1A little word from the author : English is not my mothertongue so if there's any mistake, tell me ;) This is a written expression I had to do in English lesson. The subject was, word for word : "Imagine you were one of the Stolen Generation. Speak about your experience and how it changed your life." It's the story of a fictional character so if there's any resemblance to the story of someone in reality, it's purely coincidental. It's not great literature, but I hope you'll enjoy it :)
By the way, I won't write any rest so don't wait for it. Sorry for those who hoped :S
Un petit mot de l'auteure : Pour les non anglophones qui ont tout de même cliqué, sachez que je compte faire une version française :) Voilà, voilà !
The Stolen Generation
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It was a long time before I discovered what really happened to me. History calls us the Stolen Generation ; Aboriginal children of Australia were taken away from their parents by the government with the aim of being educated like White children and receiving the best that White civilisation could offer.
I do not clearly remember my "kidnapping" like my biological parents faces. My memories are blurred : a woman crying, a man calling out after his son of ten to flee, the arm of a police officer strongly wrapped around my waist, approaching the car where my big brother finally joined me. His arms around me made me feel so safe that I fell asleep.
Then, there was the place where we had to learn "good manners". My brother always said it was a hellish jail and nothing else. He was beaten for nothing. Often.
As for me, I was a very, very young child. I was two, maybe three years old, so my mind was easy to manipulate. I was torn between the "nurses", who looked after us, and my brother, who always repeated to me like a mantra : "They are lying, they are all liars. Do not trust them, Jenny. Never, ever, ever." But my brother was a rebel, a violent one. Violence scared me, so he scared me too. The little girl I was, preferred listening to the nice ladies who spoke gently than to the scary boy, her beloved big brother had became. I spoke to him more rarely until not at all. One night, he came soflty to me and said "Farewell" when he thought that I was asleep. Then, he crossed the entrance and that was the last I saw of him. He vanished into the night. They never told me that they had found his corpse in the desert, not far behind the rabbit-proof-fence. He was dead because of starvation. I learned it by myself twenty years later.
After he was gone, even if we did not talk to each other anymore, he was still my brother and I felt very lonely and sad. At the same time, a White couple without children fell in love with me and decided to adopt me. I became Jennifer Smith, the four year old daugther of Edward and Jane Smith, who truly loved her from the bottom of their heart.
Thanks to them, I had a wonderful childhood and a good life. Although, when I was pregnant with my first child, I felt the unstoppable need to know my story, my real story of the time before the arrival of my White parents. I did research for years and this is how I finally knew my whole story as a child of the Stolen Generation.