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Stolen Generations

(Status : Public)
Coordinated by BlackWords Team
  • Autobiographies and Biographies

    'Many one-time Aboriginal authors are those who write their autobiographies or memoirs or have their story told through biography. These personal accounts often unravel the painful experience of being removed under Acts of Protection nationally.'

    (Heiss, Anita, BlackWords: Our Truths - Aboriginal Writers and the Stolen Generations, 2015)

  • Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, by Doris Pilkington Garimara

    image of person or book cover
    This image has been sourced from online.

    'The film Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on this true account of Doris Nugi Garimara Pilkington's mother Molly, who as a young girl led her two sisters on an extraordinary 1,600 kilometre walk home. Under Western Australia's invidious removal policy of the 1930s, the girls were taken from their Aboriginal family at Jigalong on the edge of the Little Sandy Desert, and transported halfway across the state to the Native Settlement at Moore River, north of Perth.

    (...more)
    See full AustLit entry

    This work was also adapted into an award-winning feature film in 2002. See Rabbit-Proof Fence.

  • Auntie Rita, by Rita Cynthia Huggins and Jackie Huggins

    image of person or book cover
    Cover image courtesy the publisher.

    "Most people call me Auntie Rita, whites as well as Aboriginal people. Auntie is a term of respect of our older women folk. You don't have to be blood-related or anything. Everyone is kin. That's a beautiful thing because in this way no one is ever truly alone, they always have someone they can turn to."

    Rita Huggins told her memories to her daughter Jackie, and some of their conversation is in this book. We witness their intimacy, their similarities and their differences, the '"fighting with their tongues".

    (...more)
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    This biography was written by Rita Huggins with the help of her daughter Jackie Huggins. Rita was a young child when she was taken from her family in the land of the Bidjara-Pitjara people.

  • Orphaned by the Colour of My Skin : A Stolen Generation Story, by Mary R. Terszak

    image of person or book cover
    Image courtesy of Creative Spirits
    In an invasive, paternalistic, federal public policy environment for Indigenous communities, this book provides an in-depth account of one person's experiences as a 'Stolen Generation' Aboriginal Australian...The book presents a rare autobiographical journaling of the psychological impact of institutionalisation on an Indigenous woman, her search for family, community and identity, her psychological breakdown and her personal reconstruction through telling her story in a supportive educational environment. (...more)
    See full AustLit entry
  • Shadow Lines, by Stephen Kinnane

    image of person or book cover
    Cover image courtesy of publisher.
    'The story of Jessie Argyle, born in the remote East Kimberley and taken from her Aboriginal family at the age of five, and Edward Smith, a young Englishman escaping the rigid structures of London. In a society deeply divided on racial lines, Edward and Jessie met, fell in love and, against strong opposition, eventually married. Despite unrelenting surveillance and harassment the Smith home was a centre for Aboriginal cultural and social life for over thirty years.' (Source: back cover, 2003 edition) (...more)
    See full AustLit entry

    This biography is the story of Jessie Argyle who was taken at the age of five from her family in the remote East Kimberley.

  • Grace Roberts : Her Life, Her Mystery, Her Dreaming, by Alice Becker

    image of person or book cover
    This image has been sourced from Web

    Grace Roberts was a 'stolen' child. This short book tells the story of her life. Grace 'was regarded as a "special woman" , she lived and worked mainly within her own language area, but her presence was felt in far wider circles; the bureacracy of the time both state and federal were very aware of her work and aspirations'. (Source: Grace Roberts: Her Life, Her Mystery, Her Dreaming 198?:4)

    (...more)
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    Author's note: 'To tell Grace's story, memory has been relied upon, so if some find query with what has been written, it has been told as it has been remembered. Wherever possible factual evidence from records has been sought, but unfortunately in the past, the bureaucracy of the time, found it ... convenient to lose their records, particularly those of the children taken by the officers of the ... Protection Board.' (page 4)

  • Tripping over Feathers : Scenes in the Life of Joy Janaka Wiradjuri Williams : A Narrative of the Stolen Generations, by Peter Read

    image of person or book cover
    Image courtesy of publisher's website.

    'Joy Williams - Janaka Wiradjuri - was a difficult personality, and she made herself so. This book explains how and why she, and so many other people like her never had a chance.

    Moving from Joy's untimely death in a Primbee flat, to the ten years she spent pursuing a negligence claim against the NSW Government, through two lost appeals and on to the beginning of her life, Read takes us on a mesmerising and evocative journey that offers a rare historical insight into institutions, street life and indigenous and urban culture between 1942 and 2006.

    (...more)
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    Epigraph:

    It's not fair. If I start crying I'll never stop. I never will. Sometimes I'm so frightened of dropping a cup. Or tripping on a feather. Because if I trip I can't [get up], I can't do it. And they're not going to take me out of the world like that.

  • Sort of a Place Like Home : Remembering the Moore River Native Settlement, by Susan Maushart

    image of person or book cover
    Image courtesy of publisher's website.

    'Set amongst the low scrub of the Mogumber sand plain north of Perth, the Moore River Native Settlement was, for thirty years, "sort of a place like home" for thousands of Aboriginal people. Sanctuary, work camp, orphanage, prison and rural idyll, the settlement was part of a bold social experiment by the Chief Protector of Aborigines, A. O. Neville, the aim of which was nothing less than the total eradication of a race and a culture.

    Making extensive and imaginative use of oral resources and hitherto unseen documents, the book paints a vivid and intimate picture of the life experience of Moore River inmates, while documenting the appalling bureaucratic incompetence, official indifference and occasional outright brutality that made Moore River notorious.

    (...more)
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  • Home Girls : Cootamundra Aboriginal Home Girls Tell Their Stories, by Peter Kabaila

    image of person or book cover
    This image has been sourced from online.

    'The stories in this book are part of a wide canvas of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people affected by past practices of removal and separation from families, including by adoption, foster care and out of home care.' (Source: Trove)

    (...more)
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  • When You Grow Up, by Connie McDonald with Jill Finnane

    Image courtesy of Magabala Books
    'Brought up an orphan at Forest River Mission, Connie McDonald became a teacher, a missionary in the Church Army and a welfare worker. Her stories recall an era of matrons and missionaries, strict regulations and clothes made out of flour bags. Confronting and suffering racism, Connie kept searching for her place in the world and her family.' (Source: Libraries Australia). (...more)
    See full AustLit entry
  • A Little Bird Told Me: Family Secrets, Necessary Lies, by Lynette Russell

    image of person or book cover
    Image courtesy of publisher's website.

    'This is a true story about lots of little secrets and one big one. It's the spare and painful tale of the author's family and the hidden strands she found underweaving its history - a story embedded in the ancestry of many white Australians. What was it that Lynette's grandmother could not tell her? Why did she cover her face in pale make-up? Who was her own mother, Emily, the "Polynesian princess"? And what happened when Emily "was taken away from us for some time"? In "A Little Bird Told Me", Lynette Russell finds out the answers to these questions, unearthing secrets kept by her family for generations.

    (...more)
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  • Forcibly Removed, by Albert Holt

    Image courtesy of Magabala Books
    '... Forcibly Removed is a personal story told with humour and a confidence that comes from experience and achievement. It reveals the journey of a spirited family who maintained their dignity and fought to survive while living on Cherbourg Mission, Queensland, in the mid-20th century.' (Backcover). (...more)
    See full AustLit entry

    Dedication:

    This book is dedicated to the treasured memories of my parents Albert and Rosie Holt. My father, Albert, was an inspirational leader and a determined Aboriginal warrior. He was dedicated to family life, and worked hard and long to provide for his family. My mother, Rosie Guilema Holt, was a very powerful, loyal wife, and to her children an inspirational matriach. Mum and Dad deserve all the credit for this book. Albert Holt.

  • No Options, No Choice! : The Moore River Experience : My Father, Thomas Corbett, an Aboriginal Half-Caste, by Rosemary van den Berg and Thomas Corbett

    Image courtesy of Magabala Books
    'Autobiography of Thomas Corbett as told to his daughter; born 1910 in the Pilbara, removed from his mother and taken to Moore River Settlement; working life in the south west of Western Australia; labouring and stock work; return to Moore River; marriage and family; final move from Moore River to Pinjarra in 1944.' Source: http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/library/ (Sighted: 01/07/2009). (...more)
    See full AustLit entry
  • Hey Mum, What's a Half-Caste? by Lorraine McGee-Sippel

    Courtesy of Magabala Books

    'Lorraine McGee-Sippel was just a small girl when she asked her parents what a half-caste was. It was the 1950s and the first step on a journey that would span decades and lead her to search for her birth family.

    'In the historic climate of the Rudd Government's Apology, McGee-Sippel aligns herself with the Stolen Generations as she reveals the far-reaching effects of a government policy that saw her adoptive parents being told their daughter was of Afro-American descent.

    'This is not just a story of displacement, but an honest telling that explores the fragility of reconnection, cultural identity, and the triumphs of acceptance.

    (...more)
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    Epigraph:

    My story is not just my story. There is family to consider and I have changed some names for privacy. This is an account of my life as I remember it. People familiar with my story may have a different version. This is mine.

  • Very Big Journey : My Life as I Remember It, by Hilda Jarman Muir

    image of person or book cover
    This image has been sourced from online.

    'Hilda Muir was born on the very frontier of modern Australia, near the outback town of Borroloola in the Northern Territory in about 1920.

    'Her early life was spent roaming the Gulf Country on foot, hunting and gathering with her family. Her mother was a Yanyuwa person, and so was Hilda. Known to the clan as 'Jarman', it mattered little that her father was an unknown white man. This small girl had a name, a loving family, and a secure Aboriginal identity.

    'Very Big Journey tells of Hilda's bush childhood, and her forced removal from a loving family to the rigours of life in the Kahlin Home.

    (...more)
    See full AustLit entry
  • Wandering Girl, by Glenyse Ward

    Image courtesy of Magabala Books

    Glenyse Ward was taken from her mother and put into Wandering Mission to grow up in a regimented and enclosed world of German nuns. At sixteen, again without choice, she was sent to a wealthy farm to be little better than a slave. Soon, she was wishing shoe was back at the mission...' (Source: Back cover)

    (...more)
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  • Back on The Block : Bill Simon's Story, by Bill Simon with Des Montgomerie and Jo Tuscano

    image of person or book cover
    Image courtesy of Publisher website

    'Stolen, beaten, deprived of his liberty and used as child labour, Bill Simon was locked up in the notorious Kinchela Boys Home for 8 years where he was told his mother didn't want him, and that he was 'the scum of the earth'. His experiences there would shape his life forever...

    Bill Simon got angry, something which poisoned his life for the next 2 decades. A life of self-abuse and crime which finally saw him imprisoned.. From The Block in Sydney's Redfern, one of the most contentious and misunderstood places in Australia, Bill Simon tells the truth about life in one of Australia's most terrible juvenile institutions, where thousands of boys were warehoused and abused.

    (...more)
    See full AustLit entry

    Dedication:

    For all members of the Stolen Generations who have passed away.

    Also see Andrena Jamieson's review, 'Surviving Institutional Abuse'.

  • Alone on the Soaks : The Life and Times of Alec Kruger, by Alec Kruger and Gerard Waterford

    image of person or book cover
    Cover image courtesy of the publisher.

    'Alec Kruger was stolen as a child from his family and his country. From this early time he knew the cold and harsh reality of institutions and not the caressing love of his mother or the warmth of other close relations. Still young, he was taken again - to the cattle stations of Central Australia where, even as a boy, he was expected to display all the independence and ingenuity of someone much older. In isolation. Alec faced possible death, till the arrival of Old People from country who saved him, taught him and made him culturally strong.

    (...more)
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  • One of the Lost Generation, by Marjorie Woodrow

    image of person or book cover
    This image has been sourced from Front cover

    'When I went home to find how my people are still living makes my blood boil, see they are still suffering, to have leaned that my great Auntie had helped to do how language, Ngiyambaa, and never was paid for it was a shock to me...' (Source: One of the Lost generation, 1998:5)

    (...more)
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