Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

Many people affected by the removal policies may be unable to return to theirtraditional country. In many cases the policies of removal and segregation havesuccessfully destroyed their capacity to maintain their connection to their land. Insome cases, traditional owners will be unwilling to reintegrate former communitymembers. People who by reason of their removal are now unable to enjoy native titlerights should be able to establish that loss in any claim for monetary compensation.The importance of compensating such loss was emphasised in numeroussubmissions to the Inquiry.Grants of land and/or housing should be made to families of those who have lost access totraditional land and such land could be allocated in areas where these people grew up andwith which they now identify (Broome and Derby Working Groups submission 518recommendation 3.2.1).I think compensation for me would be something like a good land acquisition where Icould call my own and start the cycle of building good strong foundations forAboriginal families. Because the whole thing started from people coming to this countryand stealing the land, and then everything fell apart from then on. So I think for peoplewho have been dispossessed of land, but more importantly dispossessed of our identitiesand dispossessed of where we came from … I think to give us compensation in the formof some land acquisition would go very well into helping start stable familyrelationships and stable generations from here on in.Confidential evidence 696, New South Wales.What I’d like to have – I’d like to have me own house, me own block of land. Like, Ifigure they owe me that much. I’ve given most of my life, surely they can pay for that.Maybe if I was with me family I’d have a decent bank account instead of one with adollar sixty-seven credit or something like that, or overdraft. I want me own block ofland, something that I don’t have to pay for again. Something I can call mine and noonecan take it away, because I haven’t had that yet.Confidential evidence 146, Victoria.[T]he people who have become landless … partly due to this kind of policy could becompensated by assistance to have a home and land of their own or for their family (JackGoodluck, former Minster in the Uniting Church and Superintendent of Croker Island,evidence 119).Other recommendations to the Inquiry have drawn attention to the need for broadermeasures of ‘cultural restitution’.Cultural and language education centres, meeting centres and land acquisition are the kind ofreparations and facilities that community opinion indicates may be appropriate asrecompense for past suffering and dislocation (ALRM submission 484 at 22; see also CapeYork Land Council submission 576).Full support be provided to Kimberley Aboriginal organisations promoting Aboriginalculture, language, identity and history (Broome and Derby Working Groups submission 518recommendation 3.3.3).