CANARVON WOMAN STOLEN FROM HER FAMILY AT THE AGE OF THREE

National Sorry Day , May 26, marks 25 years since the HREOC tabled the 'Bringing Them Home' or 'Stolen Children's Report in Federal Parliament. Over a decade later, former PM Kevin Rudd gave the National Apology to the Stolen Generations.

Yamatji, Nyungar elder, Aunty Rhonda Spratt is a survivor of the stolen generation.  She was only 3 years old when she was taken from her family and placed on a mission in the Gascoyne.

“I often wondered where did my mother go. All of a sudden I was with my family and the next minute I was on a mission with lots of other Aboriginal children and just white Missionaries.”

“Growing up without your family leaves a hole in your heart and your spirit.”

She said her mental health suffered in her mid-teens.

“When I was sixteen I didn’t want to live I tried to suicide a few times because nobody loved me, I didn’t even love myself. I had to learn self-love and to know that I was worth it, that I deserved to live. That was a changing point where I learned to accept who I was because I heard so much negativity about being Aboriginal.”

Ms Spratt found out where her mother was after she received a letter from her and memorized the address.

“I memorized that address because I knew I’d lose the envelope. I started writing to her every week but she never got a letter from me. I’d give it to the missionaries and they’d chuck it straight in the bin but I didn’t know that.”

Eventually, the missionaries wrote to the station where her mother was, asking if she visit.

“They wrote a letter asking if we could come and visit and we got a letter back saying we could go so in 1967 I spent one week with her but then I had to go back because the government-owned Aboriginal people from birth to twenty-one.”

In 2017, Aunty Rhonda Collard-Spratt returned to Carnarvon Native Mission with her 'mission sister' Aunty Shirley Balby. It was 50 years since Rhonda had left there as a 16-year-old.

Ms Spratt is an author and wrote a book called Alice’s Daughter. A memoir about being a stolen generation child.

“It shares my thoughts and feelings, my heartaches, my joy for the arts, and meeting my family. The best thing that happened to me was having all my other family, my brothers and sisters - the mission mob - we can share our history together, we connect on a spiritual level and a friendship level. That bond is so close nobody can ever break that because we experience the same thing and we were there at the same time.”

Ms Spratt says the National Sorry Day should be just as important as other significant events that have impacted First Nation people. 

“I’d like this day to be honored, to be remembered. I’d like to see all our important events on the mainstream calendar, not just Austalia Day - Invasion Day, Sorry Day, Marbo day.”

In 2017, Aunty Rhonda Collard-Spratt returned to Carnarvon Native Mission with her 'mission sister' Aunty Shirley Balby. It was 50 years since Rhonda had left there as a 16-year-old.