Words in action | Generations torn apart: Lost childhoods and stolen futures

The screams of mothers.

Fear, panic, running. A desperate attempt to escape.

These images from the 2002 movie Rabbit-Proof Fence tell the start of a story — a true story.

Based on the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara, the movie tells the heart-wrenching story of Doris’ mother, Molly Craig, her half-sister Daisy Kadibil and their cousin Gracie Fields.

Forcibly taken from their home and family in remote Jigalong, under the orders of the Chief Protector of Aborigines and Commissioner of Aborigines in Western Australia, Auber Octavius Neville, they were placed at the Moore River Settlement, just north of Perth.

The movie captures the desperation of that early scene. The terror and despair. But also the underlying inevitability for Aboriginal families of their children being taken.

Rabbit-Proof Fence is a movie that many of us have seen.

Perhaps we felt shocked at the harshness of the removal of the children.

Or watched with disbelieving sadness as the girls tried to make sense of their new ‘home’ — the new rules, the lack of love — bewildered by their new situation.

Many non-Indigenous people have wondered how they would feel if it was their children who had been taken.

But this would never have been the case — because they weren’t Aboriginal.

What the film doesn’t tell, though, is the story of the next generation — of Molly’s daughter, Doris.

When Doris was four, she and her new baby sister, Annabelle, were taken — again under the orders of A.O. Neville — and placed at Moore River. Doris didn’t see her mother again for 21 years.

Two generations of stolen children.

“Our life pattern was created by the government policies and is forever with me, as though an invisible anchor around my neck. The moments that should be shared and rejoiced by a family unit, for [my brother] and mum and I, are forever lost. The stolen years that are worth more than any treasure are irrecoverable.”

These haunting words are recorded in the Bringing Them Home report, which documented the practice of government-sanctioned, systematic removal of Aboriginal children from their families.

This was a practice that occurred across Australia, encouraged by the prevailing ideas of eugenics — that some ‘races’ or strains of blood were superior. An idea that directly led to the murderous atrocities that occurred in Europe in World War II.

A.O. Neville — a man who helped shape government policy in Western Australia and across the nation — was a firm believer in eugenics. His goal was to work towards the absorption or assimilation of Aboriginal people. He thought that by achieving this, Aboriginal people would eventually become extinct.

As noted in the Bringing Them Home report, “Government officials theorised that by forcibly removing Indigenous children from their families and sending them away from their communities to work for non-Indigenous people, this mixed-descent population would, over time, ‘merge’ with the non-Indigenous population.”

In this removal, distance was important. Think about the distance Molly, Daisy and Gracie were taken from their family — over 1600km.

It meant there was little likelihood of families staying in touch with their removed children or even knowing where they were. Often, siblings were deliberately separated. Children were told their mothers had died, their families had given them away, and they were better off under the ‘care’ of the ‘Aboriginal Protectors’.

“One thing that really, really sticks on my mind is being put into this cold bed with white, cold, starchy sheets and having to sleep on my own and looking down the room and just seeing rows of beds and not knowing where my brothers and sisters were.” — Testimony given to the Bringing Them Home inquiry.

It was a deliberate severing of children from families, communities, countries, cultures and languages — all designed to speed up the absorption of the children into the prevailing white population.

As the Brisbane Daily Telegraph, reporting on the May 1937 Conference of Chief Protectors, noted: “Mr Neville [the Chief Protector of WA] holds the view that within one hundred years, the pure black will be extinct. But the half-caste problem was increasing every year. Therefore, their idea was to keep the pure blacks segregated and absorb the half-castes into the white population.”

In 2022, reflecting on the impact of A.O. Neville and his ideas of eugenics, Assistant Professor Mel Thomas, co-ordinator of the University of Western Australia School of Indigenous Studies, said, “Whether or not his intentions were genocidal, the effect, had they been allowed to continue, would have been the extinction of all Aboriginal people, and that is a crime under international law today, and Australia is a signatory to the Genocide Convention.”

The now disproven and discredited idea of eugenics and its impact on government policies is part of the history of our country, whether we like it or not.

After World War II, the focus changed, and during the 1950s and 1960s, more First Nations children were removed and placed in institutions or adopted by non-Indigenous families — all part of the push towards assimilation. Clearly, a baby placed with white parents would be more quickly assimilated than a baby placed with a black family. And this was the general feeling in the wider community at the time.

Nationally, it is understood that between one in three and one in 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were forcibly removed from their families between 1910 and 1970. Most families have been affected in one or more generations by the forcible removal of one or more children — think of Molly, Daisy and Gracie and then Molly’s daughter Doris.

“It never goes away. Just ’cause we’re not walking around on crutches or with bandages or plasters on our legs and arms doesn’t mean we’re not hurting … I suspect I’ll carry these sorts of wounds ’til the day I die. I’d just like it to not to be so intense, that’s all.” — Testimony given to the Bringing Them Home inquiry.

The impact of the removal of children continues to reverberate today, 16 years since Kevin Rudd’s apology for the forced removal of First Nations children from their parents.

Furthermore, children today are still being removed at appalling rates.

The announcement, in February this year, of a new position of National Commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People Children is an important step in “addressing the welfare and rights of our children and youth on a national scale”.

Catherine Liddle, the chief executive of the national non-government peak body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families, went on to say the role would “focus on advocating for evidence-based change to policies and systems that will ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children grow up safe, connected to their family and cultural identity”.

It is hoped that this appointment — and support for First Nations-led solutions — will have a positive and lasting impact on the current removal of children.

A recommendation of the Bringing Them Home report was to have a national Sorry Day. It was one of the few recommendations to have been adopted.

We warmly invite you all to join us for the annual Sorry Day Commemoration at 10:15am for a 10:30am start on Monday, May 27, at Monash Park, on the corner of Welsford and Fryers St in Shepparton.

To watch the film Rabbit-Proof Fence, go to SBS on Demand.

Doris Pilkington Garimara’s book is Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence. To read the Bringing Them Home report, go to https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/projects/bringing-them-home-report-1997