Promise for justice
by Brian ButlerIn this moving article Brian Butler, Aboriginal First Nations Human Rights Advocate, gives his reason for wanting an apology and what it means to him and his family.
I made a serious promise to my mother and my grandmother before they died that I would work at demanding an apology from the British government through the governor general and the Australian parliaments for the way they were treated. They were treated as sub-humans and were stolen and incarcerated away from their community, which was the Aranda tribe east of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. They were placed in an institution under one of the most cruel, racist and inhumane policies implemented in any colonised country in the world.
My grandmother Eliza Gordon (Nanna Liza to us all) was forced to accompany the police troopers on horses when she was a young teenage child, to flush out the half caste children. These children, all products of rape by pastoralist and their station hands, were taken from the bush camps and turned over to the welfare authorities for the prime reason of permanent separation from their Aboriginal family and communities.
This practice was designed to bring half caste children into mainstream Australia to grow up as white people and assimilate them to the point that they would have no Aboriginal culture in any way shape or form. The intention, as expressed in the time, was to 'breed out the black in them'. The ability to learn and speak our mother's language was denied us and it is well documented that children were beaten with whips and the women and grandparents would be thrashed as well. Many tribal men were enticed down into the gold mines by the prospectors and foreigners who would then throw dynamite into the mines and kill the men. The miners then stole the women whom they would abuse for their sexual needs and to do other work around the mines.
In the time my nanna was forced to go with police patrols she was their teenage sex slave and when she gave birth, my nanna was forced by the policeman to smother the child and bury it in the sandy creek bed at a place called Wipeout. Our nana took the grief from that experience to her grave, as her last word she muttered on her death bed was 'Wipeout'. This kind of story was familiar across Australia as we have learnt from the inquiry into the stolen generation of Aboriginal and Islander children that is known as the Bringing Them Home Report.
My mother was taken from her mother under traumatic circumstances from the bungalow at Alice Springs and placed in detention at Bagot Reserve in Darwin. It was a place for non-status Australians, as Aboriginal people were not regarded as human beings and were still regarded as flora and fauna under law. From there my mother was forced to work in the residency at government house as a domestic without pay. I was born at Bagot Reserve detention centre in September 1938 and remained there until the war started and the other enemy from Japan bombed us out of Darwin back to Alice Springs when the evacuation took place. We were grateful that we at last were back with our tribal people the Aranda in Alice Springs. Growing up in Alice Springs was a horrible experience as old people were crying from the loss of the children being taken away for no understandable reason. They were lied to about the children's whereabouts and the children taken were never to be seen again.
I remember as a young teenager sitting around listening to the stories of removal from Albert Namatjirra, Bruce Fly and many others. I made up my mind then that I would travel and do all I could to find out where the children were. Babies were placed in the Alice Springs Hospital where the medical superintendent and his staff would falsify medical records stating that Aboriginal children had medical conditions that needed specialist treatment in Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane or Sydney. By doing that the authorities were able to say that the child had died and parents were lied to on every occasion. There was no way for parents to question any of that, and it was no point in going to the police as they were all in on the conspiracy to destroy and eliminate Aboriginal people.
I travelled to Adelaide when I finished my education and joined the merchant navy by sailing off on the Adelaide Steamship Company passenger ship called the Manoora. This enabled me to go to Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and many other places. Whilst in those places I would seek out Aboriginal young people and start getting them to take steps to find their biological families. I became more seriously involved when I left the merchant navy and got a job in a government department where I had more chance of finding where the children were farmed out into foster homes and into adoption settings.
In 1978 I was responsible for launching the Aboriginal Child Care Agency in South Australia. From this came the formation of the national movement for the protection of Aboriginal and Islander children, known as the Secretariat National Aboriginal And Islander Child Care Incorporated (SNAICC). I was its chairman for 14 years and it was this organisation that lobbied the federal government to provide the money for the national inquiry into the removal of Aboriginal and Islander children across the breadth of Australia.
It has been a lifetime's getting an apology from parliaments responsible for the attempted genocide of Aboriginal people in Australia. Now the nation can get on with the healing for both black and white Australia. The eyes of the world have been turned upon this country especially as Australia now has a government that has demonstrated a willingness to address human rights issues on a grand scale with the apology. That still leaves the Aboriginal nations of Australia out on a limb in terms of the Australian Constitution or any other government constitution for that matter. We do not feature in any of the country's constitutions to give Aboriginal people equal status with other Australians.
Source: Australian Options, Issue 52, Autumn 2008, pp. 30-31.