Reconciliation Week 2019

6 Morning tea at the Maritime Museum

A report by student social worker Amaleed Al-Maliki

Fremantle Maritime Museum hosted a very successful morning tea on 30 May, as part of Reconciliation Week 2019. Representing Tuart Place at this event were social worker Jan Newman, volunteer social worker Yoyo, and me. The Reconciliation Week morning tea featured two very interesting speakers – Justin Martin from Djurandi Dreaming (a tour guiding and Aboriginal art company), and fifth-generation West Australian Mike Lefroy.

Both speakers told stories about the sand/ limestone bar in Fremantle that used to cross the mouth of the river, adjacent to where the Museum stands today. Their stories were told from two very different perspectives.

Justin spoke about the importance of limestone to the Whadjuk people, as a collector of fresh water and food, and also told a Dreamtime story about how the Southern Cross was formed.

Mike spoke about the sand/limestone bar in the context of his engineering ancestors – unlike the Aboriginal people, they wanted to change the landscape and his great-grandfather, engineer C.Y. O’Connor, blasted the limestone bar to make Fremantle harbour.

Mike spoke movingly about his greatgrandfather’s achievements, as well as his mental health struggles and tragic death.

The two stories were wonderful to hear from these very talented speakers and certainly captured the spirit of Reconciliation Week. At the Maritime Museum morning tea (L-R) Amaleed, Mike Lefroy, Justin Martin, Jan and Yoyo.

Salute to service of Aboriginal veterans

The military service of Aboriginal people was remembered on 29 May 2019, at the 12th State War Memorial service in Kings Park.

Services commemorating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander veterans, from the Boer War to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iran, took place across Australia as part of Reconciliation Week.

About 500 Aboriginal people enlisted in World War I and about 3000 in World War II. Others joined up for the subsequent Korea and Vietnam conflicts, peacetime service and more recently many Aboriginal soldiers served in Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yamaji man and Korean War veteran Len Ogilvie (91) of Innaloo, signed up after a run-in with a policeman in Mount Magnet before the 1950-1953 war on the Korean Peninsula.

“Before I joined the army, as an Aboriginal man you had no rights. In any town you went to, the police would want to know who you were,” he said.

Having experienced basic ‘equality’ in the army, when Len returned home after seven years of service he noticed some change in social attitudes.

“They’d say you have done a good job; that you’d fought for your country,” he said. As a child, Len lived at Moore River Mission (later known as Mogumber).

Its always a pleasure to see Len and his wife Jean when they visit Tuart Place.

Len & Jean Ogilvie at the Memorial Service

Large numbers of people, both in Australia and overseas, have felt re-abused during badly designed redress schemes set up to ‘alleviate their suffering’ and, unfortunately, redress processes have considerable capacity to create injustice and inflict further harm on survivors.

To prevent this form of re-abuse, we need to examine the circumstances that prompt redress initiatives and closely analyse the processes used to deliver them.

We must also identify the elements of redress that do and don’t work, and – obviously – survivors must be involved in this process.

The redressing of institutional child abuse was a key focus of the 2019 Conference of the Society for the History of Children and Youth, held on 26-28 June at ACU North Sydney. International academics and lawyers met with Australian scholars and care leaver advocates throughout the conference during a series of seminars.

FACT Chairperson Cevrina Reed and Tuart Place Director Dr Philippa White joined Professors Stephen Winter (Auckland University) and Kathleen Daly (Griffith University) in presenting a session called ‘Monetary redress of institutional abuse’.

As a leader in the Tuart Place community, Cevrina shared some observations on the impacts of redress processes on fellow survivors of institutional abuse, as well as her personal experience of participating in a redress scheme.

Philippa and Cevrina highlighted some avoidable problems in redress schemes, and made recommendations for better redress.

Essential elements of good redress include: timeliness, personalised individual contact with survivors, and systems that are sensitive to survivors’ need to feel heard and believed. Congratulations to conference organiser Professor Shurlee Swain and ACU on hosting the first SHCY conference to be held in Australia. For further information, visit http://www. shcy.org/conferences/

Cevrina Reed, Shurlee Swain & Philippa White

Research spotlight on the Royal Commission

Rebecca (Bec) Moran is a PhD candidate with the University of NSW and is researching personal and political dialogues on child sexual abuse.

Readers may remember Bec from her visits to Tuart Place in 2018, when she interviewed care leavers about their experiences of making a ‘victim submission’ to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

During her research Bec conducted a total of 26 interviews, seeking survivors’ views on the Royal Commission process, and the ways in which participating has affected their lives.

Bec’s preliminary findings show that people who found making a submission to be a healing experience generally felt they had been heard, believed, valued, and respected throughout the process.

Survivors who reported being retraumatised and distressed by participating in the Royal Commission felt that the experience echoed earlier responses to disclosure, leaving them feeling unheard, disbelieved, unwelcome, and unsupported.

Bec’s research has valuable implications for services working with survivors of child sexual abuse – particularly those engaging with processes that are by their nature more challenging than the Royal Commission, such as civil claims or redress applications.

We are pleased to welcome Bec back to Tuart Place to present a summary of her research findings at 1pm on Monday 21st October. Service providers, academics, and other agencies working with survivors of child sexual abuse are also invited to this session.

If you would like to attend, please contact Vicky on 6140-2380 or admin@tuartplace.org.

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