Tenth anniversary of Bringing Them Home report, Great Hall of Parliament, 24 May 2007
This commemoration was attended by 350 people including many Members and Senators, and diplomats from 23 countries.
The first speaker was Agnes Shea, Senior Elder of the Ngunnawal people
I welcome you all to Ngunnawal land. It is good to be together - Federal politicians, Ambassadors, High Commissioners and diplomats from many countries, and the people of Canberra - to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Bringing Them Home report.
May I give a special welcome to Tamara and Ronald Woods. Two years ago Tamara's mother died tragically in an accident, the evening before she was to speak here in the Great Hall, and Tamara, then aged 14, courageously spoke in her place. It is wonderful that you have come back to be with us again.
The Bringing Them Home report was very important, as all Aboriginal people have been affected by the removal policies. And the wider community recognised its importance. Nearly a million people signed Sorry Books in 1998. Today we will hear what has happened since then, and what is still needed to heal the wounds.
There is no-one better to chair this meeting than Brian Butler, formerly an ATSIC Commissioner for South Australia, who has worked for decades to bring to national attention the story of the Stolen Generations, and to develop the organisations which can help the healing process.
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Brian Butler , Chair of the Stolen Generations Alliance, former ATSIC Commissioner
What has driven me for many years was the day my grandmother told me she was made to accompany the police troopers who went on horse to flush out the half-caste children from camps scattered through the Aranda country East of Alice Springs.
In her old age she started talking about what she experienced, and we determined we were going to find justice for her and for the thousands of other women who were treated similarly. She was used as a sex slave on each of these trips with the police troopers. When she was 12 or 13 she had her first child, and she was forced to smother the baby and bury it in a creek bed at a place called Wipeout, East of Alice Springs.
Later she gave birth to my mother and my mother's sister. Those two children were taken from her. My mother was taken to Bagot Reserve in Darwin where I was born, and her sister was taken to Adelaide. They were separated from one end of the country to the other.
That is why I vowed that I would stand here again and say to the Federal Government, 'Please, before too much longer we do need you to say sorry. Apologise to us, because that healing process is so important to each individual Aboriginal person in this country.'
The forced removal of our children from their families, a policy which was practiced through most of the twentieth century, had a devastating effect on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander society. As the Bringing Them Home report states, not one Indigenous family has escaped its impact. So the process of recovery should be a top priority for the nation.
I honour those who worked to bring this situation to national attention - people like Aunty Kathy Mills from Darwin who is with us today. I honour Sir Ron Wilson, Mick Dodson and all who worked on the Bringing Them Home report.
I recognise the support given by the Australian Government, and we are holding this function, in part thanks to contributions from the Office of Aboriginal Health.
However, the Australian community has set the lead in the recovery process. In 1998 nearly a million people signed Sorry Books. In 2000 nearly a million people walked for reconciliation. All over the country, community initiatives have contributed greatly to the healing process. Here we have examples. In Cootamundra, where for decades NSW girls were sent to the Aboriginal Training Home, there has been an ongoing work of reconciliation between the people of Cootamundra and the women who went through that Home. Here we have Valerie Linow and Rita Wenberg together with Betti Punnett, who are establishing a memorial in front of Cootamundra Railway Station. They need $300,000 to build it, and you can see the plans at the back.
Brian Butler also paid tribute to many pioneers and warriors for healing and justice for the Stolen Generations including Kathy Mills, Molly Dyer, Sir Ron Wilson, Mick Dodson, Mum Shirl, Kevin and Ellie Gilbert, Ningali Cullen, Barbara Cummings, Anne Louis, Muriel Bamblett, Vincent Lingiari, Jo McGuiness, Daisy Ruddock, Dolly Jamieson.
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Lowitja O'Donoghue, Inaugural Chair of ATSIC, 1984 Australian of the Year
I am delighted to be here. And as co-patron of the Stolen Generations Alliance, I welcome everyone to this important occasion.
I hope that together we can move closer to outcomes that we can all take pride in.
When I reflected about coming to this gathering today, and the ten years that have passed since the Bringing Them Home Report was tabled, I experienced a range of conflicting feelings.
The first was the feeling of weariness at how many times in my life I have stood up to speak about rights and justice for Aboriginal people. I decided that, at my age, it's probably not a good idea to even try to begin counting!
And of course, what accompanies this feeling is a profound sadness about how little has actually been achieved in terms of the wellbeing of Aboriginal people in this country.
On the other hand, I am constantly inspired by the hard work and commitment of those who work for change - and there are many of them.
They are peoples from all walks of life who never give up in their struggle for justice. This must be celebrated and honoured if we want to sustain and grow our healing.
Another positive is that I also feel is that the general population of this land is responsive to justice (as they overwhelmingly were in the 1967 Referendum) - if these issues are adequately represented in the public domain.
But this is a very big 'if''.
In spite of the much touted prosperity at Australia many Aboriginal people still live in the worst of third world conditions.
On any social indicator of wellbeing: health education, housing, employment, civic participation, numbers in custody - you name it - Aboriginal people are always over-represented at the wrong end of the scale.
Aboriginal people, the first people of this land, are dying of despair while those in power look the other way. Their eyes and their priorities are clearly focused in other directions.
It is for this reason that I have no expectation of an apology from our current Prime Minister.
Yet acknowledgement of the wrongs of the past is a fundamental plank in rebuilding relationships. Every State Government has taken this important step - and said 'Sorry'.
The Tasmanian Government has even passed legislation to compensate Tasmanian members of the Stolen Generations.
But at the Federal level, rebuilding relationships is not the name of the game.
The rules of the game that prevail in this town under this leadership are to respond to (and only to) what will win votes.
And this is not good news for Aboriginal people - or for that matter any groups of people who do not have a powerful voice.
Of the 54 recommendations made in the Bringing Them Home report, 35 have been ignored - that is two thirds.
Where there has been a response - for example, Link-Up services - the funding is drastically inadequate to meet the need.
The wonderful dedicated workers of these services as with so many workers in Aboriginal services, buckle under the load.
The Prime Minister either doesn't 'get it' or he doesn't care, and I am not sure which is worse.
What I do know is that:
• There has been a failure of moral authority and ethical leadership in Australia over the last ten years
• This country is in a position to be a world leader in human rights and social justice. Instead it is, as Aboriginal people would say, 'a shame job'.
• When initiatives are taken, they are too small and mean spirited to bring about significant and long-term change
• And, most importantly, the colonial attitudes of two hundred years ago are still alive and well in the corridors of power today.
I want to look at some of these atittudes because they underpin the sorry state of Aboriginal affairs in this country.
There is a general attitude of entitlement that pervades the mentality of the privileged. It is a view that assumes a right to have advantage.
And it is a view that does not question the price that others have had to pay for that advantage.
This stance of entitlement incorporates a pride in many achievements - sporting, military and economic. But it ignores the parts of the story that are shameful.
These are not incorporated into any sense of self or identity. ( I was not there. It is not my fault becomes the catch-cry.)
It is a stance that does not respect differences or other ways of doing things.
Take, for example, the recent budget allocations to Aboriginal health and housing.
While there was a much-publicised scheme for a small number of people to buy their own homes in a small remote Top End community, there was almost nothing done to ease hosing affordability for the majority of Aboriginal Australians who live in urban communities.
The Costello budget with its focus on remote and regional areas actually takes money away from Aboriginal housing in urban areas.
A recent World Health Organisation report into Indigenous health worldwide concluded that the health of Aboriginal people lags almost 100 years behind other Australians and that they are the sickest Indigenous people of all the wealthy nations.
The authors wrote that progress would not be made until the Government publicly acknowledged the role of Aboriginal people's "stress, alienation, discrimination and lack of control." ††
Health experts agree that $500 million per years is needed to lift the Aboriginal health standard to that of non-Aboriginal Australians and reduce the 17-year gap in life expectancy.
Tom Calma, the Social Justice Commissioner, believes that with an input like this we could close this gap within a generation.
But rather than $500 million the 2007 budget allocates only about $30 million per annum to this nationally and internationally scandalous situation.
So, as a result of the latest budget, a tiny minority of Aboriginal people will have the chance to own their own home and a few will have the opportunity to do real work with appropriate conditions - but this represents only a tiny number of people compared to those who need it. It is window-dressing.
And I can guarantee that what will happen is what has so often happened in the past. And that is, that we will be given good news stories of one or two individuals who have achieved - with an implication that success is available to all, if only they would choose it.
The point is that no-one can "succeed" is they are not healthy, if they are not respected, if they are not given opportunity and if they do not have the basic building blocks for survival such as clean water, nutritious food, adequate accommodation and access to services.
It is these fundamental system issues that need to be addressed. And of course it is not simple. But neither is it rocket science.
If we can happily take on issues on the other side of the world under the name of democracy - why not at home?
Watch my lips. Put in adequate human and financial services at ground level to meet the needs of communities - in consultation with those communities.
And then work with the communities on the ground to address the problems that they have identified.
It is not the answer to leave communities to sort things out under the excuse that it's self-determination.
The problems that communities face are too entrenched for that to be possible.
Neither is it good enough to put in place one-off programs that are not sustainable.
The Government responds to these issues by quoting sums of money that they have spent. But these sums pale into insignificance when compared to spending on other areas - or indeed spending per head of population on the health and well-being of non-Aboriginal people.
Just compare $135 million over four years on Aboriginal health with $123 million for the very silly and totally unnecessary new citizenship test. What is more important, I ask you?
It is time for some genuine bipartisan commitment to job creation, education and improved housing and health for Aboriginal people.
We cannot leave it to the government of the day. Mr Howard's record on Aboriginal affairs has been woeful.
Yet Australian citizens have demonstrated their openness to justice by working in groups all over the country for reconciliation. They have marched in the streets and they have signed Sorry Books in their hundreds of thousands.
And a number of corporate citizens have become aware of the need to play their part to bring about change.
It is time to re-invigorate the debate. And, dare I say it, it is time for some fresh thinking.
It is time to lead the country to understand that no Australian person can feel pride in Australian citizenship unless there is an equal concern for the wellbeing of all Australians.
There is no Aboriginal person who is not affected by the removal of their people from lands, from communities, from families and from culture.
The journey of healing will always be difficult - but Aboriginal people have always come to the table - ready to work things out.
The campaign to achieve a Yes vote in the Referendum 40 years ago was fought with courage and vision. An incredible 90.77% of the population voted 'Yes'.
This did not, as some people think, give Aboriginal people the right to vote, or give them citizenship rights, but it did remove discrimatory sections from the Constitution and it did empower the Commonwealth to legislate directly for Aboriginal Australians as a group.
It opened the door for the Commonwealth Government to take particular action in relation to Aboriginal people. As a result of the constitutional changes, several important Acts have been introduced which allow positive action and redressing discriminatory practices.
On this, the tenth anniversary of the Bringing Them Home report, I urge those of you who have worked for justice to keep up the good work.
I urge those of you with the capacity to act, to act now and to begin by implementing the rest of the Bringing Them Home recommendations.
I urge those of you who hope to be in a position of leadership in the future to rekindle a vision of fairness for this country - and to demonstrate to the rest of the world that Australia can hold its head high on the platform of human rights and social justice.
†† Dr Lisa Jackson Pulver, University of NSW, co-author of the chapter on Australia and New Zealand in a report by London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, presented to the WHO's Commission on the Social Determinants of Indigenous Health, Adelaide, April 2007
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Mal Brough, Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
What Lowitja has said, in some aspects I disagree. But in many aspects, I believe that this work must continue for many years to come. I can only wonder at the anguish that some people must have in their hearts at not knowing or being unsure of the circumstances of their birth and who they are. The Bringing Them Home report, in a very sad and confronting way, outlined many of those personal, hurtful stories. But it was that talking about those issues which allowed the healing for some people to begin, the beginning of new lives.
I urge you to look at the latest issue of the Link-Up News . One story is of Beverley, a women of my age. She was brought up by a foster family, but she wasn't told. She didn't know how to go about reconnecting with her roots. A friend suggested that she meet with Link-Up. They offered to help her. Barriers fell away. As Beverley said, 'One day I received a telephone call from Jody (my lovely caseworker) saying "Are you sitting down?" She said, "I have just spoken to your Mum." I was gob smacked, tears flowed for days and the relief was enormous.'
I haven't had that experience. But many have. Many people have experienced what it is to start a new life - through Link-Up, 1,476 have been able to reconnect with their families, establish who they are in their heart and be able to move forward. That's not a process that ended with Bringing Them Home , or will end today with the tenth anniversary.
I take on board what Lowitja and Brian said about there not being enough resources. Tony Abbott and I have discussed this, and today we announce that there will be another 22 staff in Link-Up services around the country to further build on this work.
It may not be enough. But it is essential that every person who wants to understand where they came from and who they are and where they want to be has the opportunity realised. And this is painstaking work. It must also be very rewarding work for these people. It means you give something to an individual that no amount of money can buy. You give them the dignity of knowing where they came from, the respect of knowing that it's been acknowledged, and the knowing of their family, dead or alive.
So many of us take this for granted, and it's only through the stories that you see here, that others in this audience share with each other, that make a practical difference. Families should never be, and will never be, undermined in any successful society. When it is, society itself is the loser. Bringing Them Home talks about a segment of our society where those unions were torn apart. It's hard enough to be away from the ones you love when it's not enforced. But when it's enforced by others, the pain and suffering is so much greater.
The week before last I was in Hope Vale. Noel Pearson reminded his people that that month 80 more children would be taken from their families by child protection services, and 80 the month after. And 80 the month after. I take personal responsibility as a member of the Government to try and change that. Not changing child protection but changing what is occurring on the ground that requires that to happen for the welfare of those children. So that it doesn't have to happen. So that the enforcement that some of you and the Stolen Generation had inflicted on them do not have to happen to other people in the years to come as a result of disfunction in our communities.
Lowitja, it is not a tokenistic approach that I take to this work. I give it my whole passion. And I work with people on the ground to come up with the results that you talk about. There is no rolling out of programs here. It will not work. You have to sit and talk with people. The people of Galiwinku we have visited three or four times over the last 12 months and those people are starting to re-engage with the alliances that they haven't had within their family groups for a long time. They weren't torn apart, but because they were devalued and their traditions were gone and the elders were no longer respected, it had the same impact. Today they are regaining the pride in their step, and that is important as well. I don't know what the future is for the people of Galiwinku. But I know that if the people who are the leaders and elders are not empowered then that community will be the weaker for it. And the children will also suffer.
You mentioned that there are many people, black and white, who are willing to put their hand up. I want to give you an example which demonstrates the enormous opportunity out there. In a remote community last week a man stayed behind when his wife was dying in Adelaide of inoperable brain tumour. He stayed because he believed he was looking at a better future for his people and he wanted to be part of it and believed he had a role to play. When I learnt that this man's wife was fatally ill and he was at the other end of the country, I wanted to be able to do something to reunite with his wife.
You can't use government resources to do that, much as you may like. But I made a phone to call to a man who's never visited that community and told him the story. He rang me back 30 minutes later and said, 'I've hired an aircraft. It will fly from Melbourne to this community, pick him up and take him to Adelaide so he can be with his wife.' That generosity of spirit is the same spirit that was alive in 1967. It has the capacity to be harnessed to the benefit of our nation as a whole and our Indigenous people specifically. That is not a unique circumstance. There wasn't anything about what he would get out of it. It was something he wanted to do for a fellow Australian who was in need. And I think that that generosity of spirit is what we as politicians and you as activists and passionate believers in a cause have to together harness if we are to move forward as a nation.
I am far from infallable. There are many things that you will disagree with me on, and the differences of opinion can be quite broad. I ask of you to put our differences aside much as you can when it comes to making practical differences. Because some family, some child will benefit as a result of our collective action. I thank you, I thank Brian for hosting today's event. I thank you for keeping this issue alive in the minds of the public. Because there will be someone today who, as a result of the TV, radio or print broadcast of this who might say, 'I will link up, I will find my roots, I will find my home, and I'll find my future.' And that will be because of your actions.
Tony Abbott has been a passionate believer in this cause. He has responsibility for much of the Bringing Them Home report's implementation. And I know he wants to join with me in some comments, so I would ask you to warmly welcome Tony.
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Tony Abbott, Minister for Health and Ageing
Lowitja, it was a very fine speech. Like Mal, I didn't agree with some of it, but it is good that we have had the chance to hear it in this place. I admire your passion. After what you and your people have been through, I certainly understand your anger. But I know that you - and indeed Indigenous people - are patient and I am confident that what you want and what you hope for will come to pass.
The forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families is an episode in our history of which we are rightly ashamed. Yes, some good as well as much bad came from it. There were some good intentions, if misguided, behind the policy. Still, the fundamental premise on which it was based - that children were better off away from their black families - was wrong, indeed repugnant. It was a policy based on race not reason. We should have known it then. We certainly know it now, and we do have to atone for it.
I'm pleased that my Department is doing its bit to help. We spend about $20 million a year on 11 Link-Up centres. There are 100 Bringing Them Home counsellors. As Mal has announced, there will be an extra 22 as a result of today. But I think much good is happening. (Heckling). If things happen because of democracy, that surely is a good thing. Democracy is all about Governments responding to the will of the people.
Let me say this, Lowitja. I do think that great changes have come about in our country over the last generation or so, and I think that the work of you and so many like you has contributed to the changes, and the greatest change is that Australians generally feel proud that our country has a strong Indigenous heritage, and a vibrant Indigenous culture. And we all look forward to the day when Indigenous people have no reasons whatsoever to feel like victims in their own country, in their own home.
True reconciliation will take place in 20 million Australian hearts and, notwithstanding a little scepticism in this audience, I do believe that black and white Australians, in great measure, have begun to open our hearts to each other. That is why events like this give me great confidence that we can go forward to embrace the future as a reconciled people.
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Mark Bin Bakar, Chair of the Kimberley Stolen Generation Aboriginal Corporation; Deputy Chair, National Stolen Generation Alliance
First Mark Sang his song 'Calling'.
Calling, Calling
Calling for the roots of my people
Oh my heart is calling out, calling for the roots of my people
Where are they, oh where do they keep
They know who I, am cause I call out from within
They know who I, am cause I call out from within
I think of all the old people, who are still holding out
I have to find them, cause I don't want to be left out
For time is getting on now and time can never tell
Of all the pain and misery that they've gone and felt
Please oh people recognize that we must live as one
The pain and the misery that you felt is not a fault of mine
Please oh people recognize that we must live as one
We have got to stand and fight and live beneath one sun
For time is getting on now and time can never tell
Of all the pain and misery inflicted by the Guddia's hell
Calling for my people.
My own mother was taken as a three-year-old when she never returned from a visit to hospital, sent instead to an orphanage.
I dedicate this speech to my mother Phyllis and her to mother and to their community at Margaret river near Derby in the Kimberley.
Throughout the world many Indigenous peoples have been mistreated and humiliated through acts of dominance carried out by people and their governments who were essentially alien invaders. Australia is not any different to the rest of the world, except that we do now have the democratic ability to assist in healing by taking the responsibility as a country for the suffering inflicted on our Indigenous peoples; even though Aboriginal democratic rights has only been a political reality for the last forty years. Of course some people think that in itself is reason to celebrate; but the fact of the matter is that so much remains to be done.
In my home State of Western Australia the laws that enabled the authorities to remove children were established over a hundred years ago. Those laws and the related policies and practices remained effective for over seventy years. In WA alone, literally thousands of Aboriginal children were separated from their families and from their communities.
However, the issue of the "Stolen Generations" is not only about the children who were separated from their families and communities. It is also about the mothers who lost children. The countless mothers who have gone to their graves longing for their children and those who are still alive today, who still with earnest heartfelt desires to re-connect with their child or children who were taken. Something that is simply beyond their reach. This is the ultimate abuse of woman.
Shame Shame Shame
The impact on the children who were separated is substantial. Loss of family, both birth family and extended family. Loss of country and loss of knowledge of that country. Loss of languages and loss of the Dreaming, stories and songs associated with country. Loss of law and loss of culture.
The majority of all our social problems today are because of the breakdown of family structures, the loss of identify, a sense of ostracism by the broader society.
The most important thing any great leader can do is to heal their country and heal its people, thereby uniting the country into a oneness. We long for that special leader of Australia, who will one day show that leadership. As Indigenous people, we can wait and bear the pain, as we are numb from the ignorance of various administrations and are used to being last in line.
However, we are confidant that in the future; Indigenous and Non Indigenous younger generations of people who are and will be ashamed of our Australian past and who will lead this country into a new era that will forever seal the pride that we should hold united as Australians. We believe in the future young people that will one day be Australia's voice with a clear conscience. It takes time to relieve pain, we know.
History exists in people's intelligence; we need to learn from our past, and I hope that I can witness this in my life time.
One of the greatest things about history is that the truth will always prevail. Stories can be handed down and recorded, even changed, but you can not change the truth. We as Indigenous people of this country are fully aware of the atrocities and social experiments that had been carried out on our people.
Our old people never ever forget.
Our old people have witnessed many things; some remember the outcomes of that referendum, and some even remember the way things were before that.
We are now living in a time of economic prosperity. I come from the north of Western Australia and Perth is currently a boom town; with some people making millions of dollars from it.
I travel all over Australia; I have been to the big cities, but I have also traveled to many small towns and some very remote communities. Some of those communities are right in the midst of country where all of that wealth is coming from.
Yes, that is right and cause for reflection; because the wealth of Australia comes from the land. Gold from Kalgoorlie, iron ore from the Pilbara and diamonds from the Kimberley: with countless other minerals from all over the place. Aboriginal people are in all of those places, often in third world conditions. If we look back at the history of most (if not all) of those communities and towns - the removal of children was undertaken at the behest of Government policies.
As I move around those places I meet many people who were removed as children. I meet others whose parents, grandparents and even great grand parents were removed.
We cannot over estimate the impact of those removal policies on families and communities for generations. I think that this is something the Governments likes to ignore. I call it "Institutional Deafness".
These people are living like refugees in their own land.
When the Bringing Them Home report was tabled in Federal parliament in 1997, it was a watershed moment that provided a sea-change opportunity for many in the community, particularly for a lot of non-Aboriginal people who had no idea of this shared history. In the nineteen nineties Aboriginal people and their place in Australian society was very much a part of our national consciousness. We had the reports from the "Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody" (from which came the whole concept of reconciliation); we then had the High Court decision known as "Mabo" (which led to a maelstrom of debate about Native Title); after that we had the tabling of the Bringing Them Home Report". This report touched an emotional nerve in the community that Deaths in Custody and Native Title could never touch. People could brush aside those things because they were outside of their experience, but the Stolen Generations issue was different because everyone has a Mother and most of us have children. Australians could connect with it emotionally and we saw that through a whole range of things.
Many were positive things, and some were negative. Who here today could forget that this period of our shared history gave rise to the ugly and dismissive term: the "Black arm band view of history"? That would make an interesting comparison with the holocaust deniers.
A decade later most of the report's recommendations have been ignored. Now, Stolen Generation people feel like they're the second poor cousins and it is really sad. Now they're becoming elderly people in our community and there's a feeling there that governments have just been sitting there, waiting for Stolen Generation people to die away.
The Bringing Them Home report was important and very accurate as a document but it's failed to make much difference for Aboriginal people. It has not lived up to people's expectations.
It's failed in a big way because everything to do with the Stolen Generation movement had been mainstreamed, meaning that Stolen Generation people themselves have missed out, have continued suffering after delivering their own personal stories to the report and not much has come out in a positive way for them. It is strange that good policy has not flowed from a report that got it so right. I honestly believe that there is more than ignorance involved in this, there's the fear of having to pay out compensation.
I am the producer behind "Mary G", a character based on the experiences of Stolen Generation women. Mary G, is a fantastic lady from the Kimberley. Mary came into my life one night when I was doing radio and she walked into the studio and kind of took over the show. Mary stirred up the whole community and everyone jumped on the bandwagon saying: "This is fantastic! We love Mary!"
The ultimate goal of Mary is really to rekindle and re-establish the reconciliation process and make Australia accountable for its past and to heal the country as a whole. The weekly program goes out to over one hundred community radio stations nationally and into most capital cities.
Mary is not a leader of Aboriginal people; as some people may want to label her. Nor am I, as Mary's producer, you know? We're not leaders. We are just doing a job, trying to make a difference for the goodness of our community and country, Indigenous and non-Indigenous; but coming from an Aboriginal perspective.
Having said that, it is absolutely fascinating to see how the work of Mary in healing and reconciliation has touched and moved people from all over the country. Mary receives hundreds and hundreds of messages and emails from people from right around Australia. Here are just a few of examples:
From Tyson in Roebourne: "Waiba Mary, You are an absolute legend and I admire all that you do, like giving it to the Pollies but with a bit of humor thrown in."
Candice From in Kuranda wrote: "Hey Mary! I listen to u every Wednesday night over here in Far North Queensland on Bumma Bippera! You are so deadly; I always have a good laugh for you when we drive in the car to pick my brother up from work!! You should visit FNQ some day; all them fellas will go mad for you!!!
And from Rosie in Canberra: "Hey Queen Mary, love ya heaps. My dad was also stolen, but my sister and I were lucky."
People love Mary and what she stands for. People are looking for change and they are looking for healing.
At the Chair's request, Mark then outlined the purpose of the native hibiscus flower which each of the audience had been given as they entered the hall.
The native hibiscus was decided on in Hall's Creek at a gathering of Stolen Generations people. I suggested that we needed a symbol to represent Stolen Generations people across the country. The Elders decided on the native hibiscus flower. Their reasons were that the flower grows wild and is scattered all over Australia, just like the Stolen Generations. Last Saturday we buried one of the women who chose the flower. Two days later a Stolen Generations man's granddaughter committed suicide; the effects are inter-generational. The flower symbolises peace, forgiveness, trust and, most of all, recognition of the plight of Stolen Generations people. It is a way of respecting their spirit and resilience.
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Jenny Macklin, Shadow Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
It is very difficult to find the right words for such an important day - to both honour the suffering of so many fellow Australians and to revive hope that we can move forward.
It's impossible for a non-Indigenous person to understand the burden of grief and trauma carried by the Stolen Generations and their descendants. The Bringing Them Home report was so seminal because it was our first proper attempt, as a nation, to acknowledge the loss felt by Indigenous people.
It recognised that this nation needed more than the cold facts about the forced removal of thousands of Indigenous children and babies. We needed healing. And healing comes, first, through acknowledgment.
Until the Bringing Them Home inquiry, most Australians were either unaware or only vaguely aware that thousands of families had been broken apart by sanctioned government policy.
The courageous contributions of members of the Stolen Generations, forced us to come to terms with the decades of sorrow and lost opportunities.
Mick Dodson and the late Sir Ronald Wilson's leadership helped probe the depths of our national psyche - and found us wanting. But they also gave us a way forward. The Inquiry showed we could make amends if we first acknowledged the deep personal grief that haunts every member of the Stolen Generations.
Today, I want to reiterate Labor's commitment to a formal apology in government to the Stolen Generations. It's the just and decent thing to do.
An apology is not an empty gesture. It can, in fact, be a circuit breaker. If we acknowledge wrongs, and assess honestly and rigorously what needs to be done, we can move forward.
And move forward - we must. Bringing Them Home showed us that when the profound suffering of individuals is neglected and denied, it turns into despair.
So much of our childhood is about learning to trust, to depend, and belong. If a child is separated from his or her parents, these fragile ties are shattered and can have lifelong consequences for that person's wellbeing.
When you have an entire community of broken lives, they relive the pain of childhood continuously and collectively. We must stop this trauma from perpetuating itself down the generations. And we must not allow hopelessness to let governments off the hook. We must take responsibility with Indigenous people.
Labor will provide more funding for Link-up services - to enable 1,000 Stolen Generations survivors to reunite with their families. People need to belong - to their families, to their communities, and to the nation as a whole.
We will also fund an extra 20 Bringing Them Home counsellors to improve the well-being of Stolen Generations survivors. We will ask the States and Territories to fund another 20 counsellors, and focus these in areas of need - such as male health, and remote and rural health.
But, as Lowitja has said in the past, it is dehumanising for Indigenous people to be talked about as just a problem, instead of recognising their strength. There are many Indigenous people both here today and out there taking control of their lives and their communities.
I have seen great strength in Indigenous communities - in the arts, on the radio, in our schools, in sport and local businesses - resilient people who know that change is achievable. I know that we must stand with you and work with you.
I'd like to reaffirm our commitment to a new national representative body. We are prepared to have an honest conversation, to work in partnership, and with respect. We must work together, tap into that strength, resilience and leadership in the Indigenous community.
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Professor Henry Reynolds, historian and author of 14 books
The last years of the twentieth century saw common developments in many parts of the world. Reparation commissions, reconciliation, and apologies for past injustices.
Australia pursued some of these themes in its own way. There were apologies to the Stolen Generations from State Governments, churches, and tens of thousands of ordinary citizens. You could argue that reparation in a way came as a result of the recognition of land rights in Mabo and Wik.
In some ways the Bringing Them Home inquiry was our Truth and Reconciliation Commission, although it was limited in scope and concentrated on one area of policy. But it did what Reconciliation Commissions have done in other parts of the world. Above all, it had allowed people to tell their stories, to be heard to be acknowledged, and overwhelmingly that is what people wanted.
Much of the emphasis was necessarily on the individual and family suffering. Opponents of that report talked about the individuals who carried out the policy, and the fact that they were well meaning. What we must never forget is that those policies were Government policies, pursued by people who thought it was in the national interest for children to be taken away.
There were two eras of removals separated by the watershed of the Second World War an knowledge of the Holocaust. In the 1920s and 1930s, public people - men, mainly - were openly, frankly, constantly expressing their concern about the "half-caste menace" . It was a colossal menace, they said. There was a need to check the breeding of them.
In a conference in 1937 in Canberra of all mainland States and the Commonwealth, the keynote speech was given by the Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia, A O Neville. At the end of his speech, which was unanimously applauded, he said this: "Are we going to have a population of one million blacks in the Commonwealth or are we going to merge them in a white community and eventually forget there were any Aborigines in Australia?" We mustn't forget the policy which underpinned the suffering of Aboriginal families.
After the Second World War the policy could remain the same but it could not be justified using the same terms after the war, after the Holocaust, after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The man who mostly put forward policies in this period was Paul Hasluck, Minister of Territories throughout the 1950s, undoubtably the most powerful figure to shape Aboriginal policy in the twentieth century.
For Hasluck the biological importance had gone, but absorption remained policy. He told Parliament in 1951 that the Aboriginal community represented "a serious but not a frightening problem". There was no uncertainty "about who will swallow whom".
In 1957, probably the high point of his career as an advocate of assimilation, he gave a speech in Melbourne to Wesley Church called 'New Hope for Old Australians'. He looked forward to the day when Aborigines would "disappear as a separate racial group". Their descendants might carry a "proud memory of their ancient origins" but as a group the Aborigines would disappear.
So Hasluck was going to do the disappearing more benignly than Neville. He thought that people should remember their heritage, but the policy was the same. They would be swallowed. They would disappear as a people. That's why children were taken away. It was an over-riding national policy. People who suffered should be compensated in the same way as those who suffer and die in war, because it was national policy which brought it about.
What about today? What is the policy towards assimilation? The visitor from overseas, or even the curious Australian, might assume that assimilation had returned and the conservative Australians have never really lost the legacy of Paul Hasluck.
Above all, one has to ask both sides of politics, what are the long-term objectives? The problem with practical reconciliation is that it concentrates on the present, on the immediate. At least Neville and Hasluck, for all the things we find wrong and despicable about their policies, thought generations ahead. They knew where they were going. They knew there was a vanishing point where all lines would meet, they had some long-term purpose. Practical reconciliation simply doesn't face up to those issues.
We hear lots about rights and responsibilities. Are there any rights to not be swallowed? Are there any rights to not be absorbed? Are there rights to survive as a people? There aren't many. There is only one part of one international document that Australia is committed to, The International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights. Article 27 says: "In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities exist, persons belonging to these minorities shall not be denied the right to enjoy their own culture, profess and practice their own religion, and to use their own language." They are rights to which Australia is internationally committed.
I am concerned at those who say we no longer want the rights agenda. That seems to me to be saying to an all-powerful person, 'Do what you want with me, but please be kind.'
What about responsibilities? So much, when we talk of responsibility, we think, it's the Government that has got to be responsible. What about the responsibility of Government to ensuring that there will be an Aboriginal and Islander nation in 100 or 200 years time?
That article in the International Covenant was taken seriously in some countries, unlike Australia where it doesn't mean a thing, it seems. In Norway they decided that if you signed up to that Covenant you had to take responsibility for seeing that it was carried out. So in 1988 they amended their Constitution and put in it this one sentence: "It is the responsibility of the authorities of the state to create conditions enabling the Sami people to preserve and develop their language, culture and way of life."
That seems to me to be the sort of practical reconciliation we should be talking about. One that looks to the long term and shapes policy towards long-term objectives which we have practically, it seems, forgotten. Or are we basically thinking, as Hasluck thought, that in the long run they would disappear?
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