Stolen generation

Abstract

The 'Bringing them Home' inquiry heard the testimony of 535 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders over the course of ten months from December 1995 to October 1996. Their testimonies describe the experiences of the 'stolen generation', who were forcibly fostered out to white families or church missions in order to 'assimilate' them into the white population. The legacy of this quiet genocide continues today I t was 1936. We had been playing all together, just a happy community, and the air was filled with screams because the police came and mothers tried to hide their children and blacken their children's faces and hide them in caves ... Six of us were put on an old truck and taken to Oodnadatta which was hundreds of miles away. From that time until 1968 I didn't see my mother. Thirty-two years it was. Fiona, confidential submission 305 I was taken away from [my mother]. Separating her from me was a grill. There was chicken wire across. I can remember sitting here at this grill on that side waiting for her to come out of the door of one of these wards there so that I can just see her. She wouldn't come out because it hurt her to see me over this side. Peggy, confidential evidence 404.