Stolen Generation look to future

Daisy Howard reaches inside her handbag and pulls out an old, framed black-and-white photograph. The picture shows a dozen little girls standing close together, some smiling, others looking down, burying their faces.

The Broome grandmother points to a slender girl in the middle, no older than 10 with long, dark hair and an uncertain expression.

It marked the first day of Ms Howard’s stay in Beagle Bay as one of the Stolen Generation, but at the time she didn’t understand.

A similar quizzical look was evident on her face last week, as she sat quietly surrounded by friends and visitors at the Kimberley Stolen Generation to mark the fifth anniversary of the national apology.

“The hardest thing for me was trying to understand why it happened to me,” she said. “There was nothing to say why they took us … the pain is still there.” Ms Howard never met her mother. She was taken away at the age of two and sent to Moola Bulla near Halls Creek, before later moving to Beagle Bay in 1946.

“We didn’t know anything, why we moved there … we were asking but no one could answer it.”

Decades later, Ms Howard found some comfort when she made an emotional trip to Canberra and joined countless other members of the stolen generation to publicly hear Kevin Rudd’s national apology.

It was a major milestone in Ms Howard’s life.

“The feeling was it was really good and strong … it was one of the best things ever,” she said. “It took a long time, but it happened, and when it did, it took some of the pain away.”

As she reflected on her life and family on the special occasion, Ms Howard said her wish was for younger generations to remember the history but to look forward instead of focusing on the past.