WARNING: Photo contains Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples are deceased. Sharing light this morning one of the many horrors of the stolen generation and to again help people develop knowledge around the generation trauma, loss of culture and demolished family connections that have be a result of taking people from their families during the attempt of genocide in this country.
This photo is from times during the time when the mission was still operational. The Brewarrina Mission began construction in 1880 and run right up until 1965. There have said to be hundreds if not thousands of Aboriginal people that were forcibly removed from their families, traditional lands and their country that they had been connected to through family as well as spiritual ties for thousands of years.
The people that didn’t go peacefully which were majority people (as you could imagine) were made to leave their homes were killed, that included men, women and children with horrible murdering’s and death displaces to entice cooperation every time a white order was directed. This mission collected Aboriginal people from all over Australia with people from Northern NSW all the way to the South Coast of NSW forcibly removed and placed there and told now to call that home. With all the injustice, rape, murder and killing for practicing culture the Aboriginal people had to deal with not just learning a new language (English) they had to interact and communicate with other Aboriginal people of a different language and cultural practices from all over NSW and Queensland.
As time went by and the injustice and rape continued in the hope to ‘breed out the black’ of our people with many more Aboriginal kids taken away and sent to this place in rural remote NSW. As slavery become a treasured commodity among white Australia the Aboriginal people once again suffered dispossession; after meeting new people and forming new relationships they were taken from the mission and given to family who bought the individuals in a trade very similar like the cattle trade.
The children unwillingly knowing as well as forced to had their photo taken like this one above which was then sent out across the country for white families to be bought and shipped out on the next shipment - to how far is unknown but being the largest and at times the only Aboriginal mission in Australia places across the country would have been on the list. Once bought the children were sent out separately to families and were slaves for the rest of their lives. Aboriginal Names were given and by the white family names that ‘owned’ them and that’s how Aboriginal last names originated form.
Imagine waking up every day missing home and your family members and having the fear that today you might be taken away again to a place you know nothing about and a future that isn’t yours. This is just one story of many that are attached to the stolen generation and aren’t taught about in school.
Just imagine how these poor little fullas felt, waking up every morning heart broken and scared from missing your parents they had to live in fear that they would be taken away again to a future unknown, a future that wasn’t theirs.