Link-up’s Sorry Day Breakfast
Senior Manager Paula Shaw attended Link-Up’s Sorry Day breakfast last week. This event is held each year on the Friday before Sorry Day (May 26th), to acknowledge and remember the experiences and impacts of policies of removing Aboriginal children from their families – for the individuals who were taken, their families and their communities. The Link-Up event is held at Cranbrook Place, the site of Aboriginal Girls Home that operated there between 1899 and 1906. You can read more about the event here.
This year’s guest speakers, Brett Nutley and Aunty Lorraine Wooley, are descendants of two girls, sisters, who were taken from their family to this “home” where they were treated very harshly and forced into domestic service for white families. Three generations later, Bret himself was removed from his mother as an infant. He reflected on the deep pain and persistent impact of that separation, of having no sense of kin, or belonging, or connection.
Brett’s story is one of resilience and possibility. With some key mentors and a band of firm friends, Brett established himself in a varied and influential career. He reconnected with his family, and he helped others reconnect with theirs through his work at Link-up. He worked for 12 years in Queensland’s correctional centres and recognised there that many of the prisoners shared similar trauma to what he had experienced.
Brett also worked as an educator with the Commissioner for Child Safety, and it was his reflections about his time in this role that really made me think about the kind of work that we do at ARTD and the opportunities we have to make practical contributions to reconciliation. Brett talked about conversations he’d had with the then commissioner – where he would need to make decisions about whether a child would be placed into out of home care. The Commissioner’s job was to consider the risk posed to the child of remaining with their family – and Brett asked, “But what are the risks if we remove them?”
The impacts of the trauma of removal for the child and their family are now so well documented, acknowledged and known, and in this context, his question seems so logical and so important, but this was a radical act – an inversion of the assumed logic of the system. Brett’s approach and eagerness to see things from another perspective gave me pause to reflect on how important it is that we turn assumptions on their head and ask questions that go to the core of the lived experience of the people who ultimately experience human services programs. These are the very kinds of things that we at ARTD often evaluate and make recommendations about improving.
Thank you Link-Up for another beautiful event this year. I will be wearing my purple desert rose pin tomorrow and throughout reconciliation week.
