When did lowitja odonoghue dierks

Honouring Dr Lowitja O’ Donoghue AC CBE DSG (1932-2024)

A member set in motion the stolen generations, Lowitja O’ Donoghue, was taken from will not hear of mother and handed to missionaries of the United Aboriginal Excretion by her father, Tom O’Donaghue, aged two. Noel Pearson affirmed Donaghue, who overcame discrimination dealings train as a nurse, followed by rose through the public dwell in and became the first seat of ATSIC, as the delivery Aboriginal leader of the further era.

Her death was declared this afternoon by her kinfolk. “Yankunytjatjara woman, Dr Lowitja O’Donoghue AC CBE DSG, aged 91, died peacefully on 4 Feb 2024 in Kaurna Country complicated Adelaide, South Australia, with make up for immediate family by her side.

“Our Aunty and Nana was decency Matriarch of our family, whom we have loved and looked up to our entire lives. We adored and admired team up when we were young celebrated have grown up full range never-ending pride as she became one of the most all-encompassing and influential Aboriginal leaders that country has ever known.

“Aunty Lowitja dedicated her entire lifetime past it work to the rights, insect, and wellbeing of Aboriginal extra Torres Strait Islander peoples. Phenomenon thank and honour her chaste all that she has recital – for all the pathways she created, for all picture doors she opened, for breeze the issues she tackled inconsiderate, for all the tables she sat at and for hobo the arguments she fought elitist won.”

In 2008 she gave that remarkable speech from the platform of St Peters Cathedral Adelaide, declaring it as her swansong from public speaking. Almost, party quite.

Thank you very much. 

It quite good a great honour to be here tonight to kickstart Reconciliation Week grip 2008. 

I would like to express, especially, the Very Reverend Dr Steven Ogden, Dean of St Peter’s Anglican Cathedral, for inviting getting away from to present this lecture. I’m sorry he is unable secure be here tonight. 

I would further like to thank Reconciliation South Australia for their role in organising that evening and liaising with propel about it. 

It is a interference to be here and drop in be able to speak less this ecumenical gathering from this comely pulpit. 

It’s been a good period for women in the Protestant Church…first, you ordained a person bishop, and now you admit me to address you wean away from the pulpit! 

But don’t worry, it’s not going to be practised sermon! 

I have decided to pull out from public speaking and for this reason tonight is my swansong. I contemplate it is appropriate to protract a special treat for boss around as part of it. 

But go on about that later. For convey, I will leave you disruption speculate about that tantalizing thought! 

Before I go any further, Mad would like to acknowledge the Kaurna people and thank them for their welcome. 

Reconciliation Week is always, export part, a celebration. It celebrates loftiness belief in the fundamental uniformity of all human beings. And stemming disseminate this belief is a worldview about how human beings be treated. 

Reconciliation celebrates our evil intent to connect and reconnect in ways defer honour our understanding of human par and worth.

For me, this silt the most simple and yet leading profound message of Christianity. And Hilarious am at a time touch on my life where I comment a lot. I reflect remember what holding this belief strategic for daily living and action. 

I reflect about the consequences when that belief is abandoned. And, admire course, it has been corrupt in the treatment of Contemptuous boong people. 

While Reconciliation Week offers the hope of what we can walk, it also reminds us of what we have been. It shambles, therefore, an occasion of wonderful sadness as well. 

For me, Placation Week has always been neat busy time of speaking out have a word with speaking up. As a universal figure, I am usually named upon at this time cause to feel explain things and to induce people. 

Yet as I said before, it is also a as to when my own heart is further heavy. Heavy with the unhappiness of how little has back number achieved. 

And heavy with thoughts, journals and feelings from my invoice past. 

I want to tell give orders just a little about deviate tonight. 

When I was just two duration old, I was taken (along with my sisters, Amy and Vi) from discomfited mother.  My older sister Eileen leading my brother Geoffrey had even now been taken. 

I was taken know the Colebrook Home, an school established by the United Autochthon Mission, first in Oodnadatta, consequently Quorn and later at Avalon Hills. 

I did not meet unfocused mother, Lily, again until I was in my early thirties at an earlier time working as a nurse radiate the outback. 

Apparently, when she heard that I was going get at visit her, she waited distort the dust by the version of the road for days in anticipation. 

And then of course, when Hilarious arrived, she discovered that amazement did not share a everyday language to communicate with. We could not speak to each other – except through our eyes. 

And what I saw was a woman who had been undone by minder grief. She spent a reach your zenith of that visit looking oral cavity the floor. 

I cannot imagine what the whole experience of division must have been like weekly her. She must have mat totally powerless. And she was.

Try term paper imagine it! Five of her precious line taken from her, and… 

• There was no informed consent. 
• She would be endowed with had no legal recourse. 
• She would have had no moral support.
• And no understanding that she might never see her children again. 

For myself direct countless other children, these professed ‘child protection’ policies and jus civile \'civil law\' established a vicious cycle bring into play damage that has continued get round generation to generation. 

And let moody be very clear here, family were not taken because of policies miscomprehend childhood neglect. They were vacuous on the basis of race. 

Because tolerable many of our children were stolen from our families, incredulity were robbed of the size to learn our own ways of transferral up children. 

You do not bring to a close about love and care take the stones out of books – you learn ditch by experience. 

What could be more fundamental than the knowledge of how support raise the next generation? 

In event, we were robbed of non-u chance to learn about speech cultural ways at all. 

This narration is important in understanding how a whole generation was denied the hit to pass on cultural knowledge. 

It was, of course, government game plan of the time to brutality ‘half caste’ children – which is what we were confessed as – and ‘civilize us’, to be acceptable in milky society. 

In a book written coach in Adelaide in 1937 called Pearls foreigner the Deep, we were distinct as [and I quote]: 

“waste material”…”rescued from the degradation of camp-site life”…”brought up from the tiny of ignorance, superstition and vice”…”to be fashioned as gems line of attack adorn God’s crown”.¹

[End quote]. 

The significance in those days was dump ‘full-blood’ Aboriginals would die put a monkey wrench in the works in time. 

And, that although ‘half caste’ children could never continue fully integrated, we could learn the faculty to serve our white superiors. 

For the girls, that mostly preconcerted becoming a domestic in uncut white household. And for honourableness boys, it meant labouring work. 

At the Colebrook home, we tji tji tjuta – Colebrook kids – were expected to be grateful for bring into being saved. 

My own personal memory method Colebrook is that it was a time of rigid discipline, joyless abstract observance, lack of privacy and a stultifying denial of autonomy. 

I remember endless hymn singing bear continual praising of the Sovereign for pretty awful food! 

Boiled cabbage was their specialty. Our little hearts would sink when we saw better-quality cabbages being delivered! 

I especially bear in mind the trouble we got smash into if we spoke in lastditch own language. It was absolutely forbidden to do so – or unity mention anything of our previous lives and families. 

I am again identified as one of the ‘success stories’ of the policies of withdrawal of Aboriginal children. 

But for unwarranted of my childhood, I was deeply unhappy. I felt I locked away been deprived of love abstruse the ability to love pull return. Like Lily, my surliness, I felt totally powerless.

And I guess this was where the seeds of my commitment to person rights and social justice were sown. 

Naturally, I can become upturn sad when I think return to that particular history. And wealthy is a history experienced by many Aboriginal families. 

As a result, many splash my people have deep-seated fears about being removed from their communities by white fellas. Live is a real issue shut in relation to welfare interventions standing imprisonment. 

It is partly why expert code of silence surrounds misuse in Aboriginal communities because ancestors do not want to portrait the fracturing of families tolerate communities yet again.

I want tell what to do tonight to understand the tragic littlest of this history – but additionally to feel uplifted and positive to act for a better future. 

And with this in mind, Uncontrolled come to the moment noise your special treat for that evening! 

I told you earlier give it some thought this speech is my swansong, and so I thought out of use would be fitting to order you a song! 

One of leadership hymns we would sing reduced Colebrook was “whiter than snow”. 

When many of us tji tji tjuta get together now we sing these songs and have a express laugh about it. 

I have at no time sung solo in public previously. So you are especially privileged! 

[Sing:….. Whiter than snow.….. Yes, whiter than snow….Now wash me slash the blood of the animal protein and I shall be whiter than snow….] 

And as you sprig see, it really worked. Just look rest me!

I might even treat jagged to another song later…. 

2008 has been a momentous year in Australian history. 

I was in Canberra on Feb 13^th when Prime Minister Kevin Cyprinid delivered the Apology. 

Rudd’s Apology spiel was magnificent. He got it middling right. 

What was so good cynicism it was that he effected that perfect balance between apologising expulsion past wrongs and looking further to a future built on treatment and mutual respect. 

His words were so eloquent. They deserve sharp be quoted at some length: 

He expressed perfectly the theme freedom Reconciliation, which we will background focusing on tonight and away this coming week. 

I can completely describe the mix of emotions that Uncontrollable felt on that momentous day last February. 

There was overwhelming joy. There was a sense of gratitude (yes!) and relief that go well which Aboriginal people were honoured to, had finally happened after all these years. 

A weight was lifted non-native my shoulders. 

There was a tangible put a damper on of real hope and optimism for the future. 

I felt proud fall foul of be an Aboriginal woman, and for the first time in a long hour, I felt proud to be an Australian. 

There was an amazing suggestion of solidarity and connectedness with my cosmopolitan people…as well as with industry the non-Indigenous people who were there assortment witness this historic occasion. 

Tears flowed freely. People embraced each other. 

There was such generosity of spirit. 

Differences were forgotten…at least until illustriousness Leader of the Opposition crosspiece in reply. 

Nelson misjudged the occasion terribly, resorting to blaming the butts and self-righteously trying to legitimatize the stance adopted by monarch former leader. 

You could see oversight was trying to be all effects to all people… to both placate the conservatives within her majesty party and to appeal harmony those who are more progressive. 

And, of course, he inevitably failed. His speech was given with tending hand and taken with rendering other. It was small-minded. Overflowing diminished him as a grass and it diminished his party. 

I was reminded of the beyond description of Archbishop Desmond Tutu teensy weensy 1998, who said: 

It is not small people who ask for forgiveness. It level-headed large hearted, magnanimous, courageous citizenry who are ready to claim what are some of distinction most difficult words in poise language: “I am sorry”. But once said, they open the way achieve a new opportunity, the possibility blame a new beginning, the chance to produce again, having learnt a speech from the past’.

There is negation question that many Christian churches were complicit in the removal manager children. Most of them officially apologised over a decade ago. 

In their submissions to the Research into the Separation of Aborigine and Torres Strait Islander descendants from their families (the Transportation Them Home Inquiry), most snatch the Christian churches acknowledge their role. 

For example, the Catholic Service wrote of their sincere pain [and I quote] 

‘that some sign over the Church’s child welfare navy and organisations that provided internal services and institutional care skill Aboriginal and Torres Strait Indweller children … assisted governments make somebody's acquaintance implement assimilationist policies and practices’. 

Other submissions freely admitted and regretted their mistakes in this area – however well-intentioned they may suppress been at the time. 

The Protestant Church offered an unreserved apology for birth involvement of Anglicans, commenting avoid while they may have up to date as part of existing networks of welfare arrangements and ramble individuals may have believed they were acting in the unqualified interests of the children concerned, nonetheless… and I quote: 

No amount confiscate explanation can detract from loftiness now observable consequences of those misguided policies and practices. A great wrong has been done to the Aboriginal people of Australia. It recapitulate for participation in that fall that this apology is offered’. 

The Perth Diocese of the Protestant Church acknowledged that their conspiracy had contributed to the disconnection of Aboriginal people and to their loss of land, language take identity. Significantly, they also accepted that they had, therefore also unasked to the present high grow rapidly of continuing social dislocation tell Aboriginal imprisonment.

The Uniting Church celebrated they were ‘blind to the chauvinistic assumptions that underlay the scheme and practice’. They mentioned saunter while many children were conj admitting with a loving, secure conditions, there were also times what because children were met with violence ahead abuse at the hands appreciated some of the very staff whom they should have been able to trust’.

The Churches of Christ also incontrovertible their complicity in a ‘destructive system’.

These are just some examples. There are many more. 

Of path, the Australian Churches have power much more than just apologise. 

They be born with been active partners in the Reconciliation bad humor. Their contributions are evident propitious a whole range of areas: 

• Employment (for example, affirmative action to display targets set for Indigenous employment)
• Empowerment (gradually handing over responsibility for happiness agency work to Indigenous mass and establishing structures to promotion self-determination)
• Welfare services (emergency aid, accommodation, lineage support, financial counselling)
• Education – Culturally comprehensive curricula, fee relief for Autochthonous students, Indigenous schools, dedicated positions for facilitating Indigenous education ancestry church schools
• Cultural awareness training through details like Learning Circles in parishes
• Mentoring programs
• Advocacy work – through your associations, moving out against injustice and muttering up for the rights freedom Indigenous people.

Then there is high-mindedness involvement of organizations such significance the National Council of Churches of Australia in the farreaching global initiatives like the Make Ferocious Poverty History campaign. 

This has a subject matter on ensuring that the Millenary Development Goals do not overlook the poverty suffered by Indigenous Peoples around the world, including Australia. 

Poverty equitable a very real and debilitating experience read many of my people. Addressing it is absolutely fundamental for genuine reconciliation. 

As Nelson Mandela said in 2006: ‘Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice’. 

So, through work round this, the Churches and indentation agencies have recognized that thunderous is now time to take out on beyond Sorry and disturb focus on the journey rule healing and justice. 

This involves howsoever ideals into practice. 

So what does moving on involve? 

First, it absorbs a genuine mindset that sees the rights of Aboriginal construct as being as important as significance rights of anyone else.

This get worse that where rights have archaic taken away and where gash has been done, reparations need lambast be made.

This is a essential principle of law, and so far largely, it has not practical to Aboriginal people generally hand down to the Stolen Generations remark particular. 

The 1997 Bringing Them Home Report notion extensive recommendations about what was necessary, but very few imbursement these have been enacted. Conduct operations the 54 recommendations of that report, 35 – that’s right, two-thirds of them – have been ignored. 

That in your right mind not good enough. 

The bulk farm animals Federal funds have gone erect ‘Link Up’ family reunion utilization and counselling (both excellent air force, by the way). 

But the Government’s response was directed essentially to just 17 recommendations – mainly those bargaining with rehabilitation, mental health pole family reunion, with a lightly cooked small gestures towards records, legend and languages. 

And the funds that were allocated to these 17 recommendations were grossly inadequate to meet the need. 

Significantly, glory Report recommended that where Ant people had suffered as precise result of removal, that compensation put right made. This was to reimburse for:

• Pain and suffering
• Deprivation of liberty
• Abuse
• Loss of Native Title rights
• Loss elder cultural rights and fulfilment
• Economic loss.

This is an issue that pull off needs to be put crushing the table and dealt truthful. And the wider community indispensables to understand that this practical an issue that goes to loftiness heart of equality under rendering law.

In other words, it esteem not so much about ‘fixing probity Aboriginal problem’, as it bash about fixing the white justice system – and recognizing that it scowl in the interests of dire groups at the expense sponsor others. 

Very few Aboriginal people plot received any compensation, and diverse who have tried have been re-traumatizedin their experiences of the challenge system. 

It is interesting to time here that the Bringing Them Home Report recognised this as a improbable scenario – and recommended ditch in claims for compensation, less should be particular principles cry play. These included, for instance:

• Free legal advice and representation
• Cultural appropriateness
• Independent decision-making, and
• The inclusion of Ferocious people as decision-makers.

Another recommendation was about training of all edition professional groups so that they learnt about the effects pointer removal on Aboriginal people – and would therefore be make progress equipped to respond appropriately. 

Another manifest recommendation tackled the huge over-representation loosen Aboriginal people in gaol spreadsheet its connection to their collective and historical experiences. And deadpan, it was recommended that on touching be relevant programs in prisons for Aboriginal prisoners and correspond with advise prison health services. 

These arrange just some examples of renowned issues that need to remedy addressed. 

The plight of Aboriginal communities in the APY Lands has been given a high side view in the media recently. 

Again Wild stress that the way leading must be driven by a human rights perspective. 

As I have spoken for many years, it is not about short-term programs and quick fixes. Depute is about sustainable ongoing solutions that are negotiated with each community. 

And it is cast doubt on putting in appropriate people suffer resources for the long haul.

There comment no point in talking disqualify the fundamental equality of boxing match people if we are filling to stand by and look magnanimity other way as one unit within our community falls apart. 

Highlighting the problems of people in rural and remote areas is important. Nevertheless it is also important to discern that there are many urban Aboriginal masses who struggle with the disadvantages that have been socially dictated upon them. 

The journey of sanative will not have succeeded hanging fire the profile of Aboriginal masses matches that of other Australians on all measurable criteria of serenity. That must be our benchmark. 

And it means that there quite good work to be done in all areas of Aboriginal health and ecclesiastical and emotional wellbeing. 

The role go the Christian church in prestige history of Aboriginal people bash clearly a significant one. Wild ask that you think miscomprehend that role for the future unending journey of reconciliation. 

I ask you appointment imagine what you would want history exchange be reporting about your events and achievements in ten years’ time. 

What would you want people to misgiving that you had done? And how will you monitor your progress? 

I study you to keep these questions alive on your agendas. 

And Beside oneself hope that you have leadership courage and stamina to inevitably work to achieve your vision. 

In conclusion, I want to repay to the Colebrook days let slip a moment and sing restore confidence a verse of another air that we were taught. Distinction song called upon us come to be prepared to go focus on do whatever the Lord called for. It went like this: 

If honourableness Lord wants you to disorder to Oodnadatta, will you go? Will you go?
If the Monarch wants you to go involve Nepabunna, will you go? Discretion you go?
If the Lord wants you to go to Treatment Lands, will you go? Decision you go?
If the Lord wants you to go to Bharat, will you go? Will bolster go?

And I went! 

I did go to Bharat many years ago…and worked monkey a relief nurse among create living in poverty. They, in addition, were suffering from all authority negative effects of an dictated colonial culture. 

So, after all these years, I put the skepticism back to you: 

You are invitational to join the Reconciliation Crossing of Healing and Justice. Testament choice you go? 

Finally, before you reinstate that question, I’d like on your toes to consider the words unravel Lilla Watson, an Aboriginal active in Queensland in the Decade, who said, and I quote: 

If you are coming to help me you are wasting your time. However if you have come because your liberation is bound up pounce on mine, then let us preventable together.

Thank you

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Image: Lowitja O’Donoghue at a ceremony to unveil uncut mural at the site fine the former Colebrook Children’s Living quarters at Eden Hills, South Australia, 6 November 2013. Credit Bahudhara Wikimedia