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14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Chapter 10
Children's experiences following their removal contributed to the effects of the removal upon them at the time and in later life. In this chapter we briefly survey the evidence to the Inquiry concerning those experiences which have had the most significant impacts on well-being and development. -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Chapter 11
Actually what you see in a lot of us is the shell, and I believe as an Aboriginal person that everything is inside of me to heal me if I know how to use it, if I know how to maintain it, if I know how to bring out and use it. But sometimes the past is just too hard to look at. Confidential evidence 284, South Australia. -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Chapter 12
Just as there are many homes, there are many journeys home. Each one of us will have a different journey from anyone else. The journey home is mostly ongoing and in some ways never completed. It is a process of discovery and recovery, it is a process of (re)building relationships which have been disrupted, or broken or never allowed to begin because of separation (Link-Up (NSW) submission 186). -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Chapter 13
Lots of white kids do get taken away, but that's for a reason - not like us. We just got taken away because we was black kids, I suppose - half-caste kids. If they wouldn't like it, they shouldn't do it to Aboriginal families. Confidential evidence 357, South Australia. -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Chapter 14
The Government has to explain why it happened. What was the intention? I have to know why I was taken. I have to know why I was given the life I was given and why I'm scarred today. Why was my Mum meant to suffer? Why was I made to suffer with no Aboriginality and no identity, no culture? Why did they think that the life they gave me was better than the one my Mum would give me? -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Chapter 15
Nunga baby taken away `Where's my mama' hear him say `You takin' me to Goonyaland?' Carried and fed by white man's hand Growing up different Never knowing Aunts and uncles, cousins growing Mama cries - Government pays Children lost to city ways -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Chapter 16
That's why I wanted the files brought down, so I could actually read it and find out why I was taken away and why these three here [siblings] were taken by [our] auntie ... Why didn't she take the lot of us instead of leaving two there? ... I'd like to get the files there and see why did these ones here go to the auntie and the other ones were fostered. Confidential evidence 161, Victoria. -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Chapter 18
Indigenous mental health is finally on the national agenda. As participants in the National Mental Health Strategy, States and Territories acknowledge the importance of the issue. Some of the effects of removal including loss and grief, reduced parenting skills, child and youth behavioural problems and youth suicide are increasingly recognised. -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Chapter 19
In most cases of forcible removal government officials and agents were responsible for the removal under legislation or regulations. However, there were early cases of removal of children by missionaries without the consent of the parents. In Victoria the absence of government oversight of welfare services enabled churches and other non-government agencies to remove children from their families… -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Chapter 20
There were a lot of families on the outside who were saying my daughter hasn't come home, my son hasn't come home. You had a lot of families still fighting and then you had the bloody welfare saying to these families, `We're not doing what was done in the sixties'. Bomaderry Home was left open as a big secret by the government and the welfare. And it must have been one of the best kept secrets… -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Chapter 21
Indigenous children throughout Australia remain very significantly over-represented `in care' and in contact with welfare authorities. Their over-representation increases as the intervention becomes more coercive, with the greatest over-representation being in out-of-home care. Indigenous children appear to be particularly over-represented in long-term foster care arrangements. A high percentage… -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Chapter 22
Adoption is the transfer, generally by order of a court, of all parental rights and obligations from the natural parent(s) to the adoptive parent(s). In Australia, legal adoption is relatively recent. It was first introduced in 1928 in Victoria, for example. Until very recently adoption involved near-total secrecy, partly in deference to the desire of adoptive parents to present the child as… -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Chapter 23
Family law plays a role in the `placement and care' of Indigenous children when parenting disputes come before the Family Court of Australia (except in WA where the State Family Court deals with all family law matters) or those lower courts, presided over by magistrates, which have power to deal with them. The parents do not have to be married: children born outside marriage are treated in the… -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Chapter 24
The most distressing aspect about the level of juvenile justice intrusion in the lives of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is the fact that entry into the system is usually the start of a long career of incarceration for many (SNAICC submission 309 page 28). -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Chapter 25
State and Territory legislation, programs and policies in the areas of child welfare, adoption and juvenile justice are intended to provide a non-discriminatory framework for the administration of services. In many cases, programs are designed with the objective of reducing the extent of contemporary removals of Indigenous children and young people. In spite of this, the over-representation of… -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Chapter 26
An entrenched pattern of disadvantage and dispossession continues to wreak havoc and destruction in Indigenous families and communities. This situation has been described in the preceding chapters of this Part. State and Territory legislation, policy and practice in the areas of child welfare, care and protection, adoption and juvenile justice do not comply with the evaluation criteria… -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Appendices
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Report Bringing them Home Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families April 1997 back to content page / next page Appendices Appendix 1.1 New South Wales Appendix 1.2 Australian Capital Territory Appendix 2 Victoria Appendix 3 Queensland Appendix 4 Tasmania Appendix 5… -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Bibliography
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Overview Committee (Queensland), 1996: First Report (Department of Families, Youth and Community Care, Brisbane). -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Appendix 10
Hobart December 4,7,8 Flinders Island December 4-5 Cape Barren Island December 4-5 Wybalenna December 6 Bringing them Home Launceston December 11,13 Burnie December 12 -
14 December 2012Book page
Bringing them Home - Jennifer story
My grandmother, Rebecca, was born around 1890. She lived with her tribal people, parents and relations around the Kempsey area. Rebecca was the youngest of a big family. One day some religious people came, they thought she was a pretty little girl. She was a full blood aborigine about five years old. Anyway those people took her to live with them.