Although there have been expressions of apology to Aboriginal people from different parts of our Church, including Pope John Paul II in 2001, last week's national apology is very relevant because our Church has been so closely connected to many people of the Stolen Generations.
In his speech in support of the apology, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd referred to The Bungalow in Alice Springs. Situated at the Old Telegraph Station, The Bungalow was the government institution where children who had one parent who was not an Aborigine (half-caste) were brought from many parts of the Northern Territory prior to their being sent to a church mission where they would stay until they were old enough to live independently. The Catholic mission to which many of the children were sent was at Garden Point on Melville Island, off the coast from Darwin.
I met many of these members of the Stolen Generations when I worked as chaplain to Aboriginal people in Darwin and Alice Springs in the 1980s and 90s. They had grown up at Garden Point and moved to the mainland. By the time I met them they had families, had become settled and respected members of the general community and many were strong Catholics. Indeed, they formed the backbone of the Aboriginal Catholic communities in Darwin and Alice Springs.
Although a similar situation applied in the Kimberleys in Western Australia with the mission at Beagle Bay, my experience is limited to the Northern Territory. I spent many hours with people as they wrestled with the ambiguities involved in the experience. Some were bitter about it. Others said that they would never have got an education if they had stayed with their natural families. Another said, ‘If I had not gone to Garden Point I would be a drunk in the creek bed in Alice Springs'.
Some articulated a theology that since they had no mothers to care for them, Our Lady was their mother and Sister Annunciata was her representative. There were stories of great sadness, such as the memory that some had of being driven away in a truck while their mothers cried as they watched them go. Almost everybody felt profoundly the severance of the connection with family, language and culture. Some have never been able to find their natural parents. Others found them, but found the connection too difficult to make and returned to Darwin to the ‘family' bond they had with others who had grown up at Garden Point. However by far the dominant feeling was deep sadness and empathy for the mothers who had their children taken from them.
Many had great love for the missionaries. When Sister Annunciata, the OLSH nun who ‘mothered' the girls at Garden Point, died in Sydney in 1979 the women had her body brought back to be buried in Darwin. And almost all the people I met exhibited that remarkable Aboriginal quality whereby the relationship with individuals meant far more than anything those individuals may have done for them or against them. This even extended to a man whose job it had been to pick up the children from their communities and take them to Garden Point.
We should spare a thought for those priests, sisters, brothers and lay missionaries who served the people at Garden Point. They will have mixed feelings on this day of apology. Maybe what should sustain them is not just the memory of the love, care and teaching they gave but the memories of the privileged engagement they have had with the people of Garden Point and the fact that as individuals, rather than as helpers in the implementation of government policy or even as missionaries, they occupy a special place in the hearts of those people.
The making of the apology is an emotional experience in all sorts of ways. A couple of expressions from Aboriginal people in Mt Druitt were ‘it's like a weight off our shoulders' and ‘there will be more co-operation from Aboriginal people now'. If the apology is like a weight lifted from our shoulders it should make steps forward in the journey of reconciliation lighter and thus easier to make.
By Fr Pat Mullins SJ, the Australian Jesuits' Assistant for Ministry Among Indigenous Peoples.