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A united approach to addressing Stolen Generations issues in the NT
by Vicki-Lee Knowles 10 March 2014
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1,100 Aboriginal & Islander Stolen Generation Territorians say it’s time for the Australian Government to consider Compensation and Reparation to the Aboriginal & Islander children who were forcibly taken from their families across the Northern Territory because of the 1912 Aboriginals Act,” said Harold Furber, from the Central Australia Stolen Generation and Families Aboriginal Corporation. “Baldwin Spencer, the Chief Protector of Aborigines, broke up many Aboriginal families by removing half-caste or light skinned Aboriginal children from their parents to place them into Government compounds around the Northern Territory.” Today, the collective voices of all Stolen Generation Territorians will be stronger because all three (3) NT Stolen Generation Corporations (i.e. Alice Springs, Katherine and Darwin Regions) are united under the banner of the ‘Stolen Generation Coalition of the Northern Territory’. “The Territory’s three Stolen Generations organisations are signing a MOU to formalise our united approach to advancing the interests of the thousands of Territory Aboriginal people affected by past child removal policies” Harold Furber said in Darwin today. “The Stolen Generations Coalition of the Northern Territory will at last pursue a cohesive and united strategy in taking on the issues which still affect so many of our people,” said Harold Furber. “At the heart of our task into the future is to work with government and other organisations to develop
Zita Wallace, one of Australia’s ‘stolen generation’, with her mother’s sister Aggie. Wallace was tricked into leaving her home, along with four other girls, by nuns at the Catholic-run mission who told her she was going shopping. “They put us in the back of a truck but we never went near any shop,” she says. “They took us to the telegraph station which was the holding centre for half-caste children from all over central Australia.” She ended up in an institution for 200 children, run by the Catholic church, hundreds of miles away in the Tiwi Islands, about 50 miles north of Darwin, and remained there until the age of 19. Image: Barbara McMahon
a Stolen Generations compensation and reparation package for our people. “This was a key recommendation of the Bringing Them Home report of the Human Rights Commission in 1997—and that report followed the October 1994 Long Road Home conference held in Darwin in 1994.” “Twenty years is far too long to wait, but we are determined to get action”. “We admit that in the past there have been differing views and approaches by the three Stolen Generations organisations here in
the Territory: we just haven’t been singing from the same song sheet”. “That has been used to divide us, but we are now working as one voice, with a single objective: to realise the rightful compensation and reparation package our people need. “The time for unity has come.” Gather together at Danila Dilba Social and Emotional Wellbeing Healing Room, Malak on Monday 3rd March 2014 @ 1.30 pm. For further information please contact Harold Furber 0429 844 948 or Jeanneen McLennan 0431 534 164.
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