Bringing Them Home Oral History Project
ISSN 1442-3723
Newsletter No. 4
In late 1997 Senator John 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 directly affected by the separations, would be invited to record their stories. So too, would government administrators, missionaries, police and others concerned with the policies and their administration, be given the opportunity to speak about this period of our history and what they knew about it from personal experience.
Thus the project will result in a wide range of individual accounts, providing oral evidence which will assist researchers and the general public to understand what happened and why, during this difficult period of Australias history. This oral history project is part of the Governments 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 Bringing Them Home Oral History Project Expands
Since the last Bringing Them Home newsletter, in April 2000, there have been many new interviews collected and a number of new interviewers inducted into the program nationwide.
Well over 200 interviews (including 31 interviews collected during the Pilot Project year) have now been recorded for the Bringing Them Home collection at the National Library of Australia. These include, as planned, interviews from Indigenous people with a diverse range of separation experiences, whose highly personal accounts are contributions of immeasurable value to the public record. The recollections of a range of professionals who worked with these children, or whose professional activity influenced the policy and administrative frameworks which supported separation events, will also contribute in a significant way to our understanding of the separation of Indigenous children from their families.
The generosity of all these contributors is well appreciated by staff and interviewers of the Bringing Them Home Project. Whatever the roles these people played in the past, their present involvement has required a major effort, in order to revisit past activity, practice and personal experience. In most cases there are elements of distress and pain certainly for the people who were separated as children, for their families, for those who fostered and adopted them and for those professionals who cared for them in institutions. The recounted experiences of administrators and policy makers have also brought moments of intensity, as the past is remembered. The present task of recording experiences has been shared in different ways by all who have taken part in the project, and we consider all those who have contributed, as part of a growing community of workers and participants in this major oral history program. During the year, accompanied by managers from the Digital and Audio Preservation Resources unit in the Library, I have travelled to a number of major centres to familiarise interviewers with the requirements of the project and to provide technical training. The Library uses state of the art digital audio tape recorders, to ensure high quality sound production. Due to their high cost, these machines are not in general use, and most interviewers need instruction to use them. After familiarisation sessions in Adelaide in May, Perth in July and Darwin in October, with a number of individual sessions taking place in Canberra, all states now have small teams of interviewers available to record relevant experiences.
Doreen Mellor
An Ear for the Future: The Privileges and Challenges of Interviewing
A years involvement in the National Librarys Bringing Them Home Oral History Project has brought me new insights into the role of an interviewer. For me, the greatest privilege is the deep but brief intimacy which develops during the course of an interview. For a few hours,
I come to understand aspects of the life of someone who previously was a complete strangertheir personal map of their past; their courage in coming to terms with the often traumatic events in their lives which have shaped their values, and their views of themselves and the world. We can often know a close friend for many years without discovering these things. Although I may never see the person I interview again, I will long treasure the window into their world which they opened to me.
I have also developed a new understanding of oral history. In the past I saw it as the icing on a cake I had carefully crafted from archival sources. I conducted interviews in order to test conclusions I had already reached from files relating to events or government decisions in which my interviewees had participated, or to add colour and detail unavailable from these documents. In my present role my opinions are irrelevant. I am merely a catalyst, eliciting information to which future researchers will bring a myriad questions I can only guess at. As an interviewer I am a conduit, allowing the interviewee to speak to living Australians and those yet to be born. I am an ear for the future.
The three-year Bringing Them Home Project has ears in every State of Australia. To date, it has contracted 43 interviewers, 22 of whom are Indigenous, who have interviewed 181 people. Of these, 130 are Indigenous people removed from their families as children, or parents whose children were removed. For many of these, telling their story has been part of their personal journey towards healing. It has demanded courage and caused them pain in the telling. Every one of their stories offers a unique insight into an aspect of Australian history most of us have long avoided engaging with and teaching our children about.
It is, however, also important to understand the role and values of those involved in implementing the laws and government policies which governed the lives of Indigenous Australians in the past. Of the 300 people to be interviewed, at least 75 will be non-Indigenous Australians. Of these, 51 have already been interviewed. They played a wide variety of roles as foster and adoptive parents, school teachers, religious and welfare workers, policemen and patrol officers, hospital matrons, government administrators, staff in childrens homes. The variety of their experiences is enormous. Most believed they were doing their job to the best of their ability and acting in the best interests of the children involved. It is vital that their stories also be heard so that future generations do not simply see our history in terms of past victims and villains. Their stories help us understand how the culture in which we are raised not only shapes our values, but profoundly influences the way we interact with and understand those of different cultures.
I have found interviewing a very challenging experience. The Project provides all interviewers with two sets of questionsone for Indigenous and the other for non-Indigenous interviewees. Before I interview a person I try to imagine what their life might have been like and shape the set questions to their particular circumstances. I try to get some feel of their experiences through preliminary conversations, and to do as much research as I can on the broader historical context and legal and administrative frameworks which shaped their lives. Despite my preparation, the interview always presents unanticipated openings which I feel future listeners to the interview, or readers of the interview transcript, will find valuable. I try to make my questions the only time my voice is heard during the interview. My opinions are irrelevant and I express my understanding, sympathy, outrage or agreement as much as possible in non-verbal ways.
I find coping with new technology always a challenge. The Library equips its interviewers with state-of-the-art digital audio recorders which are highly sensitive and extremely expensive.
I view these machines with considerable suspicion, carefully checking throughout the interview that all the essential signs of life are present. My biggest nightmare is to conduct an interview where nothing is recorded. The recorders sensitivity also presents a challenge. Interviews are generally conducted in peoples homesplaces where noisy refrigerators and heaters, squeaking chairs, barking dogs and noisy traffic or neighbours can intrude. I try to exclude as many of these sounds as possible, although if not too loud, background sounds can add contextual colour to an interview.
The Bringing Them Home Oral History Project has given me the opportunity to make my own small contribution to one of the most important challenges Australians face today.
It will help Australians understand, and work to heal, the continuing legacy of past laws and policies which damaged the lives, families, and culture of generations of Indigenous Australians.
Ann-Mari Jordens
Interviewer Profile: Helen Curzon-Siggers

Helen Curzon-Siggers,
Cheltenham, Victoria,
November 2000
Helen Curzon-Siggers is an interviewer with the Bringing Them Home Oral History Project. A member of the Burri Gubba people from Queensland, Helen grew up in a large and intact family with her parents and nine brothers and sisters, unaware of the disruption experienced by many other Indigenous families through the removal of their children.
She brings a wide range of experience to her interviewing. After finishing her schooling in Brisbane she trained as a nurse in Newcastle, practising her profession over the next twenty years in five States of Australia. In 1986 she prepared for further tertiary studies by enrolling in Monash University's one-year orientation scheme for Aborigines (MOSA). In 1988 she became the first Indigenous woman to receive a cadetship with the Australian Trade Commission (Austrade). When she completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at Monash University in 1991, majoring in History and Human Geography, she began work at Austrade as an export marketing adviser. The following year she began working in MOSA, becoming its Director from 1993 to 1998 and the Director of Monashs Koori Research Centre from 1997 to 1998.
It was during her period with MOSA that she met Gwenda Davey, a lecturer in the course who later managed the BTH Oral History Projects pilot program. Helen first became aware of the impact of the separation of Indigenous children from their parents through her students at Monash, many of whom had been removed from their parents for a wide range of reasons. She gave evidence to the Bringing Them Home Inquiry on their behalf, and in 1999 enthusiastically accepted Gwendas invitation to become a contract interviewer for the Project.

Helen Curzon-Siggers, Melbourne, February
2000,
at a training session for interviewers.
Photographer Doreen
Mellor
Helen believes that the interviewer should approach the interview with compassion and professionalism. Although she strives for informality, she carefully prepares for an interview by researching her subjects background as thoroughly as possible beforehand. Looking back on her earliest interviews, she confesses that she tended to intrude too much. Now she has developed the confidence to let the story unwindto let silences happen. Often during interviews, she observes, people relieve themselves of an emotional burden they have long kept secret. There are tears, laughter, then relief at the healing process of getting it all out.
When asked to identify the most valuable insight she has gained as an interviewer she unhesitatingly replied:
I have gained insight into the absolute courage of those removed. Stripped of family and cultural identity they have the courage to embark on a long and very personal search for identity. This often involves admitting painful realities about themselves and their dysfunctional personal behaviour. During the interview they dissect their lives, looking at themselves intimately, confronting their own history, facing up to who they are and what they have done. Some of these things have not been good. They have failed in their relationships and become disconnected from reality. Some have had the courage to admit that they have been disappointed in the results of their search for their families after finding that they have nothing in common with them. They have left family events such as birthday celebrations with the painful realisation that they dont fit into either white or black family rituals.
Helen believes the purpose and value of interviewing for the Project
is not just to help individuals along the path to healingit is important
in the process of national healing.
She believes the Project will
contribute to revealing the truth about what happened in the past between black
and white Australians and will help the reconciliation process. She feels it is
important to hear the word sorry and to know the meaning of the
word for Aboriginal people. It is, however, essential for white Australians to
acknowledge that the economic basis of the nation has been built on the
profound losses of Indigenous Australians.
It is hard for a lot of
white Australians to acknowledge this, she observed.
Although no longer a nurse, Helen is still very much a professional healer, helping to repair the deep wounds ignorance of Aboriginal culture has inflicted on the relations between black and white Australians over many generations. Last year she was a casual lecturer in the Medical Faculty of Monash University, teaching Aboriginal Studies and Health to first and third-year medical students. She also taught students of history at that university the Aboriginal approach to celebrating the life cycles and rites of passage, and Aboriginal history, politics and culture to students in the Performing Arts Unit at Swinburne University college.
Currently, Helen is contracted as a specialist trainer in Parks Victoria's Indigenous Cultural Awareness Program, and trains members of the Victorian Department of Natural Resources and Environment in effective public speaking. She was Support and Liaison Officer for Indigenous players and their families in the St Kilda football club and is currently working with the Australian Football League on the Indigenous Players Program. Through her own lectures over several years to a wide range of community organisations Helen has spread understanding of Aboriginal society and history and has fostered reconciliation among Australians of all ages, creeds and ethnic backgrounds. The Project is certainly fortunate to have her as one of its interviewers!
Ann-Mari Jordens
We Like Visitors!
Judith Stubbs, interviewed for the Bringing
Them Home
Oral History Project in October 2000.
Photographer Robert
Guth.
Interviewee Judith Stubbs, after being separated from her parents, spent much of her childhood in Cootamundra Home in New South Wales. Early in November, she visited the Bringing Them Home offices at the National Library of Australia to catch up with Ann-Mari Jordens who interviewed her in October 2000, and to meet other staff. She also brought in valuable documentary material to supplement her recorded interview. While she was there, photographer Robert Guth created important visual records, which will be used to further document the project and may be included in the book to be published at the end of the project.
Interviewee Judith Stubbs, with interviewer
Ann-Mari Jordens, Ann-Mari and Judith
have discovered that they were born
within months of each other.
Photographer Robert Guth
Bringing Them Home Oral History Project staff
with visitor Judith Stubbs
(l to r: Ann-Mari Jordens, Jenny Holcombe,
Project Manager Doreen Mellor, Julee Willey,
Judith Stubbs), November 2000.
Photographer Robert Guth
Judith Stubbs talking with Project Manager
Doreen Mellor, November 2000.
Photographer Robert Guth
Introducing Another Interviewer
Reg Marsh in Sydney, July 2000.
Photographer Robert Guth
Reg Marsh has also been interviewed for the Bringing Them Home Oral History Project, bringing valuable insights from his time during the 1950s, when he was involved with Aboriginal administration in the Northern Territory. Having joined the Commonwealth Public Service after World War II, he worked from Canberra in the Department of Territories and then in Darwin as Assistant Administrator from 1957 to 1962. The Project has very much enjoyed its association with Mr Marsh, and staff and interviewers have appreciated his lively participation.
Interviewer Talent
Lola Greeno, bull kelp water container, 2000, included in the exhibition Across, Canberra School of Art Gallery, Australian National University, October 2000. Photographer Georgina Smith
Right is an image of recent artwork by Indigenous interviewer Lola Greeno from Tasmania. Like many of the interviewers involved in the Project, Lola is multi-talented, and works in a number of areas. Her work as an oral historian for the Department of Education, Tasmania resulted in as I remember, a superb audio and text production by the Department, for use in Tasmanian schools.
Lola Greeno at an interviewer familiarisation session in Melbourne in February 2000, with National Library of Australia Technical Officer Shelly Grant. Photographer Doreen Mellor
Biographical Note on Authors
Ann-Mari Jordens has published widely on Australian history. Her most recent books are Redefining Australians, Hale and Iremonger, 1995 and Alien to Citizen, Allen and Unwin with Australian Archives, 1997. She is currently a contract interviewer and part-time researcher with the Bringing Them Home Oral History Program.
Doreen Mellor is currently Project Manager, Bringing Them Home Oral History Project at the National Library of Australia. Immediate past Director of Flinders University Art Museum in Adelaide, she has published widely on Indigenous visual arts and cultural issues, and serves on the Boards of a number of regional and national organisations.
National Library of Australia Bringing Them Home Oral History Project
Contact details:
Doreen Mellor
Project
Manager
Phone: (02) 6262 1141; Fax: (02) 6273 1180 Email:
dmellor@nla.gov.au
Julee Willey
Project Assistant
Phone: (02) 6262 1674 ;
Email: jwilley@nla.gov.au
If you would like the National Library to record your story or know
someone who could be interested in
putting their experiences on the public
record, please call our Toll Free number 1800 353 907
Steering Committee
Ms Winnie Pelz, Chair (Council
of the National Library of Australia, SA)
Ms Baiba Berzins (NSW)
Ms
Jackie Huggins (Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, QLD)
Mr Jeremy Long
(NSW)
Ms Anne-Marie Schwirtlich (National Archives of Australia, ACT)
Mr Russell Taylor (AIATSIS, ACT)
Dr Judith Winternitz (Department of Prime
Minister and Cabinet, ACT)
