Stolen generation survivor says she has never had a voice

The Wiradjuri artist and stolen generation survivor said making art soothes her trauma and teaches people about her life and culture.

Now, she wants people to hear her voice in the hope it will help people understand why Aboriginal Australians feel silenced.

She had no interest in controlling the lives of white Australians - only her own.

"We don't want their jobs. We don't want their land. All that crap, those lies being told as reasons for voting no, it's sad," she said.

"Do they want to control us for another 250 years?"

Aunty Fay said she had a stable home life before she was taken from her parents.

Her father was a Rat of Tobruk, who returned to very little after his service. He found work in a cannery in Leeton in the NSW Riverina with her mother.

"One day while they were at work, the welfare came and took us on our way to school," she said.

"They didn't advise the parents we were being taken ... we were put into Cootamundra [girls home], my brothers went up to Kinchela [boys home].

"No parents were allowed to visit the homes, so we were locked in there."

They were told their parents didn't want them - a lie told to many stolen generation children.

Years later Aunty Fay learned the truth, when she reconnected with her mother in Sydney.

She believes having their children taken away broke her parents' relationship and contributed to their early deaths.

"They took away our voice, they took away our lives, they took away our parents and our children," she said.

She only met her father once more in her life - at her mother's funeral.

"He asked me, 'which one are you?'," she said.

"I said 'I'm Fay', and he said 'I'm your dad'."

"He died not long after ... that was all I said to him before he died."

Aunty Fay said "atrocities" like deaths in custody and family separations continue to be committed against Aboriginal Australians.

Her brother, a non-drinking, non-smoking boxing trainer, died in police custody at 28 years old.

"The police rang me up, and said we've got your brother, and we can't let him go because he's got no money," she said.

"I told them the vagrancy acts had been abolished ... just tell him to go down to the post office and I'll give him some money the next day.

"They came to my house in the morning before I went to work, and told me he'd been found deceased on the side of the road ... and that's still happening."

In the '90's, Aunty Fay contributed to the Bringing them Home report.

"What we put up and said 'this is what we need', their response was 'ok, we'll do this and that'," she said.

"But they've only implement 40 [recommendations] out of more than 100.

"Even when I was working in government, I didn't have a voice. I was told what to do."

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