Bringing Them Home Oral History Project

Newsletter No. 1

Talking to the Nation

In September 1997 1 Senator Herron announced that the Australian Government had asked the National Library to conduct a major oral history project among people involved in the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. Indigenous people separated from their families would be invited to record their stories, so too would be government administrators, missionaries, police and others concerned with the separations.

The aim of the project is to create a ‘rounded’ history which will provide oral evidence to assist scholars and the general public understand what happened and why, in this painful period of Australia’s history.

This oral history project was a part of the Government’s response to the Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, which published its Report in April 1997 under the title Bringing them Home. The oral history project has begun with a pilot project to conclude in June 1999, and if feasible, a three-year project will follow.

The National Library project adopted the name Bringing them Home, but otherwise the two projects are significantly different. All individuals who gave testimonies to the Inquiry (which was carried out by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, commonly known as HREOC) were offered confidentiality, and at present, none of the testimonies can be examined by the public. A few extracts were published in the HREOC Report, and a few edited stories were published, with permission, in Carmel Bird’s 1998 book The Stolen Children: their stories.

By contrast, the National Library’s oral history project will aim to create, as far as possible, a fully open record. Interviewees will truly be talking to the nation. The recordings will be preserved for posterity, available to scholars and members of the public, and a book is planned.

The Library has also decided that the process of carrying out the project will be a fully open and consultative one, although it will not be able to match HREOC’s visits to more than fifty locations around Australia! As a first step, the Director-General of the Library, Warren Horton, wrote to more than eighty individuals and organisations, both Indigenous and others, asking for their comments and suggestions for an Advisory Committee for the pilot project. After national advertising, Dr Gwenda Davey AM was appointed as the project manager for the pilot project in September 1998, and the Advisory Committee held its first meeting on 1 December. The members of the committee are as listed on this newsletter.

At its first meeting, the Advisory Committee discussed a number of draft papers prepared by the Library on the objectives for the project, on planning and on the role of the Advisory Committee. It also discussed an issues and options paper on matters such as who should be interviewed, and from where; who should be the interviewers and what kind of training might they need, and other matters relating to copyright, access, counselling and evaluation.

The Committee considered that the pilot project (which aims for 30 interviews) should record stories from Indigenous people with a wide range of experiences of separation. This was considered to be more important than attempting to visit all locations where separation occurred. Nevertheless it was decided to conduct interviews for the pilot project on both sides of the continent, in New South Wales and in Western Australia. Non-Indigenous people involved in separation, who might comprise about a third of the interviews carried out, would be sought in a greater variety of places, due to the difficulties in locating them. Apropos of which, this newsletter would greatly appreciate receiving from its readers names and contact details of any former administrators or other suitable people who might be willing to record interviews for this project.

The project manager, Gwenda Davey, made a preliminary visit to Perth in the week following the Advisory Committee meeting. Although hurried, the visit was rewarding and productive - though not without surprises! It was unexpected to learn that Sister Kate’s children’s home in Perth was now under Aboriginal management, and that there are now few residents there. It was also a surprise to learn that Western Australia has no state-wide Link-Up organisation coordinating family reunion among former separated persons. Nevertheless a number of individuals and organisations were of great help, such as Joyleen Koolmatrie, an Indigenous psychologist who was met at the Centre for Aboriginal Studies at Curtin University, and Stuart Reid, the national president of the Oral History Association of Australia. Staff at the Aboriginal Affairs Department and at the Family Information Records Bureau (Family and Community Services) were generous with their time and advice. Through all these discussions, the project manager also received a rather awe-inspiring sense of the vastness of Western Australia, and was frequently advised about the necessity for this project to ‘get out of Perth’!

It is a subsidiary aim of the National Library’s Bringing them Home oral history project to leave behind some benefit in the areas where interviews will be conducted. So it is pleasing to have been able to arrange for five persons to undertake a week’s training in oral history methodology at the University of Western Australia, during January. The Library itself has organised some training in January for interviewers from NSW and the ACT, through its Oral History and Sound Preservation Sections, and assisted by the two historians on the Advisory Committee, Jackie Huggins and Peter Read.

The Bringing them Home pilot oral history project at the National Library is pleased to announce the appointment of a part-time administrative assistant, Francine George. Francine originally comes from Normanton in the Gulf of Carpenteria, Queensland. She has lived in Canberra for a number of years working within various government departments, including the Aboriginal Development Commission (ADC) and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commercial Development Commission (CDC).

January 1999

National Library of Australia
Bringing Them Home Oral History Project

Project Manager:
Dr Gwenda Davey AM
Tel.: (02) 6262 1141
Fax: (02) 6273 5081
Email: gdavey@nla.gov.au

 

Advisory Committee
Ms Rosie Baird (SNAICC, NT)
Rev Bernard Clark (Uniting Church, SA)
Mr Barry Duroux (Link-up, NSW)
Ms Jackie Huggins (Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, QLD)
Ms Carol Kendall (Chairperson, NSW)
Dr Peter Read (ANU, ACT)
Mr Russell Taylor (AIATSIS, ACT)


Mr Jeremy Long (NSW)

January 1999

NOTE:

1 Please note that this announcement by Senator Herron took place in December 1997 and NOT September 1997 as originally published. 15/5/2000

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