- Title: AUSTRALIA: Victim of the Australia's "Stolen Generation" tells her story
- Date: 17th February 2008
- Summary: (L!3) LAWSON, NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) LOLA EDWARDS, FORMER RESIDENT OF COOTAMUNDRA DOMESTIC TRAINING HOME FOR ABORIGINAL GIRLS, SAYING: "She said, I was trying to remember my language under the blankets, and I just went all cold because I was being raised to think white and act white and keep myself clean, scrub my skin. Take th
- Embargoed: 3rd March 2008 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Australia
- Country: Australia
- Topics: Domestic Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA43UFA3FZ8BCWY4QWCHYY3Z9PY
- Story Text: Lola Edwards is hoping to see the rest of the world in her twilight years when she and her husband go on an around-the world trip in March next year.
Born in 1947 in a small Australian country town in New South Wales state, Edwards carries a lot of memories from the many places she has lived and travelled in Australia and in the United States.
But it's the tiny rural Australian town of Cootamundra, she reminisces about when meeting friends and relatives. And the years she spent in Cootamundra, makes her visit to the Australian capital Canberra this week, more important than any other part of her life's journey.
Built in 1887 as the town's hospital, the old building of Bimbadeen Bible College still overlooks the fertile valley of Cootamundra.
Between 1912 and 1969, the building was turned into and used as one of the main Aboriginal Girls Training homes in New South Wales.
One of the homes to train tens of thousands of Aboriginal children who were forcibly taken from their parents under a government policy of assimilation from the 1880s to the 1960s. Those children are called the "Stolen Generation" or "People of the Bleaching".
Many Aboriginal children were raised on government and church missions in remote, outback locations where life was tough and sexual abuse widespread.
A memorial stone was erected in front of the Cootamundra Bimbabeen Bible College to remind people of those years.
Lola Edwards, one of the many aboriginal children, spent 11 years in the Girl's Training Home. She remembers the day a welfare officer took her away from her family when she was four-years-old.
"To this day, I have this, this feeling about the taste of blackberries because in my memory, I have that day still there, where we were taken, the day we were taken, the taste of blackberries is something to behold for me, because I was holding onto mum's dress, she took me blackberry picking and the welfare officer said that we were going to a circus," said Edwards.
Welfare officers took her and her siblings to Sydney where they took Edwards' brother away to a boy's school before taking the girls to Cootamundra.
A report by Australia's Human Rights Commission said in 1997 that the children who were snatched from their families to be raised as white.
Edwards remembers a girl whom they thought was mad because she was talking to herself every night under the blanket.
Only after many years, she learnt why that girl was talking to herself.
"She said, I was trying to remember my language under the blankets, and I just went all cold because I was being raised to think white and act white and keep myself clean, scrub my skin. Take the black of your skin, you see," Edwards told Reuters.
As Edwards turned 16, she had been placed as a domestic servant to an outback cattle station where she became subject to "nasty" things, according to her words. And then moved to Canberra to work in a civil servants hostel, again as a domestic servant.
In Canberra, she met her first husband, an American, who she later lived with in the United States. After working for DHL for 12 years in the States, Edwards received a phone call from her sister Oomera one day.
"I was living in San Francisco and she rang me up and said: 'Oh Lola, would you like to come down and meet mum?' You have got to remember I am American in my head. I said 'Yeah, sure.' What else do you say?" said Edwards.
She then flew to Australia to meet the mother she almost forgot. Oomera Edwards who was also a Stolen Generation child is a founding member of the Link-up organisation which aims to reunite aboriginal families affected by the policy.
The experience of re-unification made Lola Edwards decide to return to Australia permanently as she realised that she wanted to find out more about her people and their ancient culture.
Edwards told Reuters that she didn't make any attempt to find her parents after Girl's Training home years because she was totally "brainwashed".
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is to deliver an apology to the victims of the Stolen Generation during a parliament session on Wednesday (February 13) Rudd's centre-left Labor made an apology to indigenous Australians a key part of his campaign for national elections in November, which ended 11 years of conservative rule under former prime minister John Howard.
But Rudd ruled out compensation payments after aboriginal demands for a A$1 billion ($892 million U.S. dollar) reparation fund for victims of past policies.
"This apology is for us of the stolen generations who were taken.
The rest of Australia can think about this forever that should it be justified or not. I don't care about how they think. All I think about is my dear old mum and dad who had us taken out of their arms, you see. Bitter and twisted? I have every reason to be bitter and twisted, but I am not. This is the history of Australia, this is the real history of Australia and this is what happened to me as one of the stolen generations," says Edwards.
Aborigines are Australia's most disadvantaged group. Many live in third world conditions in remote outback settlements.
The 1997 "Bringing Them Home" report found Stolen Generation children, as depicted in the 2002 film "Rabbit-Proof Fence", were forcibly taken and placed in orphanages run by churches or charities, or fostered out to socialise them to European culture.
Some were brutalised or abused, but former conservative Prime Minister John Howard rejected an apology because the removal of aboriginal children between the 1870s and 1960s was done by past governments and could open the door to reparation claims.
All six state governments have already made official apologies to Aborigines, who were governed under flora and fauna laws until 1967. A landmark referendum that year saw Australians vote to allow Aborigines to be counted in the population.
The island state of Tasmania recently approved a A$5 million compensation fund for 106 Stolen Generation Aborigines taken from their families, with State Premier Paul Lennon saying no amount could make up for the hurt suffered.
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