An historic partnership for a significant Boorloo location was announced on Thursday evening, with the site of the former Sister Kate's home now to be jointly managed by Yokai (WA Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation) with the Beananging Kwuurt Institute (BKI).
The property is owned by the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress WA through its agency BKI, with the Memorandum of Understanding between BKI and Yokai: Healing Our Spirit signed on Monday.
Services are expected to resume soon at the site, with plans for redevelopment and new buildings for accommodating truth-telling and healing programs.
Dr Jim Morrison announced the landmark transition during a talk at Murdoch University on Thursday.
"Our organisation has been around for a while, and we've got the history with the people that were associated with BKI. That is, the late Reverend Sealin Garlett was very supportive of the work we did. He probably never missed a Sorry Day when he was well and was always on hand to do the Eldership responsibility, Welcome the Country. He gave a prayer in Noongar in one of our languages when we officially took over A.O. Neville's office," Dr Morrison told National Indigenous Times.
"For a lot of years now, we've had an interest in renovating the missions to make them into therapeutic or healing centres… what it lends itself to was virtual reality of missions whereby you've done the laser camera work and the drone camera work, and you've got all the dimensions… And you put the helmet on and you can walk through the mission and hear the voices of people that were in the mission.
"We were looking for every opportunity where we need safe places… (there are) far too many grief and loss issues. So, the space is important."
Dr Morrison noted that Yokai's recently released documentary, Genocide In the Wildflower State, shines a light on the reality of white supremacy and eugenics driving the policies that created the Stolen Generations.
"Having been aware of Sister Kate's home… that was fairly well incorporated in our documentary. I started my leadership with a gentleman by the name the late Rob Riley (who was a Sister Kate's resident as a child). And when we were 18, we supported the first voice in in Australia, the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee. And that's more than 52 years ago."
Dr Morrison has received an honourary doctorate from Murdoch University in recognition of his many years of work and advocacy for Stolen Generations survivors.
"We feel it be a perfect opportunity to launch the partnership (to manage the Sister Kate's site), in line with one of the recommendations of the Bringing Them Home report, and in line with what the Healing Foundation have done recently, with their report – Are You Waiting For Us To Die?
"We have been campaigning for our redress or compensation or reparations for stolen people in this country. WA and Queensland are missing out. So, we've certainly lifted the profile of Stolen Generations issues in this country."
Dr Morrison noted that Western Australia is "probably the worst state" for child removals.
"Sister Kate's is along the line of many other places that were institutions. We've done eight missions, put them into a virtual reality set up to look at healing for people that were taken to these places. At Sister Kate's some of the buildings have gone, but they're all recorded. We have maps and people's memories to help establish these places of healing."
Dr Morrison told National Indigenous Times church-run institutions had been particularly atrocious for Indigenous children.
"It happened more with the churches (than the state-run places), when the churches got involved. So, a lot of sexual abuse occurred, and a lot of our members have been victims of that. The national figures as of November last year, about 50,000 victims (of institutional abuse) right across the board, and 38 per cent are Aboriginal."
Dr Morrison said Yokai and BKI will work with other healing centres to collaborate and enhance the work being done.
"I see it (the plans for Sister Kate's) as more of a truth-telling centre… where truth can be told, and then - once the truth is understood - people may seek support to enable their trauma to be looked after. We will have referral services there as well.
"We wouldn't see it in isolation, but working with other ACCOs (Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations), and not being a solo silo.
"We feel we've fairly well geared up to support our community, a healing centre concept plan. We're not working alone, we've done a lot of work with the Healing Foundation, and they've, in turn, done work around investigating healing centres around the world.
"We've looked at all of that research to see how best we can support Stolen Generations people… It's social and emotional wellbeing."
Dr Morrison said the partnership between Yokai and BKI has worked closely and investigated what a design for the site "might look like".
"We've had 175 built environment students visit these missions and do research in support… we may look at other states and what's happened elsewhere, we also see close collaboration between Stolen people and Elder Care Services, and initially, that's probably how we'll resource the building. Our Elder care workers will potentially be based there. Our people can then visit. There's plenty of room for parking at the moment.
"Our (Yokai) office, the Neville office, is right at smack bang in the middle of the city, and it's quite an awful place to visit anyway, given its history. So, we'd be looking at developing. We just got an assurance (on Wednesday) of funding from NIAA to the end of 2027. The support is there from the Commonwealth Government."
Dr Morrison said the Yokai partnership would not "reinvent the wheel" but learn from and work with other organisations and agencies to make the most of existing knowledge and structures.
"The Healing Foundation would very much be a part of everything we do," he said, noting that Yokai Manager of Programs & Community Engagement, Tony Hansen, recently spoke at the Healing Foundation event in Canberra marking the Apology anniversary.
"We have the links nationally through NIAA, Healing Foundation, and have very good support from the Lotteries Commission here (in WA).
"With the background we've got, we now just need to look at spaces that we can get our mob in and involved. We've been given space with the City of Bayswater… We put on a lunch every Thursday, we send people home at three o'clock. They don't want to go, they don't leave.
"The people, our Stolen people, are beginning to see that these places are therapeutic. They feel good. They want to participate. So, we've got the impetus or nucleus of people that will visit the Sister Kate's facility. We don't know what state it's in now, so we need to work with that. And after Saturday, there'll be a meeting with the people that have been very critical (of the handling of the site), and I think once they know that our organisation is involved, we'll get their blessing. One day at a time."
There has been an ongoing dispute between the Uniting Church and Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress WA, and the now former board of BKI, who alleged their predecessors (as managers of BKI) had mismanaged the site and its finances.
The new nine-member BKI board is 100 per cent Indigenous, with eight of the nine members being Noongar people. Yokai and the new BKI board have taken control of the Sister Kate's site, and signed a commercial lease for the sum of one dollar per year to formalise the arrangement.
"There's four and a half acres there to be considered. There are the older Sister Kate's people who have developed an aged care facility on the block through Sue Gordon. She was one of the original people around that same time as Polly Farmer," Dr Morrison said.
"Then there's the group that are working with another property close to Sister Kate's. They're the next group that came after. So, they're in the 50s and 60s age group.
"There's an aged care facility there, and that's looking to be extended through an organisation called Hall & Prior, probably one of the biggest suppliers of aged care services in the country. They are working very closely with us too. There are Uniting Church Aged Care Services. There's so much good will around and we should be taking advantage of that to develop a more holistic service
"It is about, inviting our Stolen Generations people that are all eligible for aged care this year, it is about linking them better to aged care services, whether it be residential or helping them stay at home through anything that supports home life, cleaning, gardening, taking people shopping.
"I think for Aboriginal people going back into an institution, it's going to be a barrier, particularly if one third of the aged-care services in this country are faith based. Therein lies some real barriers. But I'm looking forward to the opportunity. This place is going to be a great opportunity for us to develop social, emotional well-being, or where people can just come to relax and talk through their issues being a safe place. It's amazing how much people tell their stories if they know they're in a safe environment, and that's what the healing centre is all about."
Sister Kate Clutterbuck was an Anglican nun who in 1932 wrote to Western Australia's notorious "Chief Protector of Aborigines" A.O. Neville asking for funding to establish a home for Indigenous children.
While the nun said the home should be for the children who were the most poor and neglected, and "not those who have mothers who love and care for them … but those who are the most unwanted in the state", the WA government took Aboriginal children from their families if they were "half caste" or light skinned, for no other reason, and sent them to the home, which began operating first in Buckland Hill in 1933 before moving to Queen's Park the following year.
Neville openly expressed his view that lighter-skinned Aboriginal children should be stripped of their culture and language, forced into non-Indigenous families, and strongly encouraged to marry non-Indigenous partners with the intent to eradicate their identity and connection to their people. Under international law introduced in 1948 these policies, which continued into the 1970s, were genocidal.
Sister Kate passed in 1946 and by the late 1950s children in the home faced appalling conditions and abuse from staff.
In 1953 the buildings at the site were donated to the Presbyterian Church, since 1977 part of the Uniting Church in Australia.
Sister Kate's Children's Home and Mogumber Training Centre amalgamated to become Sister Kate's Child and Family Services in 1980 and in 1987 the name changed to "Manguri - A Development of Sister Kate's and an Agency of the Uniting Church"; its purpose being for residential child care and family support for indigenous children and families. In July 1994 it was registered as "Manguri Aboriginal Corporation Incorporated" for Aboriginal children and young people aged 0 - 17 years who have been assessed by Family and Children's Services and then assisted by the Manguri Cottage Programme and Transitional Accommodation Service. Manguri halted operations in 2002.
In more recent years, services on the site were delivered by the BKI, which was established by the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress WA.
In December, the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress WA said "our predecessors set up Beananging Kwuurt Institute (BKI) and ran it for many years – to be an Indigenous led and run place of support and healing for our people".
"This remains our vision and we are committed to seeing BKI restored to its full potential. We know, deep in our spirit, the importance of this place. It is a special place culturally. It is also a site of significance to many Stolen Generations survivors and their families as it used to be Sister Kate's where so many of our kids were taken," they said in a statement.
"We feel privileged to be custodians of this place and have felt great sorrow to see it slip from our oversight. We feel entrusted with the BKI legacy but were increasingly troubled to see BKI taken in a direction that did not align with that legacy or even its constitution. For these reasons and others, we made the difficult decision, after years of attempts to find another way, to request the Uniting Church to not renew the lease for the previous managers.
"We want to make clear that we hold no ill-will towards any of the people who have attended or run any of the activities at BKI. We all share the knowledge of the importance of this place and have experienced its healing potential. Once we have conducted a thorough review to: update the governance structures; source a sustainable funding base and; restore the safety of the premises we hope that you and many more families in our community will again be able to access the services of BKI."
