Aunty Lorraine Peeters's last memory of her homeland was watching the mission gates fade into the distance from the back of a rattly truck.
CONTENT WARNING: This story discusses sexual assault.
After being snatched from her parents at Brewarrina Mission in north-west New South Wales in 1942, four-year-old Lorraine was taken 650 kilometres south with her five sisters to Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls.
The Wailwan Gamilaroi woman's life was about to change forever.
"The first thing they do [at the former home] is line you up as a family," Aunty Lorraine, whose ancestral home is Warren on Wayilwan country, explained.
"Any clothing you wore was taken away, your hair was shaven, so you're standing there, with no clothes on."
Separated from her sisters, Aunty Lorraine described being ripped from her family and culture and "plonked into another" as a government-led assimilation strategy to get rid of her people.
"Brainwashed, abused, and the whip — if you ever used your own culture," she said while reflecting on the former home's mantra of 'act white, speak white, be white'.
"I really think it was a genocide of our race."
Under state government legislation until 1969, hundreds of First Nations girls in New South Wales were forced to live at the former Cootamundra Girls' Home, about two hours drive from Canberra.
The institution operated from 1912 to 1969, training girls to become domestic servants. Their small wages would be paid to trust accounts with the Aborigines Protection Welfare Board, under the Aborigines Protection Act 1909-1969.
"If we wanted anything, that would have to come out of the wages that we earned. But we didn't see the wages, they went right back to head office," Aunty Lorraine said.
"If I wanted more underwear or something that would have taken approval from head office. "
Aunty Lorraine describes Cootamundra Girls Home's blatant assimilation approach as having the "Black belted out of her", but added, the behind-the-scenes abuse was just as horrific.
'A smorgasbord for the matron'
Aunty Lorraine says, for her, an important part of decolonising and healing trauma was facing her abusers.
At Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls, Aunty Lorraine was constantly told to fear Aboriginal people, especially Aboriginal men.
But it was a white woman, the person who was meant to protect her from harm, that became Aunty Lorraine's abuser while she slept in the small childrens' dorm known as the "isolation room".
"The children that went through that isolation room, the four to six years olds, were like a smorgasbord for her [the matron] every night," she recalled.
"I had that for two years before I moved up to the main dormitory.
"I thought it was just a game she was playing. She'd come in and tickle and go in under the covers.
"We didn't wear underwear to bed so she was free to do what she wanted."
Aunty Lorraine blocked the memory of the abuse and metaphorically stored it away in what she calls her "bags".
It wasn't until Aunty Lorraine watched ABC journalist Sarah Ferguson's three-part documentary Revelation, on the criminal priests of the Catholic Church, that triggered her into facing what had happened to her as a child.
"I had to go back to Coota, sit in that room and bring my four-year-old self out of there and grieve for her — that I left her there, all that time," she said.
"When I sat on that bed it was like children screaming, then the memories further came back to me.
"That process is so healing."
'We were slaves to white families'
In the 1940s and 1950s, Australia experienced a labour shortage, Aunty Lorraine said, and Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls was fundamental to the process of training young First Nations girls to work as servants or farm-hands for wealthy non-Indigenous families.
"We were slaves to white families," she said.
Aunty Lorraine worked as a servant in rural New South Wales, from age 15.
"The final part of your training was how to serve high tea to white families that you going to work," she recalled.
"To pass the test, you had to learn how to cook a sponge cake from scratch and present it to the matron with fine china."
Aunty Lorraine passed the test and worked for two families.
Although she said they were "really nice people", she was never once invited to sit down with her so-called employers to enjoy a slice of cake and tea.
"You didn't sit there with the owners, that was taboo. Your place was in the kitchen, not at the table."
More than 570 Coota Girls children were sent to work for over 1200 employers, according to the Coota Girls Aboriginal Corporation but that number could be higher.
"It wasn't only cattle stations or sheep stations, there were doctors," she said.
"People that wanted domestic help and we paid for that, that money went straight back to government."
Scared of Koori men
The abuse Aunty Lorriane suffered as a little girl, and the poor conditions she faced while "in service", was not the only reason for her grief.
What she grieves most, is her family.
"We weren't allowed letters, they (family) wouldn't be allowed to come anywhere near us," she explained.
One day Lorraine's grandfather came to the former girl's home looking for her and her sisters, she said, but because she was "brainwashed to think all Aboriginal men were dangerous" — she ran away "terrified".
"This was all part of their breeding out of our race, so we wouldn't grow up and marry our own kind," she said.
"When I turned 18 and went to Sydney, if I saw a Koori man approaching on the same side of the street, I'd cross over.
"The fear was still inside me at 18 years of age."
Put back together
Marumali is a Gamilaroi word for "put back together" — it's the name of Lorraine Peeters's program that helps other members of the Stolen Generations, and the wider community, work through and understand trauma.
For Aunty Lorraine, a vital part of Marumali's strategy is truth-telling and sharing her experience and learnings with the next generation, including her granddaughter Meagan.
At Aunty Lorraine's home in south-east Queensland, she took Meagan through her Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls records for the first time.
"Right through these documents there's a report on your behaviour, how clean you were as a child and how you behaved," Aunty Lorraine said.
"My job was 'yard duties' at four years old."
Meagan pointed out the relentless record keeping on her Gran's skin colour changing, through the seasons, as a young child in the 1940s.
"My skin colour is medium in this document," Aunty Lorriane said.
"But through the other documents sometimes it's 'fair, fair again, back to medium.'"
Aunty Lorraine and Meagan explained keeping the girls light-skinned was a priority because potential adopters or employers preferred lighter skinned girls.
Aunty Lorraine was never adopted by a white family, which she is thankful for.
After trying "every trick in the book" to get out "the service", Aunty Lorraine eventually studied to be a nurse.
But she had a bigger calling — to find her belonging and start healing.
"There was something more powerful I had to go and try," she said.
"Which was home and country and my spirit. Where I originated from which was out there in Warren on the Beemunnel [Reserve].
"My country is Wailwan Gamilaraay. And that completes me just knowing that."
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2023-06-03 20:04:52Z
CBMiamh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIzLTA2LTA0L2xvcnJhaW5lLXBlZXRlcnMtdHJ1dGgtb2YtYWJ1c2UtYXQtY29vdGFtdW5kcmEtZ2lybHMtaG9tZS8xMDI0MzcxMjLSAShodHRwczovL2FtcC5hYmMubmV0LmF1L2FydGljbGUvMTAyNDM3MTIy
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