Aunty Lorraine Peeters was four years old when she was taken from her home at Brewarrina mission in north-west New South Wales, driven away through metal gates she still remembers. For the next six years, the Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls Home became her world - a place where she was separated from her siblings, trained as a domestic servant, and systematically brainwashed to be white.
“On entry, all your clothes were burnt, and then you were doused, or what they call delousing, and this is back in the 1940s so it was sheep dip,” Aunty Lorraine told Guardian Australia. “And then your head was shaven, you were given a new identity and religion.” The mantra, she said, was: “Be white, speak white, live white every day.”
Her story is one of hundreds documented in the Bringing Them Home report, tabled nearly 30 years ago. Today, survivors and advocates are still urging governments to do more, as outlined in a new national plan from the Healing Foundation. The report, *From Sorry to Action*, has been released ahead of Sorry Day on Tuesday.
Aunty Lorraine has spent decades pushing for change. She testified at the national inquiry that led to the Bringing Them Home report, co-founded the Coota Girls Aboriginal Corporation 13 years ago, and helped establish trauma-informed support for survivors. In 2008, she presented then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd with a coolamon representing lost babies and children ahead of the national apology.
Now 88, she is urging federal and state governments to support Stolen Generations survivors in their final years, many still searching for connection and family reunification. “Survivors are still suffering trauma, survivors with disability or that are mentally not right, given the trauma they’ve been through, and the organisation is still running on the smell of an oily rag with nothing,” she said.
The Healing Foundation’s report calls for comprehensive support for thousands of ageing survivors, including culturally safe aged care, access to records held by private institutions like churches, and removal of medical co-payments. It also urges a redress scheme in all states and territories - Queensland remains the last jurisdiction without one, after Western Australia announced its program last year.
Up until the 1970s, Aboriginal children were systematically removed under assimilation laws. Between 1910 and 1970, an estimated one in 10 to one in three Indigenous children were taken. Many never returned. The foundation’s CEO, Shannon Dodson, said momentum has stalled since the apology. “We’re coming up to 30 years - an entire generation where we’ve lost already thousands of survivors,” she said. “I think that it is a real plight on the country and a real stain on the country that we have not dealt with our duty.”
Despite everything, Aunty Lorraine says she has built a “good life” for her children and grandchildren. She returned to the place she was born - a tree - and took some earth with her. “Going to that tree was like a rebirth. I took some of the dirt, some of the bark and gum leaves and it’s with me beside my bed. I’ve been very fortunate in creating what I had lost.”