Raysofhope

ByEujinyCho

Coota Girls Aboriginal Corporation: where there was once a domestic training institution for Indigenous Australian girls taken from their families is now the office for the Coota Girls Aboriginal Corporation - founded in 2013 by former residents of Cootamundra Girls’ Home. Now run by survivors and their descendants, this organisation directly addresses the trauma of the Stolen Generations and the healing needs of survivors Its work involves establishing healing programs, sharing the stories of survivors, reconnecting survivors and their families, and linking survivors to support services.

Tangible action

Reports: In Australia, the ‘Bringing Them Home’ report of 1997 was a pivotal step forward that addressed the nation’s general ignorance of the Stolen Generation - it undertook extensive hearings in every capital city and many regional areas and took testimonies from thousands of survivors, ultimately concluding that the Stolen Generation was an ‘act of genocide’ and making recommendations for funding, reparations and official apologies. In America, the more recent Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative of 2022 involved investigations of over 400 boarding schools as well as discussion with local tribes across the country The report explains the laws and policies that allowed for the establishment of these schools and the key institutions involved in running them, as well as the conditions that Indigenous children were forced into; similarly to Bringing Them Home, it also suggests pathways towards justice

Young activists: Dujuan Hoosan, a 15 year-old Arrernte and Garrwa boy from Alice Springs in Australia, experienced frequent brushes with the law in his youth. In 2019, at the age of 12, Hoosan travelled to Geneva and became the youngest person to address the UN Human Rights Council. His speech exposed the glaring issues in his country’s