Genocide in the Wildflower State

Documentary 60 min 2024 (PG)

“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.”

Brenda Greenfield, Survivor, Gnowangerup Mission.

In springtime diverse and beautiful wildflowers bloom along roadsides leading to the many Native Missions and State institutions in Western Australia that once served effectively as concentration camps for Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their parents.

These were places used for systematic programs of ‘biological absorption’ for ‘breeding out the colour’ of our mixed-race people, and for forced social assimilation into settler society.

At the root of these practices and policies were theories of eugenics, enacted in Western Australia well before Nazi Germany. They aimed to achieve a ‘White Australia’.

“The blacks will have to go white. It is exemplified in the quarter castes, and by the gradual absorption of the native Australian black race, by white. I have noticed no throw-backs in such cases hitherto.”

A.O. Neville, Chief Protector of Aborigines,1933.

Legally empowered by special acts of Parliament, the WA Government removed thousands of our children from their families and incarcerated them in institutions like Moore River Native Settlement and Carrolup, and in dozens of participating church missions throughout the state.

A national inquiry into what occurred in these missions and institutions deemed it to be genocidal (Bringing Them Home Report 1997). WA was the first state to apologise for this terrible injustice, and in 2008 Prime Minister Rudd formally apologised to our people on behalf of the nation. However, while other states have established practical redress schemes, Western Australia has not compensated survivors.

“They’re waiting for us to die. They’re waiting for us to die! Without even consideration of the trauma and harms that’s impacted upon us.”

Jim Morrison, Stolen Generation Descendant

Many Aboriginal infants died in these institutions and missions, and children suffered sexual and psychological abuse. Supported by archival images and historical records, Stolen Generations survivors and their descendants give testimony to the untold grief and intergenerational trauma caused by this vast racial system.

“Genocide in the Wildflower State” offers a deeply moving and disturbing exposé of the often denied and dismissed reality of racist state thinking, and the resulting misery families experience today. It gives voice to Survivors’ proposals on what must be done to redress the wrongs.

Production Information

Produced by YOKAI Healing Our spirit (Western Australian Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation) and Bringing Them Home WA Inc., written and directed by Frank Rijavec (Exile and the Kingdom), co-written and researched by Steve Mickler (Andrew Bolt, The Far Right and the First Nations), and narrated by Kelton Pell (The Heights, Mystery Road: Origin).