Original subtitles

♫ As I went down in the river to pray

♫ Studyin' about that good ol' way and who shall wear

♫ The starry crown good lord show me the way

I was originally born in Grafton,

taken from Grafton to Cootamundra Girls' Home

when I was four.

I don't know why.

It's not clear to me where I'm originally from.

I know I'm from up there somewhere

Up the Bundjalung tribe, that's what I was told.

I'm still tryin' to find out.

Not really important to me it's not.

'Cause I was too much in the institutions.

♫ Oh sister let's go down

I was three and a half years old.

Being so young as I was,

I thought this was natural to be abused

you know and thrown in the box room

and whipped and things like that.

♫ The starry crown good lord show me the way

Be a domestic service

to be workin' in a white person's house

to do their cleaning and their washing

and lookin' after their kids

and that's what we were doing.

It was just literally a slave,

to be there to do their bit of what they wanted you to do.

♫ As I went down in the river to pray

We were like dogs,

just given the rubbish you know?

Had the leftovers.

Hurts, to think what the wealthy have done to us.

Pain that we went through.

I still have nightmares.

♫ Oh sisters lets go down

♫ Lets go down, come on down

♫ Oh sisters lets go down

♫ Down in the river to pray

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In 1901, Australia became a federation.

Under the new constitution,

aboriginal people would not be counted in the census.

And the commonwealth would have the power to make laws

relating to any race of people in Australia,

except aboriginal people.

The federated states retained exclusive power

over aboriginal affairs until 1967

when the constitution was amended in a historic referendum.

When Australian's voted overwhelmingly

to change these discriminatory clauses.

Aboriginal people had been subject to oppressive legislation

that varied on a state by state basis

from the late 19th century.

The notorious aborigines protection board

had the power to forcibly move people

from their traditional lands, onto reserves and missions

and to remove children from their families

and power over their financial affairs.

The policy of protection,

of smoothing the dying pillow of a doomed race,

rapidly changed to one of control.

With the end game of assimilation.

Certainly when the pieces of legislation

were first drafted in the late 1880s

through to the early 1900s,

what you do see is a reflection

of this generally held assumption

by the dominant culture in Australia

that aboriginal people were a dying race.

By the time you get to the 40s, 50s, 60s

and it's very clear

that the aboriginal population isn't dying out.

The impetus behind the concept of protection

becomes very different.

You do find a large sort of broad similarity

in terms of the assumptions about

inferiority of aboriginal people,

the problems that were assumed to exist

or would be created if aboriginal children

were left with their families.

The importance of seeing assimilation

of aboriginal people as a key way of progressing forward

in terms of federal government policy.

All of those sorts of big ideological pictures

were pretty much existent across the board.

I was born in Brewarrina.

I didn't know my father

but I had a step father who I really loved

who was the only dad that I knew.

We was playing outside in the dirt

with our roly poly

and then while mom

and all the other ladies were playing cards inside,

black car come there, just parked there.

Jenny she had me by the hand

and hanged onto me.

And the welfare fella just picked us up and took us.

Took us and mom didn't know.

- There was certainly an assumption

that the best time to remove children

was the youngest you could possibly get them

so there were lots of instances where

aboriginal women would go into hospital,

would be told their children had died

and then later find out that they'd been adopted out.

There was a view that if children were institutionalised

or sent out to work,

somehow these would be better ways

of equipping them for life in white world

then allowing them to stay with their families.

- Well I was born at Peak Hill,

in Peak Hill hospital.

In 1932.

That's a long time ago.

Yeah no,

you'd see me out on the mission there at Peak Hill

with mom and dad.

Well that's where we was taken' from there.

I remember we was playin' out on the lawn

out the front of the courthouse

and that's where mom and dad walked away

and left us there.

I don't think they knew where I was going,

I was only little,

I didn't know whether they knew or not

but we didn't know.

I was only little, tiny kid.

Train ride and ended up at Cootamundra.

In 1911, the Cootamundra Domestic

Training Home for aboriginal girls

was opened by the Aborigine's Protection Board,

in Country, New South Wales.

Until it closed in 1968, hundreds of aboriginal girls

were placed in the home,

after being forcibly removed from their parents.

The idea was to segregate part aboriginal children

from their families,

in order to assimilate them into the mainstream community

as domestic servants.

- Matron called out and said,

"now girls, this is your new home.

"You behave yourself and do as you're told,

"things will be alright."

And that's what she said.

They never told us why we were taken, never.

- I went to Bomaderry Children's Home ,

I was aged two with the other two sisters.

And when I went to Cootamundra,

about nine with me other sister Patty,

they said we were gonna meet me eldest sisters

and I didn't even know we had 'em.

Only family I knew was the Bomaderry kids

and the ones in Cootamundra, they seemed strange.

I wasn't brought up with them.

If you're not brought up with someone,

how could you connect?

The story of private John Wenberg

of the second AIF and his wife Lily

is one shared by many families.

All nine of their children

including sisters Adelaide, Valerie and Rita

were taken from them.

Some were taken before their younger siblings

had even been born.

Two of their children, Dorothy and John died of neglect

while wards of the state.

Despite their repeated pleas

for the return of their children,

John and Lily were formally advised

that the removal of their children

was justified due to parental neglect.

- I got in the home when I was three and a half.

Grew up, grew up not knowing they were my sisters.

And grew up not wanting to know.

You know, we're not close now.

We're strangers.

Same with our brothers, they're strangers.

I was more or less on me own

amongst about 45 girls or more.

All in the same position I think that I was in.

Taken and just put there, for the reasons unknown.

I was a real devil then,

I just wouldn't settle down to do nothin'.

'Cause I had an idea in my head

that I shouldn't have been there.

You know when you wake up in the morning

and you think you're gonna wake up

and see your mom and dad and you don't,

you wake up and you're in a dormitory with about

14 or 15 other kids, all age groups,

it's not very comforting.

- When you became a women you know,

you got your periods.

I didn't know what was going on.

I was down the toilet, I saw blood,

"oh shit what's happened here"?

And went up to the matron and,

"Oh Adelaide," she said.

"You're turning into a women."

And all she did was handin' me these things,

you have to wash yourself and that you know?

So shit what's goin' on here you know?

That's all we were told, nothing.

There was no love up there, none whatsoever, none.

In 1948, an Anglican missionary couple

established the Marella Mission Farm

known as the Hidden Mission,

to accommodate aboriginal children on their private property

in a north western suburb of Sydney.

The first child arrived in 1953

and the subsequent hundreds of children

who passed through their gates became an unpaid labour force

that supported the farm,

which already benefited from government funding

and public donations.

Soon after being taken from her family at the age of two,

Rita Wright was transferred form the Cootamundra girls home

to Marella where she remained until she was released

aged 19.

- I hate that place, I hate the name.

I used to steal oranges off the tree

and hide 'em under the floorboards.

And then they'd make us start readin' the bible,

"thou shalt not steal," you know?

Like you have to steal to survive,

just to have a feed you know?

We were hungry.

We were treated like slaves.

Done all the work.

We kept a dirty farm goin'.

We kept it goin' and all the hidin's and,

hidin's over just tiny little things.

They put us there 'cause

they say that my mom was a dirty drunken woman.

We're supposed to have malnutrition.

My auntie, she said "your mom was one of the cleanest women

"up there in Brewarrina."

- The first time I saw my father,

he came up to the home.

And in order to come up to the home,

you had to have a letter from the Aborigine Welfare Board,

to see your kids.

He never had a letter, he just roamed in.

I always remember he had this army coat.

And he's holdin' out his arms, he's callin' out,

"Valerie, Valerie."

And he said, "I'm your daddy."

- The matron rang the police

and they got him off the property

because he was drunk and weren't allowed

to come up there like that.

When we were all taken, he just took to drink.

You know, all his kids were gone so what the hell?

He had nothing to live for?

- And poor dad wrote a letter to the welfare,

"could I have my children back?"

He said, "I'll get a home for 'em."

He got a home for us.

But they didn't, they wouldn't give 'em to him.

- You know a girl came from Cootamundra.

You know she used to tell me,

she said Val, I asked her, I said,

"have you got a mom?"

And she said, "yes."

And I said, "why are you in here if you got a mom?"

I said, "I thought all the girls didn't have mom and dad?"

And she said, "Val if you go out to the peppercorn tree,

"put a cross on the peppercorn tree every night

"and your mom will come."

She never came.

- You know I think for many of us

have often heard our elders say,

they said that this protection was kind of an ironic word

just like welfare was.

And that the motivations behind the policy

were much more about protecting white people

from aboriginal people.

And although you know, in their usual way,

our eldest sort of say that it's a kind of joke,

I think that there's a lot of pain behind that.

- Tried to bring them up as normal children

and to teach them whatever we could

as far as cleanliness and that was concerned you know?"

And to live as white children,

that was all we were trying to do.

It was the only thing we could do with them?

- I loved school, I loved it with a dear passion.

I did very well at school.

We were all sitting on the outside,

the officers where they had their meals, on the steps

and the matron said,

"oh Adelaide's a very clever little girl."

And one of the officers said,

"what's the point of the her being clever?

"She's only going to be a domestic."

And that stuck with me

and I'll never try it again, never.

- Well what they trained you for

was to learn to scrub and wash and clean houses.

You know, for the white people.

Iron their clothes, milk a cow.

You know, had to get up early in the mornin'

and milk a cow.

- They teach ya to cook, they teach ya to wash,

they teach ya to iron, clean.

I used to muck up, being who I was,

they sort of targeted me because I wasn't flexible

like the other kids.

Come and do all your duties,

do that, do whatever.

And I used to say, no I'm not doin' it.

I would just walk away

but I used to end up then bein' locked in a store room,

like a box room they called it.

No lights, no nothing turned on.

You'd be sittin' in this little box room

for hours more or less.

- They'd get ya and they'd push you in.

You may try not go in, but they push you in.

You'd sleep in the box with no bed.

No mattress.

They don't bring in food or water for ya.

And you gotta stay there overnight, it's real dark.

You know and you get scared

and I thought to myself I can't cry,

because you're not allowed to cry.

- Across the country, children taken into state care

whether they were put in institutions

or sent out into employment situations,

suffered an enormous amount of abuse.

Psychological, emotional, physical and sexual abuse.

- I said to this officer Hailey,

she said something and I said, "oh shut up."

"That's the last time you'll ever say that to me" she said.

I'll get you.

Never thought anything of it.

About a week later, she was on bath duty.

There's two baths and they call you in.

Betty Lee was in that bath and I was in the other bath.

I was washin' myself quite happy, very happy, singin' away

and Betty yells out, "watch it Adelaide,

"watch it, she's coming."

I felt this burnin' right across me back.

I didn't cry, I didn't cry.

I didn't give her the satisfaction.

But that cat o nine tails,

that bloke down near the stock yards

gave one to the officers.

That whip, to keep us in hand.

And that's what they used to use on the cattle

to get 'em into the different yards.

- They used to call me a runner, I'm always on the run.

I ran away from the home

and the policeman picked me up,

and I was about 12.

And I was put in a cell

and that's where he raped me.

I kept that to myself.

I kept the rape to myself 'cause I always thought

well you don't say those things

or you get into trouble.

And they won't believe ya anyway.

- They were so-called Christian missionaries.

We was made to call him mom and dad.

Or we used to call 'em little names on the side.

I know you should not hate anybody,

but he is one man that I really really hate.

- Things he done was unbelievable

and they were supposed to look after us.

Used to hit us.

Do other things.

Things you wouldn't believe.

He abused me bad.

Done things,

that I was too frightened to tell people.

'Cause I always thought no one would believe me

and I'm still goin' in surgeries.

From this day on I'm still havin' surgery over this.

That messed me, I'd go there

and I'm gettin' tubes put in me.

I still let it happen to me you know?

Made me sit on his lap and

he used to bounce up and down.

It was dirty, very bad.

And he calls himself a Christian.

The tree was shaped like a horse,

like gettin' on a horse.

I jumped on it one day,

I made out that I was takin' off from Marella.

Sittin' on a nose, "yahoo" and all this,

thinkin' I was free.

But the day had to end ya know?

It was make believe days, stories.

It's very very hard when you're in a home,

being treated,

treated like slaves.

Little children, we were kids, just slaves.

To me I don't like workers sayin' dogs,

but we were like dogs.

In 1897, the aboriginal protection

and restriction of the sale of opium act

was passed in Queensland.

Under the guise of protecting aboriginal people

from physical and financial exploitation

by their employers,

this legislation allowed the state government

to assume complete control over aboriginal people's lives.

Including the power to control their welfare entitlements

and wages.

A strategy repeated across the nation.

- What happened for an aboriginal person

sent out to work under the government control

was that firstly you had no idea

how much the government was selling your labour for.

They didn't tell you what wage you were supposed to get.

Secondly, while you're working,

up to 80% of your wage,

in theory was paid as, what they call pocket money,

which was money that the employer paid you

during the 12 month work period.

But this pocket money quota,

the government always knew from the very very beginning

was probably never properly paid.

It was so easy for employers to say,

yes you got a shirt worth X amount,

he got food worth X amount, he got tobacco

and that takes up the whole 80%,

so there's only 20% of the wage to be paid.

- On many stations in to Kimberley right through

until the late 1960s, all people were getting still

was basic rations of meat, flour, tea, sugar

and a ration of tobacco.

For many aboriginal workers and their families on stations,

that's all they got.

Just this really meagre amount of food and tobacco rations

in exchange for working full time.

- One of the ways the government funded itself

from aboriginal work was

through the Aboriginal Welfare Fund.

This had been set up in 1943 and was always notorious

for it's mismanagement.

And the fund comprised a levy on the wages

of all aboriginal workers which had been in place

since 1919,

and was used supposedly

for the benefit of aboriginals generally.

- Aboriginal workers on stations just couldn't up and leave

when they wanted to.

They were bound by employment contracts

and employment permits.

In economic terms,

they were making so much money

for the pastoral station owners

because they were being paid either nothing at all

or a fraction of the award wages.

One of the complaints that station owners started making

in the 1940s and 1950s when agitation for wages

was coming from aboriginal workers themselves,

one of those complaints was,

if we have to pay these people wages,

we can't run the station.

These pastoral stations simply weren't viable economic

propositions without the huge economic contribution

that aboriginal people made to the industry.

So it was really a one-way transfer of economic resources,

from the aboriginal community to the nation.

- Well generally speaking I find them quite good.

I think I prefer the native neighbour.

Why?

- I get along quite well with my girls.

Well if I had one white housemaid,

well if she resigned I'd get left with nothing,

but I've always got another girl to take one's place.

- Aboriginal girls were taken from their families

at such a rate.

This was partly fueled by the insatiable desire

for cheap domestic servants.

These young aboriginal workers

and some of them were really little more

than children themselves,

they were paid so little.

Like in their hand they only got a few shillings

and the rest was managed by the aborigines department.

What it meant was that,

even really modest households could expect to

be able to employ an aboriginal domestic servant.

This is an area of stolen wages

where I don't think you can actually separate

the stolen generation's story

from the stolen wages story, they're completely entwined.

- When you reach 14 and a half or something like that,

you get your report sent up to the home

and the matron sends it up to the welfare,

Aborigine Welfare Board.

If they think you can't go any further,

they stop you from going to school

and then you're put out to domestic service.

When you go on the farm,

you're supposed to do the washing, clean the house,

if there's kids there, gotta look after them.

'Cause you never had a day off, you just kept on going.

- I was 16 or 15,

matron put me out on a property

and I didn't know how to milk a cow.

I used to put water in the bucket.

And I put the bucket on top of the kitchen table

and next minute I could hear this man say,

"Valerie, Valerie, get in here!"

I went in there and he said,

"you put water in this milk."

And I was shakin' like a leaf, I didn't know what to do.

So he said, "next time just watch it."

And then one day I was vacuuming in the lounge

and he came back

and he said, "Valerie" he said, "get in here!"

He said, "you haven't done the kid's room."

And I, I'd done the kid's room.

I'd went in and vacuumed and cleaned the kid's room up.

And he just threw me on the bed and he raped me.

And that night when he came home,

I had a cup and a plate in my hand

and as soon as I'd seen him,

I broke the cup and plate

and then he gets this big fence boy

and he belted me with the fence boy.

And I went runnin' out

and I slept in the wooden box outside all night.

It was cold.

Then I woke up the next mornin'

and I looked up and seen if they were gone.

And they were gone,

so I went, I dunno I just went back into the house

not realizin' what he's done,

I just got his shoes

and I started to clean his bloomin' shoes.

'Cause I was frightened I was goin' to get myself

in trouble with matron if I didn't behave myself.

Then the knock came on the door and it was the police.

And he said, "what's wrong Valerie?"

And I said, "this man's been beltin' me

"with this fence boy and he's done somethin' to me."

And the police said, "you go and get your case

"and pack your case, you're goin' back to the home."

When I was goin' back to the home all matron would say,

"now Valerie," she said,

"don't mention or tell any of the girls

"what has happened to you

"and tomorrow I shall buy you a new dress."

And tomorrow came, she bought me a new dress

but I didn't know where I was goin' in the new dress.

And a week later after that,

she sticks me out onto another property.

I was so frightened of the man, I ran away.

Government control over their wages

effectively condemned many thousands

of aboriginal girls and boys

to a treadmill of abuse

from which their was little hope of escape.

Internal investigations from the early 1920s

reveal aboriginal wages

were misappropriated by governments

to cover their own liabilities,

including the cost of removing people

to missions and reserves

and the forcible removal of children.

In essence, aboriginal people unwittingly funded

their own disenfranchisement.

Even thought the racial discrimination act

established a legal award wage in 1975,

many aboriginal workers continue to be underpaid

and had no control over their financial affairs.

- There is almost no proper money trail

of what happened to aboriginal savings,

individual savings, because people were never given

any record of what was being done to their money

until 1968 when they were given bank books

which showed just the amounts

still sitting in their account,

and for many people that was a tiny amount

after perhaps three decades of work.

So the profitability of the state,

it was built on the backs of black workers

and it was built to a large extent

with the money, which black workers earned,

but governments took.

- Stroke of luck came.

I was sent to Sydney.

I was goin' on 16.

I went to work for this beautiful woman at Double Bay,

her and her mother.

She was paralysed from the waist down.

She gave me all the respect I needed

and she was the only one that did.

She always made sure if I was upset,

she'd say to me, "what's your problem Adelaide?"

And sometimes I couldn't tell her

and then other times I could tell her.

And she said, "oh we'll get through this."

- I'd run away from Marella.

I went in a red fern and lived in there for three months,

on the streets.

Stealin' milk and snow drop and takin' clothes

off the lines and puttin' my clothes back on the line

to survive.

I seen these group of aboriginal people

come towards me.

I crossed the road, I was frightened.

'Cause you know, you grew up with the kids in the home

but seein' the free people,

you know people that was free?

Havin' them do what they wanna do.

- I used the bloody men, they used me and I used them.

It wasn't for love.

They might've loved me, but I never loved them.

What the hell's love gotta do with it?

I had to go with these white fellas,

'cause I believed that white fellas

are a better race that me own people.

I learnt different later, ha!

I used these white fellas up.

Reason why I used to go in the pub

to meet me own people, I'm trying to find who I belong to,

where I come from, things like that.

- It's taken a long time for me to realise

that I wasn't really white.

That's how good they are, it's like a brainwash.

You know, when I seen a dark person

I used to cross the road,

'cause I didn't wanna associate.

You're brought up that way.

You accept things, you know?

- They said not to marry an aborigine person,

because they were dirty and the white race

was better than the aborigine race.

- I'm sure it gives people some comfort

to think that these were things

that all happened in the past.

But the fact of the matter is that it's just not true.

You've first of all got people

who live in our community who lived this.

To them it wasn't just yesterday,

they live with this every day.

The sorts of traumas that they've suffered as children.

The impact of separation from their families.

These traumas do get handed down.

Their removal as children made it very difficult for them

to be in a family.

When I got married,

I was lookin' for somebody to look after me for a change.

It didn't work out that way.

Used to come home drunk, you know?

And all he wanted was you know what.

And I thought to myself,

I suppose it was meant to happen again.

I got so used to bein' abused

and I didn't trust anybody.

I think that trust is a big thing.

People say you've gotta move forward.

How does one move forward

when you still go that in your mind,

what happened to you as a child?

- As much as I love my husband,

I did still have no trust in him you know?

It was very hard.

My husband never smoked, he never drunk

and he never got into me.

He taught me how to cook,

but then he had to die from the dialysis.

From this day on I still haven't got a boyfriend

'cause I'm too frightened,

for what I went through.

- When I did go out and have my own family,

I used to check the kids every night.

I put my hand on their chest

to see if they were still breathin'

or see if they were still in their bed

because they had no idea,

they're not takin' my kids.

And in the end of it, I just reared my kids on my own,

I worked and reared my kids myself.

- I don't think I was meant to be a mother.

I just haven't had it in me.

I tried.

We weren't brought up with a mother,

so how do you expect to be a mother to your children

when you don't even know how to be a mother to them

when you've never had one, to help ya, to guide you.

- I used to say to the kids,

if you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend,

I wanna know who they are

and I wanna know who their parents are,

because they could have been related, you know?

You get around the same area where you come from,

everybody's more or less related to this one or that one

and I'm thinkin' well no,

I wanna know who they are and who their parents are

and where they come from.

- I was just goin' on 26 when I found out I was pregnant.

And I was cranky, cranky as hell.

So I went to see an abortionist,

I didn't want a kid, never wanted a kid,

never wished to have any kids.

If this is the way they treat aborigine kids,

never will I bring a child into this world

to be abused like this, that's how I thought.

Well I had Robert,

and I said to the lady, I'll leave if you like

and she said, "no you're not, we'll bring him up together."

And she brought him up.

He wasn't mine.

She took control of him.

I was just the one who gave the birth.

And I've never said to him I love you, never.

'Cause I can't.

Because of what happened up at that home.

Taught me not to trust people, not to love anyone,

not even to love me own child.

- I was goin' through depression pretty bad.

I was havin' flashbacks

so I had to go and see a psychiatrist.

I told him what happened

and he said, "why don't you sketch

"what happened to you as a child?"

And I've been doin' that ever since.

When you're paintin' you're in a world of your own.

Your mind's occupied by the paint your doin'.

'Cause if I don't paint, I start to have the flashbacks.

I start to get panic attacks.

- I do what they taught me to do.

I just clean and look after myself.

Play tennis and play bowls.

Very sporty, I get out and play a lot of sports.

I used to always play sports, years ago.

Even had a go at football.

- And when I went to Sydney,

I couldn't understand why I was gettin' pains all the time.

I was playin' tennis and I used to double up with pains.

I used to play with these white people out at Rose Bay.

Went home to the lady I worked for,

I said, "I dunno I've got these two pains under here."

She said, "we'll send you to the doctor."

Now I went into hospital,

not knowing what was going to happen.

Not knowing.

Doctor came around, looked at my chart,

he said, "look girly I'm gonna ask you one simply question

"and one simple question only.

"You can give me that answer or not?

"That kidney was caused through trauma.

"Did you fall?

"Or fall off a horse, fall down out of a tree?"

That's what that bloody thing did, that whip.

I didn't say nothin'.

I said, nah I don't wanna talk about it.

- Now it's gone, why'd he put me through that?

I get angry and I swear, to myself.

'Cause you gotta get everything out you know?

When you got that anger, you do anything.

I threw plates, I wanted to jump on the railway tracks

down Rooty Hill.

And even when my husband died I said Doug

what've you left me for 'cause I need ya but where are you?

So I went back just to sit there.

To see a little creek runnin' through.

Now it's a recreation centre built there.

And I wanna try and get a plaque put up

for the Marella children that was there.

In 2006, a senate legal

and constitutional affairs committee

established an inquiry into stolen wages nationally.

Almost 170 years after a British committee

first recommended that protectors of aborigines

be appointed in Australia.

The senate committee found extensive evidence

of misappropriated trust funds, welfare entitlements

and stolen wages.

Estimated to be at least 500 million dollars

in Queensland alone.

It recommended that indigenous people be supported

to tell their stories.

Given unhindered access to government archives

and that a national scheme be established

to undertake preliminary legal research

into stolen wages.

Almost 10 years later, claimants are still waiting.

- Reparations have been a really tricky legal issue.

For an average person who hears what happens,

to many of the people who were taken

and then suffered horrendous abuse,

have long psychological damage,

it becomes a real question as to why

there isn't a legal remedy for that?

- In May 2002, Queensland Labour Premier Peter Beattie

made an offer of reparations in parliament.

He said, "we have no idea how much money has gone missing

"from people's accounts over the decades."

He quoted it was a least half a billion dollars

over an 80 year period.

From all of the whole range of funds that went missing

and so he offered 55.6 million dollars was his offer.

What it worked out to was $2000 per person

for a younger claimant and $4000 per person

for somebody 55 years and older.

To get that money, you had to sign away your legal rights.

There was such a poor take up of the offer,

people were so disgusted

that the subsequent labour government

increased the amount to $7000 which again

is still an absolute pittance.

Certainly the Queensland government, in it's conditions

said that only people who were alive on the date

in May 2002 when they made the offer,

only they could apply for the money,

so anybody who's parents, grandparents,

great grandparents had lost money under the system,

they were out of luck.

- I think it's important that what they do do

is recognise that there was a structural harm

that was being committed against a broad group of people.

Their experience was continually denied.

There's something very important about

a formal structure that says,

well yes it did take place

and yes there were people who worked in these circumstances

and were effectively treated as slave labour

and we need to do something about it.

When you look at the poverty within indigenous communities,

the fact that there's so little

that people had to hand down, in a material sense,

it is a way in which people

who have been exploited for their labour

are unable to even bequeath that to their children

and their grandchildren.

- There really needs to be a political will

at both the federal level and the state and territory level

to drive this issue,

until aboriginal workers and their families

receive the justice that they deserve.

- The money that should've gone to aboriginal workers

was used to continue to remove children.

And when you think that this was a policy

that went form the 1880s informally,

through to a very strong state structure

by the early 1900s, right into the 1960s,

you're talking about generations.

You can even conceive where people

would've been funding these bodies that would then

come and take their own children.

- An awful lot of the despair on the communities,

is rooted in the institutionalised dis-empowerment

over generations.

And I believe that the government is responsible

for the conditions today.

Legally responsible.

I think they had a duty of care.

They gave themselves that duty of care

in their laws and regulations.

- There is probably a short answer

to what you call someone who is in that circumstance,

especially a child who is getting no wages

or is severely underpaid.

The United Nations human rights standards

would say that is slavery.

People will say, "well you know that's what happened

"in the southern states of America

"and we didn't have that here."

But for the child who was working for nothing

in someone else's kitchen with no other choice,

cannot escape,

is beaten when they don't do their work,

is abused in other ways, it's slavery.

It hurts,

to think what the welfare done to them

and what they done to us.

The pain that we went through.

To look back on my life, it wasn't a life.

It just wasn't a life.

I got my freedom.

I got a lot of love

and I got my children, my grandchildren.

And now they give me support.

They give me the strength,

'cause I can stand up and talk to them,

tell them what's right from wrong you know?

- I will never forgive them

for what they done to me you know?

I mean I wasn't the only one who got raped and abused.

There was thousands of aborigine kids, boys too,

they got raped, I wasn't the only one.

- I was determined not to be broke,

they wasn't gonna break me,

I wanted to be me own self.

I was seein' what happened with other kids

and the way it affected them.

A lot of them come out and all they wanted to do

was they get on the drugs

and they get on the alcohol

and all this sorta thing.

I never went that way, I was determined not to.

I was gonna make somethin' of myself.

But I ended up married with a mob of kids.

Lovin' it though.

- Why do you think a lot of these young boys

and the men and the fathers went to drink and died?

Because they lost their kids like my father.

He had nothing to live for, nothing.

So he just threw in the towel,

they weren't going to give his kids back,

he asked for them back, so what?

That was it.

- I had to go to TAFE to learn about my people.

I was very proud you know?

I was hurt to learn about them, very hurt,

'cause I was sayin' to myself,

why didn't I learn these things while I was at school?

And I'm proud to be an aborigine.

And I always will be.

I'm proud to be a proud black woman.

Proud to be one.

Okay?

♫ As I went down to the river to pray

♫ Studying about that good ol' way

♫ And who shall wear the starry crown

♫ Good Lord show me the way

♫ Oh sisters let's go down

♫ Let's go down, come on down

♫ Oh sisters let's go down

♫ Down to the river to pray

♫ As I lay down in the river to pray

♫ Studyin' about that good ol' way

♫ And who shall wear the starry crown

♫ Good Lord show me the way

♫ Oh sisters let's go down

♫ Let's go down, come on down

♫ Oh sisters, let's go down

♫ Down in the river to pray

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