Cirrus@Austlit

'The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s (HREOC) inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families provided a forum for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and others to speak of their experiences of removal in a national public setting. The testimony provided to the inquiry fulfilled a number of functions and operated at a number of levels. The telling of individual stories of removal was important to Indigenous people in terms of representing their experience and contributed to a level of ownership of the inquiry by those who participated. David Frances, chairman of the Kimberley Stolen Generations Steering Committee, for example, explained that the report was important in telling the ‘true story’ of what happened to Indigenous people ‘because future generations will read it to understand what happened to us’. In their work on Stolen Generations testimony, Rosanne Kennedy and Tikka Wilson point out that in the inquiry report, Bringing Them Home, testimony is used as evidence of the harms of removal, as part of the construction of a history of removal and as an address to the Australian community to solicit an active engagement from readers.' (Introduction)