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Houston, Jacqui --- "Community Profile: Marjorie Woodrow" [2004] IndigLawB 55; (2004) 6(5) Indigenous Law Bulletin 19


Community Profile: Marjorie Woodrow[∗]

by Jacqui Houston

Marjorie Woodrow has lived a life of turmoil and heartache; an experience common for those of the stolen generations. For Marjorie, these struggles – perhaps more her survival of them – have become her strengths. In a lifetime punctuated by tragedy, Marjorie has lost family through government policy and through death, her fractured life made all the more difficult by the denial of her wages for which she worked through physical and mental anguish. Her determination to secure the rights of Indigenous people, however, has not been beaten. A courageous and stoic advocate for the return of moneys appropriated by past governments, Marjorie’s efforts have seen the stolen moneys issue come to the fore and the establishment of a formal process to address the matter. Formed in May 2004, the Aboriginal Trust Fund Reparation Scheme Panel has held meetings around NSW to gather information on identifying the extent to which Aboriginal people are owed money from Trust Funds operated prior to 1969. The Panel is due to report to the New South Wales Government in October of this year. I spoke with Marjorie on the issues important to her as an Aboriginal Elder.

Background

Marjorie Woodrow’s mother, Ethel Whyman, was a Barkandji woman from central western NSW. She became pregnant with Marjorie after being raped by a white man. Marjorie’s only ‘record of birth’ is a piece of paper dated 1 August 1933 listing the names and ages of children schooled in Carowra Tank near Lake Cargelligo. Taken away as a child of seven, she was told that her mother was dead. After spending three abusive years on a property at Griffith, Marjorie was taken away again, this time by an Aboriginal woman and her partner. At the age of 13, upon the death of her guardian, she started domestic work on a property where she was later accused of theft. The courts ordered her to be placed in Cootamundra Girls Home.

I met 4 of my cousins in there; learnt that they were related. We started to make up [our minds] that we would run away to see if we could find our families. But two got away and me and the other little one got caught because we were too small. I hurt my foot and we had to go to this farmer’s house and she rang the Police. They took us back to the home and there they smacked us around. The old matron said I was the trouble one amongst them. I guess I was talking up a bit then and so I ended up in Parramatta Girls’ Home.

I spent 2 years in Parramatta. In all these homes they put us they really didn’t care who cared for us. As long as we were ‘cared for’. There was molesting going on – it’s lucky that a lot of us didn’t have babies but you know, it’s probably that we were too young to fall pregnant. It was just dreadful.

‘The truth of their lives ...’

We had a reunion in that horrible place, [Parramatta Girls Home,] and to see them crying and what they talked about - it never changed, even for the younger ones. We’ve all had broken homes [since this time]. Our homes never stayed intact – [we wanted] to be happy with our children and our first marriage. It’s been a hard trot for us and I suppose people wouldn’t understand what we went through and how it affected us even with our private lives. We had a hard battle. I lived in a tent with [my husband] for six years waiting for my money to come so I could buy a house and I knew I would have enough to buy a house and perhaps put one of my oldest children through university. Have a comfortable home – to have something nice to come home to. But it never eventuated.

Really and truly how Indigenous people’s truth of their life has never been made known; out in the open.

‘Give it everything you’ve got until the day you die’

But you survive ... I divorced my first husband then met another chap 16 years later. I had a grandson in my house and he was only three-weeks-old when Welfare came and took him out of my hands. They said to my daughter, ‘Pick him up, you’re the mother’. She was only 15. They said, ‘We’ll take him to the hospital.’ I knew then, I had a feeling what they were up to but I couldn’t prove anything. So when my partner came home he went off. He said ‘It’s time you let go and let this bloody government have it in the chest. You should not sit and take it. You should complain about things.’ The Legacy man took it up with a hotline in the paper; in the Sydney Morning Herald. They rang there and they said that they’d give me £10,000 if I’d go [public] and shut the Welfare down. I’d given them 24 hours but he was back at my house within 2 hours when I went to Welfare. They didn’t want that [publicity]; the government knew I meant business.

He’s named after my son that died with his wife and my two-year-old grandchild. I had the other [grandchild]. They were killed and I had the other little girl with me and we brought her up. Only for that I think, the child being there that kept me going. That would have been the end of me but I knew someone had to be available to look after that child so that kept me going.

When you lose a family, it’s a terrible thing. It’s like as if you have a hole in the heart because it’s your child and your daughter-in-law and your grandchild and it was terribly painful. And you get very bitter. I was bitter for some time and then I looked at it square and talked to my partner. He said, ‘It’s time to speak out and get on with your life. There’s a lot of potential in you for this country and you’re not too old to do it. I’d give it everything you’ve got until the day you die. Don’t you forget you’ve got it your way in this business.’

‘One of the Lost Generation’

I wrote a book called One of the Lost Generation and [in 1993] it went back to the [Murrin Bridge] Mission and one of the women went across to Mum’s place and said ‘Ethel, this daughter you’re waiting for, is she white or black?’ She said, ‘She’s fair. She’s my oldest child. She’s my secret of my life.’ When she worked for this person at this property, her husband raped my mum and I was from that rape. When these women had these babies, because they were married men and had money, the child ... they didn’t want it to be known. ... That’s why they were taken.

My children never knew anything about my life until my first book was written. They watched me cry through that. When Link-Up[1] came back and questioned me and wanted to know about my life, it was so painful that we had to talk about these things and I cried through them. And today I can’t cry at all. I’m probably more fortunate to be able to talk about it than the others because it made me strong.

[Mum] lived in that house [in the Mission] for 8 years and never went outside the door; only to go to the toilet. She said she had to stop going to town because they gaoled her every time she went to town. And she was raped in the gaol. It was known that she was raped in there and she let them know but it was swept under the carpet. The hospital and things like that. So all that, when it comes back to you ... People don’t understand what you’ve got to cope with. It’s an awful thing to cope with, not even the government would understand. And they say to you ‘it’s time to go on’. But if it was their life, I wonder if they would say what they are saying.

After my Mum died ... I got my file out and saw where they owed me all this money. I thought ‘This is it now. I’m into it now.’

‘You go a long way with what you do’

That’s what I do now in schools: I educate all the children on every matter, whichever way it goes. Because it’s time for someone to open up and let it out and it’ll never die once you start because your own will keep it up after you go. When they see that one has done it and you were straight on doing it. I’m finding, when looking at some of my leaders, they’re not straight enough. They’re just in there to do for themselves and their families. They don’t care about the next family and that’s not Indigenous way.

Indigenous way is to help one another and to care and share. It doesn’t matter what you’ve got, you share it. Food-ways, clothes-ways, any-ways. As long as everyone is happy and satisfied. But that’s all gone now because the opportunity is there for all our young people [but] they’ve forgot who put it there. All the old ones that spoke up to make sure that the envelope with their pay is in front of them. Not like when we didn’t have it.

The government has never looked at any of us stolen generation in any profitable way whatsoever and that’s what annoys me. We’re qualified now; we’ve got our knowledge and we can pass it on to our young ones very clear and plain. Why [Indigenous kids are] going in to gaols is because of the drink and all the drugs. I went out to my mother’s place and I had to clean it up there. We’d get drugs coming, you had drink, the parents coming home fighting and I witnessed it all. It was frightening.

I think they should be making those places dry. They’re allowed to take a couple of bottles home to drink. But they didn’t have it before, they don’t need it now. They’d find they’d work better if they didn’t have it. When I went back to that Mission we won Tidy Town. The first time an Aboriginal community won Tidy Town and it boosted the place – it looked beautiful.

[Teaching young people] makes you very powerful. You go a long way with what you do. I find that I get on with everyone and it’s very good to have that; to teach the children. They go home and they spread the word. I go out to the gaol now too. I don’t know why more elders aren’t going to visit these children in these places. They need us because when they come out of there it’s not like they’re going to get a job tomorrow.

‘The strength was there for me’

As I went along I started to study about different things and ask questions and I was told about quite a bit of [my culture] and I involved myself into that then because I could feel going back to these places the strength was there for me. They had a lot of carved trees around the place. And I was very fascinated with all these trees. Well growing up and not learning about my culture, I didn’t know what they meant. So I could feel I suppose the way I thought and the way I felt it was like as if they were telling me to go ahead with it. I felt very powerful.

I want to see that the younger ones have the chance to get it into the school and learn [their language and their culture]. There’s so much that can be done with our peoples’ business that it can be shared in a proper way. It’s not right that you’ve got every other culture speaking their language but we weren’t allowed. We were flogged – we were put on bread and water for speaking our language and we had to block it out.

I needed to be much younger to stay there [at the Mission]. I was 70 when I went out there. My mum was 99. She said ‘You’re educated and you dress nice. You have to teach your people.’ And she gave me my stone that she’d left to me ... that’s the healing stone. She initiated me in the house and showed me how to use that powerful stone. And it is powerful.

I learnt more by going home as an adult because I wanted to hear more about it and it’s marvellous because probably as a child I wouldn’t have got half of it. Because I’ve met [relatives] that lived around my aunt and she spoke her lingo every day in that house and they can’t even speak it. They said ‘What’s the use of it?’, because it’s all English now. How sad, to think that I’ve died to get back to what I lost and here I can see them talking like that.

‘Someone’s got to do this for us to get to where we’ve got to go’

I’ve still got two books to do and these two books are essential because the money will go to the Indigenous children – for them to get to where we want them to get. We need [Indigenous] doctors, nurses, lawyers, politicians; we need them all. And we can be our own subjects. We’ve got to be our own subjects. I was listening to one lady on talkback; she wanted to know what was the Aboriginal flag doing on the Harbour Bridge. She was told it was for NAIDOC week and she said ‘I’m glad it’s only NAIDOC because I was going to ring up and tell them to take it down.’ I thought [those people] were all gone but they’re not. It makes a mess of all our young ones; the future.

The government’s got to realise all of this.

‘Until they come to do the right thing ... I don’t think they’ll ever get reconciliation’

There can be no reconciliation until [the government] fix up stuff. I can remember when I was young and I was just coming back into finding out about all the – radicals they used to call them – and activists like Kathy Walker and Mum Shirl and Charlie Perkins. I learnt a lot by listening and supporting them. We went from there and worked side by side. Until they come to do the right thing by Aboriginal people ... I don’t think they’ll ever get reconciliation. It’d be a shock to me if they do. There’s too many things to be fixed up. Every state now, bar Tasmania, is responsible for the stolen wages and every state has got to answer.

‘They should be the voices’

You have all these Missions. They should be the voices. Have a day or a couple of days with them and ask ‘what would you like?’ So that it can be fed back to the government because their ministers cannot come out and do what I’m talking about because nobody would give it to them. But send your own out there properly. I would no more take any of my people down for one dime.

Our leaders – we’ve got some good leaders in there.

‘My name will never die ... they can keep it going’

When I spoke at the Opera House on the 26th of May [2004] I said, ‘we all suffered terribly in these places. All the carers we had over us and we had terrible lives but I’m not here for you to say sorry to me. I want your support to make the government straighten out the business and come clean and do the right thing by Indigenous people. Then maybe we can all work side by side in a happy way.’

This [stolen moneys campaign] is for all of us; all their wages. I’m letting my people know not to be afraid of the media because you look after them and you treat them right and you’ll get a fair deal from the media. It goes both ways. Without the media I wouldn’t have got to where I am today.

It’s the future I worry about, not now, the future and what I leave behind. They’re going to come back to that and my name will never die because it’ll be there so they can take it up from there and keep it going.

For more information on the Aboriginal Trust Fund Reparation Scheme (‘ATFRS’), see www.aftrs.nsw.gov.au. Copies of Marjorie Woodrow’s books, Long Time Coming Home and One of the Lost Generation can be obtained by calling 02 4392 5606. The Indigenous Law Centre has prepared a fact sheet ‘Stolen Wages’ and Entitlements: Aboriginal Trust Funds in New South Wales and a submission to the ATFRS. Both documents can be accessed at <www.ilc.unsw.edu.au> or by calling 02 9385 2252 to request a copy. My sincere thanks to Marjorie for welcoming me to her home and giving so generously of her time to speak to the ILB.


[∗] Interview with Marjorie Woodrow, Elder, (Central Coast NSW, 6 August 2004).

[1] Link-Up services are organisations funded by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (‘ATSIC’) to assist with the process of family tracing and reunion for members of the Stolen Generations. For more information call 1800 624 332.

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