Aboriginal elders have recounted their experiences of discrimination, dispossession and child removal for a landmark Victorian inquiry.
The Yoorrook Justice Commission has tabled in Victorian parliament its first interim report which details Aboriginal elders' experiences of systemic abuse, including discrimination, dispossession from land, legal injustice and child removal.The report states trauma is being passed through generations in Aboriginal families
Yoorrook was established in May 2021 and has the same powers as a royal commission, meaning it can compel government bodies to give evidence and hand over records. Commission chair Eleanor Bourke said the report detailed the pain experienced by elders, who "deserve to see change in their lifetimes". "This is why the Yoorrook Justice Commission must offer a very different forum for truth-telling and include new ways to bring about change in a contemporary environment, primarily through treaty."
"I was born on the verandah of the Echuca hospital because in those days they didn't take the Aboriginal mothers into the wards with the non-Aboriginal mothers," she told commissioners."I was taken from my mum and placed in a series of homes to be raised as a white person," he told commissioners."It took a lot of time and many resources to find out my identity as a member of the Stolen Generations.
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