Plummer, Karen --- "Book Review -- The Lost Children" [1990] AboriginalLawB 57; (1990) 1(47) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 14

• Book Review – The Lost Children

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Book Review –

The Lost Children

Edited by Coral Edwards and Peter Read

Doubleday, Sydney, 1989

pp.198, sc $19.95

Reviewed by Karen Plummer

The first chapter of The Lost Children, titled `Growing Up' looks at the childhood and early memories of thirteen Aboriginal Australians taken from their families. -The transcribed dialogue provides a personal, often painful account of the deceit of government departments and some adoptive families. It recounts the loss of identity and suffering experienced by the children torn from their family and culture. In the subsequent chapters, `Homecomings' and `Reflections', they tell of their reunions with their families and of the impact of uncovering their personal histories.

Peter Read in his introduction to The Lost Children gives an account of the cultural genocide chronicled in Protection Board and welfare documents up to recent decades. This is highlighted by a statement by a Board official in 1909: "In the course of a few years there will be no need for the camps and stations; the old people will have passed away and their progeny will be absorbed into the industrial classes of the country." Aborigines did not die out but government officials continued their attempts to `disperse' and dissociate the children from their culture. Joy William's Application for Admission' to Lutanda Children's Home, dated 1947 reads: " Reason for admission: a fair skinned child to be taken from association with Aborigines." Government departments continued to actively conceal the identities of children removed from their families into the 1950's. Parents were told to destroy information and family histories relating to their adopted children.

It was not until adolescence (a time often associated with identity crisis), that some of the children discovered their Aboriginality. At twelve, Alicia Adams was taken from Bomaderry Children's Home to Cootomundra Girls' Home. Here the realisation that she was `black' and not like the woman she had learnt to call `mum' came as a shock, she rejected her new identity, and started wearing long sleeved jumpers to hide her skin. Stan Bowden was advised by the manager of the Kinchela Boys' Home, not to mix with `blacks', that he had the advantage of being able to pass as a `white' and that his parents were both dead. Many years later he found out that his father was in fact alive, and was able to see him - two weeks before his fathers death.

The negative stereotypes of Aborigines as `lazy, dirty, drunkards unable to care for their children', were often perpetuated by the children's guardians. The children were deterred from finding their families by stories of neglect and abuse, they were denied information about their past and lied to. In the second chapter titled `Homecomings' Stan Bowden recalls the frustration of not knowing where he came from or who his family was (the Protection Board had control of documents such as birth certificates); "See I couldn't talk to people, because everyone else knew where they was from, who their parents and grandparents and brothers and sisters and all this. Everyone asked me this, I still didn't know, so I just kept to meself all the time." It was through Link-Up, an Aboriginal organisation dedicated to uniting people who have been separated from their families, that Stan was finally able to discuss his experiences with other people who had been through the same thing. Link-Up also helped him to contact his family and to learn more about himself, giving him the confidence to discuss his past and the incentive to help others through the same organisation.

The homecoming experiences recounted in The Lost Children vary from awkward and painful to jubilant and re-assuring, most convey as the word suggests, a sense of returning or belonging. Paul Behrendt compares this homecoming experience to the pain of childbirth in that only those who experience it can ever truly know it,"I guess that is the bond which people in Link-Up have."

The Lost Children provides a detailed account of the injustices perpetuated against thirteen Aboriginal people through government bodies and through the racist attitudes amongst individuals and institutions. It provides a personal account and presents a range of emotional responses that offers the reader some insight into the suffering of individuals. It recounts the process of recovering lost identities in a way that enables the reader to have a more emotive understanding than could be achieved through a more conventional history or documentation. Pauline McLeod says in `Reflections' that she wants people to understand that what happened to her family; "Should never ever happen any more. To steal twenty four years of a family's life. People will have to know about it. The Department people. The white people in this country. Even the Aboriginal people who just seem not to see what's happened. To really see that it has happened.' The Lost Children uncovers a web of deceit and recounts a history that can't be ignored.