Transcript 18/06/1999 Stolen Generations - ethnic cleansing? BARRIE CASSIDY: Here in Australia, some historians will argue that the forced removal of Aboriginal children was, in a sense, our own form of ethnic cleansing. And the consequences of that policy, practised for most of this century in the name of assimilation, is still touching the lives of thousands of Aborigines. Even to this day, reunions are occurring. And this is the story of one of them -- a mother and her daughter brought together just this week in the Red Centre after 55 years. 55 years during which the authorities frustrated the daughter's every effort to find her true heritage and identity. Murray McLaughlin reports from Alice Springs. MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: Shirley Stirling now knows she was born here at the old Telegraph Station in Alice Springs, apparently on February 4, 1937. Her mother was Aboriginal, her father a white European labourer. The Telegraph Station is now a museum, but back in the 1930s, it was converted to a government hostel for so-called half-castes. This was home for Shirley, her older brother James and mother Hilda. SHIRLEY STIRLING-CURNOW: They were free with their families and happy and -- but that was all destroyed. MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: Shirley Stirling reckons she was just two years old when she was taken away on the Ghan train from Alice Springs, bound for an upbringing at the Anglican Church institutions in Melbourne. SHIRLEY STIRLING-CURNOW: I remember the Ghan train and I did ask my doctor, you know, your memory bank starts when you're three. Can it start earlier than that? He said, "Yes, it can if it's traumatic enough." MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: The trauma endured for 60 years, but Shirley Stirling never gave up her journey of self-discovery. SHIRLEY STIRLING-CURNOW: That's it. MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: It's ended at Willoura, a small Aboriginal community 260km north of Alice Springs. SHIRLEY STIRLING-CURNOW: And asking, you know, always, every day really, "Where is my mother?" Probably once a week I asked where my father was, too. But then I was told I was an orphan and that I had nobody and no brothers and sisters and no grandma and grandpa and no-one. And just to get on with it. And they always reminded me I was Aboriginal. As much to say, "Well, you know, well, you're Aboriginal anyway, so what the heck. Why should we help you?" HILDA STIRLING: Yeah I've been trying right, asking, asking. I don't know, just gone. MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: What did they tell you w hen you asked? HILDA STIRLING, SHIRLEY'S MOTHER: Just that she's gone somewhere. That's all. MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: And all the time you've been searching, all the time? HILDA STIRLING: "Just forget about it now," they told me. "You just forget about it." MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: There could be no forgetting for mother or daughter. For years, Shirley Stirling hounded government agencies and archives. There'd be many journeys to Alice Springs, one of them ending in the town cemetery. SHIRLEY STIRLING-CURNOW: I went to the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages here in Alice and the lady there just said "Go to the graveyard." I said, "What for?" She said, "Well, you might find something." MURRAY McLAUGHLIN: Only recently did official archives yield enough information for Shirley to piece together her history. Not even a death certificate in her mother's name would suppress the search and a few weeks ago, she had enough information to set Dennis Austin on the trail of her mother. He runs an ATSIC-funded office in Alice Springs called Link-Up and is appalled at the obstructions Shirley Stirling has had to suffer. DENNIS AUSTIN, LINK-UP: Lies, I suppose when she was younger if we refer back to her younger days, and just as she was growing up, different suggestions that were given to her in regards to her birth mother, not only just from the everyday people, but from official people too, government people, the runaround that she's got. I was actually probably shocked that the information that she gathered and what I gathered was, you know, easy to put together and like I was saying earlier, the connection should have been done a long time ago. ------------------------------------------------------- RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." RecOzNet2 is archived for members @ http://www.mail-archive.com/
