Further Information

Video Transcript of
Oral History excerpt from Wominjeka (Welcome)
Koorie Heritage Trust Inc.

Kids are beginning to understand now, who we are and thing like that. They’re being taught at school a different sort of a history about Aboriginal people or none at all. But when they see these places and know what’s happened there, like an’ our people fought and died on the land I think that that really makes them realize who they are, that they’re aboriginal people, an’ their got a heritage. There was blood spilt in the ground all over the place here in Victoria and a lot of it hasn’t been recorded. There’s a map with massacre sites and things like that on it but I mean we have still survived al that sort of thing and we are living in the future as well but you can’t have the future without a history of the past.

An’ the police came out an’ took the kids and grabbed them and put em in the police cell for that night. They never even let any families know that the kids were there and that was the sort of sneaky thing they done. Why me? Why was I taken? I didn’t feel that I got the love I was supposed to get… It’s like a hole in your heart that can never heal…like a kid’s supposed to get at that age. My feeling throughout life of hurt, pain and neglect began as far back as I can remember. That’s why I got in with the wrong crowd. I suppose. I was taken from my family along with my biological brother. They seem to care more. I didn’t know any Aboriginal people, none at all. He was with me through everything. I was placed with a white family and I was just… If it wasn’t for him I probably wouldn’t be alive today. … I was white. We moved from South Gippsland to east Gippsland by this time I was about nine years old. I never knew I accepted myself to being a black person until…I don’t know. My parents pulled me out of school because the welfare were taking the Koori kids from school, never to be seen again.