaround and I saw things that were different to what I had, without trying to be mean oranything. It wasn’t what I expected at all. Just mainly silly little things. There’s a lot ofpeople in there, a lot of people, all the time. It just felt different. To me it was likeeverything was for everyone. They shared everything. It wasn’t till I saw what they hadthat I thought, they deserve what I had. To me you feel crammed in, in Nan’s house,like, you can’t move ...Quoted by Link-Up (NSW) submission 186 on page 53.I’ve received a lot of hostility from other Aboriginal people. They’re my own relativesand they really hurt me because ... they have a go at me and say that I don’t even knowmy own relatives, and that I should; that I’ve got nothing in common with them. Thedamage is all done and I can’t seem to get close to any of them.Confidential evidence 363, South Australia: woman removed at about 2 years in the 1940s;ultimately fostered.I had no idea – like I didn’t mix with Aboriginal people at all. I had – and I’ve admittedthis in public before that I was racist towards Indigenous people. I learnt my prejudicesfrom newspapers, from the television, from the radio ... and while my adoptive parentsdidn’t go around criticising, you know, Aboriginal people in front of me, there wascertainly no positive comments about Aboriginal people ...Confidential submission 3, Victoria.Language differences inhibit many reunions and make rebuilding truerelationships virtually impossible.I could have at least had another language and been able to communicate with thesepeople. You know I go there today and I have to communicate in English or use aninterpreter. They’re like my family, they’re closer than any family I’ve got and I can’teven talk to them. We may have upped and left but I can’t imagine it because thosepeople never left. That’s their home, that’s their country, they can’t imagine ever livinganywhere else and yet now when I go back I feel so isolated from it and I really wouldlike to be part of that community and to work with them. But I find it very difficult.They accept me because of our blood link and things but I am not as good an asset tothem as I would have been if I’d maintained all that other stuff.Confidential evidence 313, Tasmania: woman whose mother was forcibly removed to amission in Queensland.Locating family members has proven impossible for some.But a lot of girls didn’t know where home was because their parents were moved andresettled miles away from their traditional homelands. They didn’t know where theirpeople were and it took them a long time to find them. Some of them are still searchingdown to this present day.Confidential submission 617, New South Wales: woman removed to Cootamundra Girls’Home at 8 years in the 1940s.