It’s National Sorry Day today, and Victorian Greens Senator and Djabwurrung Gunnai Gunditjmara woman Lidia Thorpe has announced a plan to provide national compensation for Stolen Generations survivors.
In a statement released yesterday, The Greens called for the Federal Coalition Government to put a national compensation fund in place to compensate Stolen Generations for “the harm inflicted on them by successive Australian Governments.”
The Greens’ plan would provide Stolen Generation survivors with a $200,000 payment plus additional $7000 for funeral expenses, as compensation for the harm inflicted on them by successive Australian Governments.
This is about justice and healing. 2/3
— Senator Lidia Thorpe (@SenatorThorpe) May 25, 2021
“The Greens’ plan would compensate each survivor with a $200,000 lump-sum payment to support them and their families in life-changing ways, as they continue to heal, as well as a one-off ex gratia payment of $7,000 to each survivor for funeral expenses,” the statement says.
“The Greens will also provide a separate, secondary package to support the emotional and mental health needs of survivors and their families as they continue to heal from the appalling trauma of being stolen from their families by Australian Governments and their agencies.”
The Green’s proposal was announced yesterday, and it’s about fucking time this government does something to compensate First Nations people for the unimaginable trauma they’ve had to endure under on-going colonisation.
“The Stolen Generation are getting older, and we’re running out of time to deliver justice,” Senator Thorpe said.
“They took our children to break our society. No Government has ever brought peace to the people of the Stolen Generation.
“It’s time to reparate. We need to break the cycle and stop the trauma.”
The conversation around this day brings up an important point – that National Sorry Day didn’t change anything for Aboriginal families. Aboriginal child removal rates have actually increased by roughly 1,000 kids per year since Kevin Rudd‘s 2008 apology, and the figures are a tragic reminder that we have a long way to go before ‘sorry’ means anything.
The truth is, the Stolen Generations are on-going. We are still removing Aboriginal children from their families and communities under the guise of paternalistic ‘concern’ for their well-being, and just because the actual infrastructure around how we do it has changed over time, doesn’t mean the politics have.
If you think the stolen generations period is over, you’re sadly mistaken. Our children are getting removed at a higher rate post stolen generations. Policy is still targeting our people to assimilate and inter-grate.
— Barkaa (@Barkaa__) May 26, 2021
Ten years after Rudd’s 2008 apology, Bundjalung woman Vanessa-Turnbull Roberts spoke to Mamamia’s Tiddas 4 Tiddas podcast about the fact that the day Rudd delivered his speech, she was forcibly removed from her family over what she calls “falsified allegations of neglect.” She was 11 years old.
“They came in and they intervened and it took them 11 years to remove me. Nothing was even wrong, and they would have known that had they represented my rights, my voice,” Vanessa told Tiddas 4 Tiddas.
Now, Vanessa is in her early twenties. She’s my age. To think a First Nations woman was removed from her family this recently when everyone talks about the Stolen Generations like it’s something only found in history books is sickening, and a great example of how fucking good Aussie politics is at pretending colonisation ended. The truth is colonisation is on-going for as long as Australia is occupied.
On #SorryDay we remember the systematic racism and oppression of Aboriginal peoples under government policies and pay our respects to the Stolen Generations. Sadly though, current statistics remind us the unwarranted removal of our kids from communities isn’t a thing of the past. pic.twitter.com/ERcORoxSVS
— AbSec (@AbSecNSW) May 25, 2021
To this day, First Nations people are dying in police custody, being removed from their families, having their land stolen, their sacred sites desecrated – it’s important we as people who live on stolen land don’t just acknowledge, but actively make reparations and demand the rights and sovereignty of the people who’s stolen land we live on.
“The Stolen Generation has never stopped. Assimilation has never stopped,” Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts said in Tiddas 4 Tiddas.
“This Stolen Generation is continued in our policies, it’s continued in the action and it’s continued when we take a look at the rates of incarceration and we just look at why those people are in those places.”
The Stolen Generations are on-going. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.
