Experiences of the stolen generation
Edited from the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
Bringing them Home - The Report
The overwhelming majority of the children forcibly removed under assimilationist legislation and policies were separated from their Indigenous family, community and culture.
1) They were not permitted to use their languages.
Y'know, I can remember we used to just talk lingo. [In the Home] they used to tell us not to talk that language, that it's devil's language. And they'd wash our mouths with soap. We sorta had to sit down with Bible language all the time. So it sorta wiped out all our language that we knew.
Confidential evidence 170, South Australia: woman taken from her parents with her 3 sisters when the family, who worked and resided on a pastoral station, came into town to collect stores; placed at Umewarra Mission.
2) Children were given the very strong impression their parents were worthless
`Your family don't care about you anymore, they wouldn't have given you away. They don't love you. All they are, are just dirty, drunken blacks.' You heard this daily ... When I come out of the home and come to Redfern here looking for the girls, you see a Koori bloke coming towards you, you cross the street, you run for your life, you're terrified. …show more content…
Bomaderry Children's Home is one. The key feature was the encouragement of close attachments between older girls and babies, infants and young children. As we now know, attachment to a primary carer is essential for the infant's emotional, intellectual and social development and for his or her happiness. The bonds permitted in these more enlightened institutions went some way to overcoming the many other damaging effects of institutionalisation for many Indigenous inmates. Many Colebrook people have spoken fondly of Matron Hyde and Sister