Stolen generation member dies just months after reunion (fwd)

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Stolen generation member dies just months after reunion

Australia
25th October 2007, 18:15 WST
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=77&ContentID=44701

A 107-year-old member of the stolen generation has died only months after
she was finally reunited with members of her original Kimberley people in
Western Australia’s far north.

Belinda Dann was only six or seven years old when she was taken from her
mother and family in Nykina Aboriginal country on a cattle station near
Derby early last century.

She and several of her sisters were taken by horse and cart to Beagle Bay
Mission, north of Broome, run by the Catholic St John of God sisters.

Ms Dann married as a teenager and later moved to Port Hedland, where she
died on October 9.

Her son Bernard Dann said his mother’s family knew the authorities were
looking for light-skinned children and would disguise her with charcoal.

“Her mother painted her in charcoal. But they got caught ... they went to a
billabong and it all came off,” Mr Dann said.

When she arrived at the mission, Ms Dann and her sisters would ask: “Where’s
mummy”.

“They were told: ‘Don’t worry, mummy’s coming’, but mummy never came, mummy
never knew where they were,” he said.

He said he and his mother were very poor living in Port Hedland and often
experienced bigotry.

Throughout the years, Ms Dann had remembered her Aboriginal name, but she
did not know who she was and where she came from.

Then four months ago one of her grandsons mentioned her original name in a
conversation with an Aboriginal girl who had heard of Ms Dann and was
connected to the Nykina people.

“They had searched for her for 100 years,” Mr Dann said.

When a meeting was arranged, an incredible thing happened.

“I’d never heard my mother speak in her language in all her years ... they
started speaking language all around her and she starts speaking in
language again!”

Belinda Dann will be buried in Port Hedland on Saturday.

AAP