The Stolen Generations’ trauma now recognised

The Morrison government has recognised the trauma caused to Stolen Generations through a new piece of legislation that will support healing. Read Eileen Cummings’ story.

EILEEN Cummings has written to every Prime Minister for the last thirty years.

Forcibly removed from her mother at just four-years-old, Ms Cummings made it her life’s work to see the Australian government acknowledge the trauma inflicted on children of the Stolen Generations.

Taken from Mainoru Station, she grew up in the Methodist run mission on Croker Island but longed to be reunited with her mother.

It would be 15 years before that reunion occurred, a moment she describes as “confronting and confusing”.

EDITORIAL: Healing a hundred years on

COLONIAL Australia has edged towards reconciliation. Over 100 years ago the Australian Government forcibly removed the first Aboriginal child from their mother, a practice that spanned more than three generations. Now 40 years after that practice ended, the Morrison Government will compensate survivors for their trauma.

It has been a journey. In 1997 the Bringing Them Home report led to a number of recommendations that still haven’t been enacted. One of those recommendations was the need for a formal apology. In 1998 and 1999 each state and territory government apologised to Stolen Generations but it was another decade before that apology found a national stage.

Progress since then has been slow. For the Territory’s Stolen Generations the fight was constant. Survivors’ powerful advocacy meant reliving their story in government enquiries, media interviews and public forums. It would be 13 years after the national apology that their voice was finally heard. The road to the recently passed Territories’ Stolen Generations Redress Scheme Bill has meant many survivors have passed before their trauma was acknowledged.

But for those survivors still living, it is about lifting the shame they were made to feel for the colour of their skin, for their language, for their culture. It is a step towards healing, which begins with the government taking responsibility for their “wrong”.

Only imagine if it hadn’t taken a century.

“I thought my mother should be happy to see me, she should be grabbing me and hugging me,” Ms Cummings said.

“Her crying and calling out threw me a bit but that was because I was brought up in the white system, I had started to think like white people not like my Aboriginal mother.”

It took decades for Ms Cummings to rebuild her relationship with country and kin.

Reflecting on her mother’s passing she recalled the anguish, not only she had experienced as a child but that her mother must have felt.

Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation chairwoman Eileen Cummings pictured in her Malak home, Darwin. Photograph: Che Chorley

“When I was taken, it was something she really suffered with for a long time,” she said.

“I think my mother ended up dying over a broken heart even though I had returned to community.”

Now in her late 70s Ms Cummings advocacy has led to the Territories’ Stolen Generations Redress Scheme Bill, which will compensate and support survivors of the Stolen Generations who hail from either the ACT or NT.

Passed by the Federal senate on Friday, a promised $378m will be distributed to survivors across the nation but Ms Cummings said it was the government’s acknowledgment of the pain they caused that was the greatest relief.

“One of the things I’ve been fighting for years and years, is for the government to acknowledge they did wrong by all us children and to take responsibility for that,” Ms Cummings said.

“I feel this bill does that, it starts some of the healing.”

Eileen Cummings

From March 1 2022 eligible survivors will be able to apply for a one off payment of $75,000 in recognition of the harm caused by forcible removal and a further $7000 to healing and support services.

Australian Capital Territory senator Katy Gallagher said for more than 60 years Australian governments took children from their homes in the wrong attempt to assimilate them into white society.

“It was the Bringing Them Home Report, published 24 years ago, which elevated the experiences of the individuals affected by this policy, documenting the harrowing testimonies … of First Nations children,” she said.

She went on to acknowledge Kevin Rudd’s apology in 2008 as a powerful recognition of the harm caused to the Stolen Generations.

“I hope I can speak for everyone here today when I say that we all remain truly sorry,” she said.

Senator Malarndirri McCarthy.

Northern Territory senator Malarndirri McCarthy said Ms Cummings had shown great strength and bravery in challenging the government and all political members in pursuit of recognition.

“Without her fierce advocacy, I’m sure we wouldn’t have this scheme here today,” she said.