Sorry Day healing for stolen generations survivors
Keira Jenkins |
Aunty Lorraine Peeters was taken from her family at the age of four.
The Gamilaroi and Wailwan woman and her five sisters were forcibly removed from their home at Brewarrina, in outback NSW, and placed at Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls.
Her two brothers were taken to Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home.
The institutions were brutal and the children taken there – under accepted government policies – often experienced mistreatment and abuse.
These children, removed during a period spanning from the 1910s until the 1970s, became known as the stolen generations.
“For the next 10 years of my life I was taught another’s culture, forced to forget my own, given a new identity,” Aunty Lorraine told AAP.
“The things they couldn’t change were the colour of my skin, my identity and my spirit.”
For many stolen generations survivors, National Sorry Day, held each year on May 26, is an acknowledgement of their experiences and the continuing impact of forced removal from community and family.
“It’s an important day for us. It’s a healing day for us,” Aunty Lorraine said.
“We all come together, share childhood memories, they’re all our sisters, they’re family.”
The date also marks the anniversary of the tabling of the Bringing Them Home report to parliament in 1997.
The landmark report shared the history of stolen generations in Australia and made more than 50 recommendations to address the impacts on survivors.
However, only a few of the recommendations had been fully implemented, according to a recent Healing Foundation report, despite the report being tabled nearly three decades ago.
Foundation chief executive Shannan Dodson said supporting survivors through equitable redress, access to records, trauma-informed aged care and support for the organisations that represented them should be prioritised by all governments.
“It’s really important that we, as a matter of urgency, put that elevation of their needs at the top, as most survivors are now eligible for aged care,” she said.
“We’ve already lost too many survivors without them seeing some of these things and the justice they deserve.”
The 2025 Sorry Day theme of “we cannot wait another generation” spoke to that impetus, Ms Dodson said.
The day will be marked with events across every state and territory.
On Sunday, Coota Girls Aboriginal Corporation held a gathering in Sydney for survivors, their families and supporters.
Aunty Lorraine’s granddaughter Meagan Gerrard, who works as the corporation’s project and communications manager, said the event grew each year.
Ms Gerrard, a Wailwan and Gamilaroi woman, said the impact of the policies that led to the stolen generations were still being felt today.
“Without public commemorative events such as this, there’s less opportunity to educate and share the story,” she said.
“It’s a really vital piece of healing and continued collective healing.”
AAP
