Breaking the cycle of taking Aboriginal children from their families was the theme of the Sorry Day ceremony held in Dubbo on Thursday.
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Their compelling stories of those who endured it were told at a solemn Sorry Day ceremony led by the Dubbo Regional Aboriginal Health Service.
It comes 25 years after the Bringing them Home Report revealed one in 10 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families between 1910 to 1970.
"We need to break the cycle in this generation," Wiradjuri elder Margaret Walker told a large gathering of the local Indigenous community gathered at Victoria Park on Thursday morning.
"In NSW, I am the eighth generation of this trauma that we need to break. We don't need to be diagnosed that this is what we have got and be medicated and sent away. We need to tell our stories.
"We need to heal as a family and the mainstream out there are forgetting the parents and their families who need help as well, stop taking our children."
Ms Walker said the intergenerational trauma of forcible removal from families has been the cause of many mental health issues and social problems plaguing the Indigenous community which is why she has been devoting her work to helping Indigenous inmates in jails.
Kamilaroi elder Lorraine Peeters said she, then aged four, and her three sisters then aged 12, 13 and 14 were forcibly removed from their parents and "placed at Cootamundra's domestic home for Aboriginal girls to work for families" while her two brothers went to a boys' home to be trained as farmhands.
"We were stripped of everything that connected us to our family, language and community, and to reclaim that has been a huge journey," she said. "We must always remember those who had passed on, those who never found their way home and those who are still finding their way back home."
"We must always remember those who had passed on, those who never found their way home and those who are still finding their way back home."
- Stolen Generation survivor Lorraine Peeters
A mental health therapist, Ngemba woman Maryanne Frail addressed the crowd to introduce LinkUp, a community organisation working with Dubbo Aboriginal Medical Service and other health networks to assist families removed from their families.
"I was involved as a Stolen Generation because my grandfather used to take children away and then he would return them back in the middle of the night," Ms Frail said. "It's such a privilege to hold a person's hand and walk through the journey with them."
Cade Goodwin of Dubbo South Academy's Clontarf Foundation came to the event with Zack, Mardi, Khalil and Kayam. "Most of our families have a direct connection to the Stolen Generation and we understand the impact to generations including our boys that's why we are here to pay respect."
Community worker Jim Forrest, of Connecting Communities for the Indigenous community said the removal of Aboriginal children was still occurring in many ways despite the recommendations in the 1997 report initiated by the then Attorney General, Sir William Deane, that children removed from troubled homes must be cared for by their nearest next of kin instead of non-Indigenous foster carers.
At 67, Mr Forrest said he has not stopped working for the service because of the need for advocacy on housing, family and community services and reconnecting their families.
He currently has 15 clients needing homes and they are among the 5000 waiting list on social housing across Orana.
"I am still fostering boys after I've raised nine, they're taking kids and making it too hard a basket to get them back to their families."
DAMS chief executive officer Phil Naden said they have a highly-skilled team that specifically assists Stolen Generation survivors and their descendants who reside in the region and they directly work with families.