The Centrecare Reconciliation Action Plan Working group held a morning tea at Victoria Gardens in East Perth, to jointly recognise National Reconciliation Week, and to officially launch the Centrecare Reconciliation Action Plan.
Our thanks to Centrecare's Glenda Kickett for the 'Welcome to Country' and for the reconciliation reading as reproduced below.
NEVER MORE
(Pauline McLeod from The Lost Children edited by Coral Edwards and Peter Read, 1997)
Separated
Fretting, sad.
Given into other hands.
Parents, sister, brothers gone.
Wondering what did
I do wrong!?!
Institution big and cold
All this happen
When one year old
Confused and lost
I didn’t know
That the Government decreed it so.
Different places
Till five year old
Then went to family
As I was told
(Going once…Going twice!
Sold!
To that lovely couple
Who’s not too old…)
So that is how it all began
Simply taken from
My home and land.
Who would lift an eye today
After all it didn’t happen yesterday!
But remnants of the child’s cry
Echo loud in my mind.
As I feel the inner fear
Of rejection, injustice coming near.
A victim of circumstance
I must fight, my life to enhance.
To be totally free of it all
I must live through it once more.
For my spirit and culture to be as one
I must go back to where it all begun.
The child of one must be taken in hand
And shown through her ancestral land.
Where the old people will heal her heart
As her culture she becomes a part.
Never more to be taken away
As it has happended in her young day.
Make sure it never happens again
Please! No more, the hurt, the pain.
(page 22)