Wiradjuri Elder Aunty Gail Clark was one of the lucky ones. Born in Narrandera, she remembers her father, a drover, hiding her and her siblings from the government men coming to take Aboriginal children from their parents.
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“He knew when the government people were coming and he’d take us out with him to the bush,” Aunty Gail said.
She escaped, but the awful legacy of the stolen generations made its mark on her family.
Her grandmother was stolen as a child and grew up on a mission in Wellington.
She tragically had her two daughters and one son removed.
They were later reunited, through both the fight of their parents and their own initiative.
For Aunty Gail, Friday’s National Sorry Day was about remembering those who never made it home.
“I feel so sad that a lot of them didn’t get to come home…. my nan’s sister and brother never came home. We don’t know where they are or who they were,” she said.
Sorry Day was first commemorated in 1998, a year after the publication of the Bringing Them Home report.
According to this report, between one in three and one in ten indigenous children were stolen in the period between 1910 and 1970.
Aunty Faye Moseley was one of those children.
Walking to school just outside of Leeton, she and her five siblings were thrown into a truck while her parents were at work.
She was taken to the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls and trained as a servant with no pay.
Aunty Faye’s pain is still raw.
She actively campaigns for action on the continuing impact of this history on the community today.
‘It’s like we’ve been through a war and we continue to go through a war,’ she said.
She was at National Parliament last Tuesday, presenting a new Healing Foundation report addressing the current and emerging concerns of the stolen generation to the PM Malcolm Turnbull.
Despite the hardships of her family and people, Aunty Gail has a positive message. She hopes that on Sorry Day, the younger generation learn from their elders and make the most of the opportunities they have, a philosophy she learnt from her nan.
“I used to say to my nan, ‘don’t you hate those people that took you, took your children?’ She would reply, ‘No, hate is a four letter word, you have to move forward.’”
“For young kids today their aunties and uncles went through it. They should be inspired by their resilience and courage and adaptation. We all need to adapt to the new world,” she said.
