# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Updated February 13, 2018 17:33:38

I am the child of a stolen child.

It's been 50 years since my mother, aged three, was stolen from the arms of her mother in the north-west NSW town of Bourke.

It's been 50 years, but that moment has reverberated through the decades, and I live with its consequences every day.

The stories of people like me - the children of the stolen children - are largely untold.

But let me help you walk a mile in my shoes. Let me tell you how the theft of my mother from her mother all those years ago completely derailed my understanding and experience of my own culture, family, language and history. Let me do that, not to make you feel guilty - but so we keep learning how to walk together.

My mother never learnt how to love

I missed out on a lot growing up, including my right to a mother who knew how to love.

When my mother was stolen, she was separated from her 11 brothers and sisters. They too were stolen and sent to foster homes all over the country.

Not only was my mother robbed of relationships with her siblings, but she never developed a maternal bond with her foster mother.

When she tried to track down her biological mother, she found out she had been murdered some time after they were forced apart.

As a result of the immense trauma my mother experienced - and a lack of maternal nurturing from her foster mother - she never had a chance to learn how to properly love me or my sister.

Meeting my family for the first time

I was nine when we were contacted by one of my mum's sisters, who had also tracked down some of her other siblings. We had a week-long family reunion in Walgett, where I got to know my biological aunts, uncles, great-aunts and great-uncles.

I felt more grounded on the red dirt of Kamilaroi Country than I had ever before in my life. My soul yearns to get back to where my ancestors once roamed.

Last year we received another surprise phone call from a woman saying she was a daughter of one of my mum's long-lost siblings.

Through this phone call I gained four new cousins in the space of a week. It blows my mind that there are people out there with the same blood as me - the same grandparents, the same ancestors - and I don't know who or where they are.

Every day I wonder about the family members I may never meet.

My lost culture

As a result of being stolen, my mother and her siblings lost their connection to country. That means my sister, my nephew, my cousins and their children have all been deprived of this connection too.

Growing up, the only reason I knew I was Aboriginal was because that's what I was told. I remember a teacher at school calling me up on stage one day because she thought I would know about the didgeridoo - but the truth was I didn't know anything about my culture, language or spirituality.

I felt like I wasn't a "real" Aboriginal person - yet I also didn't fit in with my white family (my dad is non-Indigenous) in a predominantly white society.

The relatives I grew up with didn't look like me. My skin colour and facial features were markedly different, and that deeply affected my sense of belonging. I felt like an outcast who didn't fit in anywhere.

It's been 10 years since Kevin Rudd delivered the historic apology to the Stolen Generations. It is a moment that Australia is rightly proud of as it showed the nation's potential to face up to the ugly truths of the past and move forward together.

Moving forward is important, yes. But there are those who think we should "move on" and "get over it". I can see it's hard to fully grasp the realities of intergenerational trauma if you don't know someone who has experienced it.

Fighting stereotypes

All these years later, I've achieved a lot and overcome even more. I'm now a university student doing a corporate internship and I hold various leadership roles. Yet despite my accomplishments, I constantly have stereotypes imposed on me by the very people who expect me to just "move on".

When you've only known fragments of your identity, it can be a struggle to find your true self amidst people's preconceived ideas.

I'm not the Aboriginal you expect me to be. I'm not the Aboriginal I should've had the chance to be.

But I am strong and I am proud and I will not give up. I am the child of a stolen child.
Amanda Fotheringham is a proud Kamilaroi woman. She is the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representative on the Student Representative Committee at Macquarie University, where she studies sociology.
Topics: indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, community-and-society, aboriginal, government-and-politics, indigenous-policy, australia

First posted February 13, 2018 17:29:53

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
I am the child of a stolen child. It's made me who I am

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Updated February 13, 2018 17:33:38 I am the child of a stolen child. It's been 50 years since my mother, aged three, was stolen from the arms of her mother in the north-west NSW town of Bourke. It's been 50 years, but that moment has reverberated through the decades, and I live with its consequences every day.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Communities and families are mourning the loss of five young Aboriginal girls who took their own lives in separate incidents in Western Australia, Townsville and Adelaide this year.

In early January, a 15-year old girl from Western Australia died two-days after self-harming on a visit to Townsville.

Last Sunday, a 12-year old girl died in the Pilbara mining town of Port Hedland, followed by a 14-year old girl in the East Kimberley community of Warmun last Monday.

Another was a 15-year-old Noongar girl from Perth who died last Thursday and a fifth was a 12-year-old girl from a town near Adelaide who died last Friday.

Another 12-year-old boy is reportedly on life support at a hospital in Brisbane after what is suspected to be an attempted suicide. He was flown from Roma to Brisbane yesterday, The Australian reports.

The Director of Suicide Prevention Australia, Vanessa Lee, is calling on the federal government to support an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicide prevention strategy tailored specifically to meet the needs of Indigenous people.

"When are we going to see change... when are we going to see a national Indigenous suicide prevention strategy supported by the COAG, delivering for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people," Ms Lee said.

"We need to remember that Indigenous people know the solutions. We know the answers. We didn't write the Redfern Statement for a joke... funding needs to be put into Indigenous organisations, into Indigenous hands."

National coordinator for the National Child Sexual Abuse Trauma Recovery Project, Gerry Georgatos, told NITV News the recently reported suicides have weighed heavily on the affected families and communities.

"These incidences... have impacted -psycho-socially- the family. Hurt them to the bone. There are no words for anyone's loss," he said.

"To lose a child impacts ways that no other loss does, and to lose a child is a haunting experience straight from the beginning and doesn't go away."

South-western Noongar woman, Grace Cockie, lost her 16-year old daughter to suicide last March in their home in Perth.

"It was a devastating experience, I don't ever want to go through that again and I don't want no one else to go through that," Ms Cockie told NITV News.

"She went to school every day. She loved going to school, hanging out with her friends, playing football with her Aunties.

"Part of us is gone... No one is going to replace her," she said.

Ms Cockie wants other parents to encourage their children to speak-out if they feel unwell and said there needs to be more mental health initiatives which offer culturally supportive help for Aboriginal youth.

"Keep an eye on them and talk to them all the time," she said.

"There's a lot of avenues for whitefella kids, you know, and with our Aboriginal kids they're probably too scared... they probably think they (mental health workers) won't help them," she said.

The Kimberley region faces alarming suicide rates

The deaths come as WA waits on a final report from an inquest into 13 Indigenous youth suicides in the Kimberley region from 2012 to 2016.

The Kimberley region has the highest Indigenous suicide rates in Australia - not just for Aboriginal youth, but for the entire Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population.

The inquest by state coroner Ros Fogliani is expected to table findings early this year.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics found last month that Indigenous children aged between five and 17 died from suicide-related deaths at five times the rate of non-Indigenous children.

This rate was 10.1 deaths by suicide per 100,000 between 2013 and 2017, compared with 2 deaths by suicide per 100,000 for non-Indigenous children.

One in four people who took their own life before turning 18 were Aboriginal children.

Mr Georgatos said nine out of 10 suicides in the Kimberley region have involved Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

A senate inquiry in December found that not only are services lacking in remote and rural areas of Australia, but culturally appropriate services were often not accessible.

The inquiry found that the lack of culturally supportive services is leaving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people accessing mental health services at a far lower rate than non-Indigenous people.

Mr Georgatos said that services aren't accessible to the majority of people living in the Kimberley, saying that suicide prevention has come down to community support as opposed to accessible mental health professionals.

"Many of these communities [in the Kimberley region] have no services... It is forever community buy-in to support, to have a watchful eye ..., but people become exhausted," he said.

Mr Georgatos said he believes investing in local workforces that possess local cultural knowledge and training these workers to understand intense psychosocial support for young adults is the way forward.

Poverty the 'driver' towards suicide

Poverty and sexual abuse in the Kimberley region may be a leading factor for youth suicide, according to Mr Georgatos.

"Nearly 100 per cent of First Nations suicides... are of people living below the poverty line," he said.

"Crushing poverty [in Kimberley and Pilbara] is the major driver of suicidal ideation, of distorted thinking, of unhappiness, of watching the world pass one by right from the beginning of life.

"One-eighth of First Nations people living in the Kimberley live in some form of homelessness... sixty per cent live below the poverty line."

A Medical Journal of Australia report in 2016 showed seven per cent of all people living in the Kimberley were homeless.

Last year, forty per cent of youth suicides in Australia were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

"It is a humanitarian crisis... one-third of those suicides is identified as children of sexual abuse, and we don't have the early intervention to disable the trauma of child sexual abuse," Mr Georgatos said.

"We don't have the early intervention and the trauma recovery for them, we don't have the outreaches for them but what we also don't have is the talking up and calling out of sexual predation in communities."

Mr Georgatos said he believes if we have education in communities about what young children should do if they were to ever be predated upon, it would reduce the child internalising their trauma which may lead to suicidal ramifications.

"What we need to do is we need to outreach more personal on the ground to outreach into these communities to support them into pathways where they can access education," Mr Georgatos said.

"We need more psychosocial support, people just to spread the love... to keep people on a journey to a positive and strong pathway and to ordered thinking, not disordered thinking."

Government supported resources

Australian youth mental health organization, headspace, last week received a $47 million funding boost from the federal government.

Chief Executive Officer, Jason Trethowan, told SBS World News the organisation will be working closely with Indigenous communities thanks to the new funding.

"We know there are challenges around rural remoteness and often headspace hasn't been there for them... that's why we have a trial going on in the Pilbara region of Western Australia where there are actually headspace services without a headspace centre," he said.

Indigenous health minister, Ken Wyatt, told NITV News the federal government will continue to invest $3.9 billion over the next three years (from 2018-22) in Primary Health Networks (PHNs) to commission regionally and culturally appropriate mental health and suicide prevention services, particularly in the Kimberley and the Pilbara regions.

Currently the key active programs in these regions include the government's $4 million Kimberley Suicide Prevention Trial and the $2.2 million Pilbara headspace trial, which opened in April last year.

The Pilbara headspace trial was co-designed with local communities, including young people, service providers, community members and local Elders.

The Pilbara headspace team has staff located in Newman, Port Hedland and Karratha, with employees spending their time in schools, youth centres, Aboriginal Medical Services, community centres and other locations.

This allowing them to reach out to youth who may not typically engage with school or youth services, said
Samara Clark, manager of headspace, Pilbara.

"It's all about engagement first, building trust, building visibility," she said.

"What we're hoping for is positive help-seeking behaviour, where they feel safe and comfortable enough to come up to us," she said.

Ms Clark encourages anyone who sees a headspace worker, who may be identified by their green t-shirts, to reach out to them for support.

"If a young person sees one of the team members around, even if a community member sees them, just go up and have a yarn ... the team will talk to you then and there."

- Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact: Lifeline on 13 11 14, the Suicide Call Back Service on 1300 659 467 or find an Aboriginal Medical Service here. There are resources for young people at Headspace Yarn Safe.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Indigenous youth suicide at crisis point

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Communities and families are mourning the loss of five young Aboriginal girls who took their own lives in separate incidents in Western Australia, Townsville and Adelaide this year. In early January, a 15-year old girl from Western Australia died two-days after self-harming on a visit to Townsville.

# data[].attributes.body
This is a short video about the long term impact of people who were removed from their families.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Telling Our Stories – Our Stolen Generations (Florence Onus)