When our kids were taken away the churches kept our kids. There was a lot of money involved. So the churches need to be made accountable too. Not only the government but the policies that allowed the churches to keep our children away from their parents.

Mogumber was full, New Norcia was full, Tardun was full, Sister Kate’s was full. They were full of all our kids. And they only could just squeeze us, me and my brothers, into Marribank Mission.

You know it’s a long time now since Bringing Them Home national inquiry happened. They found there was genocide against Stolen Generations people, a policy of genocide. Which is about the most serious offence that there could ever be under international human rights law. And there was an absolute clear duty on the state responsible to make reparations for that crime of genocide.

Mum had our last brother Dean, and when he was born, they took him off her, because we were in the mission. They took him from her. And even though he was in the same mission as Anthony, Timothy and Cynthia, he had no idea that they were his brothers and sister. And neither did they.
And when I mention ‘stolen’ I’m specifically talking about our language, our culture, our totemic connections and our connection to families.

When we tried to tell someone about the abuse, we were told, “There’s some things God does not want you to talk about. How dare you.”

My father and my mother never got the chance to be parents to me. I’m 66 years of age now and the only thing I can do to moving forward and to spare my children of the torment and the heartache and the trauma that I’ve gone through is always be there for my children.

I went in from two months to nearly ten years of age. And then went home to my mother. Just got packed up one day and driven to this house in Albany. Didn’t even know it was Albany, just got driven. You were never told, and that, where you were going, because you had no rights to know anything. And then just dropped at this door, and that. No authority explained where you were going. No authorities that were with you explained who these people were.

Fifty-seven percent of Aboriginal people in our state today are connected to the Stolen Generations people. So that’s every second Aboriginal person you walk past in the community, they have that trauma, that intergenerational trauma that’s impacting their lives.”

[Standing on steps of Parliament House] In 1905 the Act was put in place here. This same building where the ‘breed out the colour’ policy was initiated. Let’s not say our children were taken because they were bad parents. ‘Breed out the colour’ policy was the eugenics of this country, and initiated by A.O. Neville.

But they knew about New Norcia. [it] was the capital of… like a place of sexual abuse, but they kept on sending us there. So, the Native Welfare was in on this, and the government at that time.