When Not Everyone Is Sorry

An Apology for This

National Sorry Day, 26 May 2024

Image of Point McLeay Mission 1860. The mission included a school, church and community housing. Photograph by Herbert Read, AIATSIS Collection.

I recently participated in a yarning circle where I had the privilege of sitting with brothers and sisters who belong to the Wiradjuri and Wurundjeri peoples of the land where I was born.

I started chatting with the woman next to me during the break, who disclosed to me that she had been taken from her mother when she was six years old. Her mother wasn’t able to find her until she had grown up and was living as an adult in her mid-twenties. I guessed from her age that this must have happened in the 1960s.

Could this be possible, I wondered? So, I looked it up, and yes. The Stolen Generations are the people who were removed from their families by federal and state governments and church missions, lawfully, under acts of parliaments, between approximately 1905 and 1967. In some places, ‘half-caste’ children were being taken until the 1970s. Official government estimates are that this affected one in three indigenous children some regions. Of course, the fact that as many as 18,900 indigenous children were in out-of-home care in 2022, demonstrates the generational trauma that remains with us, and arguably the unofficial continuation of the policy today.

I was listening to this woman share her story, knowing that the reason I was born in Australia is because of the White Australia policy, which enabled my grandparents to migrate to Australia in the 1950s for five British pounds. They were escaping the poverty and post-war trauma they were raised with in London, struggling with their own battles to survive the systems that had failed to protect them from violence in the home, and the neglect that resulted from post-war PTSD, depression, addiction and suicide. These were the result of the injustice of poverty, but never of race; never because of the colour of their skin. In fact, our skin colour had afforded us opportunities because we lived in times when our government wanted to keep Australia white.

I received this woman’s story. She didn’t know mine.   

Two things immediately stretched the capillaries of my soul.

Firstly, I wondered how a mother could survive this. I thought about what it would be like to spend fourteen+ years not having any idea where my child is, what could be happening to her and no way of reaching her. I thought of missing her childhood, not being there for the critical moments of development and the memories that shape us forever. Not being a witness to these moments and having no pen to author any of the story. No hugs. No kisses. Wondering every day if she was okay, knowing she most likely was not.

It is unfathomably, indescribably cruel.

I also found myself marveling at this woman’s grace and strength, to be sharing her story with me, a stranger, at all. How had she managed to face her adult life, embrace joy, form relationships of trust and find the courage to tell her story; even to make peace with herself?

She is a role model.

I recently had a woman ask me how on earth I could remain a priest in the church, given that I had experienced abuse in the system growing up. I don’t compare this to being forcibly removed from my mother because of my race, but I found myself immediately thinking of my indigenous brothers and sisters, in the face of her question.

I thought of the thousands of people who continue to live within a system that abused them, and whilst in the healing process, find the strength to contribute to that system, tell their story, and work towards positive change for future generations.

They do this while their suffering is queried and doubts muttered-under-breath as to whether ‘it was really in the best interests of the child.’

How can I do it?

I thought, ‘How do they do it?’

No victim ever owes this to anyone. They are entitled to run away and do whatever they need, to survive and heal.

And yet, we know that we cannot heal without these brave people who bring their pain into the circle and speak it to strangers, knowing it won’t always be received with love or even acceptance, all while we gather on stolen land. There will always be the deniers, the minimisers and people like me, who want to be a part of reconciliation but who come to the table having benefited from what has been taken and desecrated.

I had to tell the woman who asked me how I can stay in the church, that even though my brain knows the answers, my heart is playing catch-up. This ‘catch-up’ could take years. My faith has to stand in the breach and navigate the tension, until it miraculously closes.

Eventually, I look like the woman I met at the yarning circle.

And this is why I will join my nation today and every day, in saying “Sorry.”

I know that sorry doesn’t fix everything, but I hope that by apologising we can sow a little more day-by-day strength into the brave ones, to keep going.

Renewal happens in every imperfect and shaky attempt to speak the truth. 

Article written by Heather Cetrangolo, 26 May 2024