In 2002, after the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, a group of Kinchela Boys Home survivors came together. With strong childhood bonds never broken, the men were on a journey to reconnect with each other, reclaim their past and support survivors and their families to heal.
Tiffany McComsey, CEO of the Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation (KBHAC), explains how both the corporation and a powerful process of truth-telling sprang from this first step:
‘The first thing that came out was some of the Uncles said we need an organisation that’s ours, that looks after the brothers and looks after our families.
And that was the big catalyst for even bringing the Uncles together – with all of the complexities of that and the pain and fear… That then led right away to needing to go back to the site where Kinchela was.
‘And from that journey was wanting something ongoing with truth-telling, and that’s how this organisation started, and the hope that the truth-telling would really lead to change.’
They returned to the site in Kempsey NSW for the first time since they were boys.
It wasn’t an easy process, as survivors had to confront their experiences – which many had buried. The deep bonds they formed as boys helped them to endure the abuse and harsh conditions of the boys home, where they were assigned numbers instead of names.
Kinchela’s mission
The KBHAC vision is to ‘improve the social, emotional, cultural, and spiritual well-being of KBH survivors and their families in meaningful ways, supporting the KBH survivors to restore their family structures by providing individual, family, and collective healing programs’.
Over time, it has developed a survivor-led model of governance and healing. Survivors and KBHAC own their stories and tell them from a place of self-determination.
As KBHAC Chair Uncle Michael Welsh explains, ‘We know how to develop the programmes that we need to be able to help the rest of the families and brothers feel in a safer place.’
KBHAC members emphasise the power of truth-telling to prevent a repetition of violations and to create social change. Because of this passion, they have told and re-tell their stories of trauma to educate a new generation.
‘We have to keep on doing what I’m doing. Talking is never easy because it brings back memories that I shut out for so many years but if we don’t keep doing this it allows this trauma to grow so that’s the strength that I gain from this and the journey of the KBH brothers when we are going through a difficult time,’ explains Uncle Michael.
We've had ministers who have been told multiple times and then all of a sudden, they're like, "Wait, you were numbers? You didn't have names?"
Truth-telling on the move
In 2020 KBHAC launched a mobile education centre, or ‘site of conscience’. Set up in an old commuter bus, it is an immersive experience designed to convey hard truths about the Kinchela Boys Home.
The front half of the bus is an exhibition that was developed in consultation with the survivors. The back is a cinema and yarning space, where a short, animated film produced by survivors is shown.
It is their observation that the immersive experience helps people to properly understand in a way that reading the same facts in a report does not.
‘We’ve had ministers who have been told multiple times and then all of a sudden, they’re like, “Wait, you were numbers? You didn’t have names?”’, explains Tiffany.
The mobile education centre also has a recording booth where visitors can share their reflections and where community members with stories about the Kinchela Boys Home, the Stolen Generations and related community histories can share and record them. These stories become an educational resource and record for future generations.
Tiffany explains that sharing these experiences between descendants of survivors allows for the sense of isolation to be broken down: ‘It’s like this light bulb goes on and it’s like, it wasn’t just my family’.
Driving engagement
She says the mobile education centre facilitates a safe space for meaningful engagement.
‘We set the context watching this animated film and things really start to drop or be felt at that human level with people and then the Uncles will go into more of their stories and I think it’s the way in which the Uncles look after each other in that process that it allows people to feel safe to ask a question,’ Tiffany says.
It’s a survivor-led opportunity to extend stories beyond the act of personally retelling their trauma and encouraging two-way interactions.
KBHAC wants the mobile education bus to connect with the hearts and minds of future generations, therefore, its content and media target a young audience. But they’ve ensured there’s something suitable for anyone wishing to connect with the truth of this place. The yarning circle space brings in oral testimony, archival material, artifacts, film, images, audio and interactive materials.
The NSW Government provided resources for the centre while bus operator, CDC NSW, committed $750,000 over three years.
At first, CDC helped to maintain the refurbished bus, but as their understanding grew through exposure to the truth-telling they became more and more committed, providing engineers who designed elements of the bus as well as drivers to help ‘get the Uncles out there in their truth-telling journey’.
CDC also offered office support for the organisation and careers and training for First Nations candidates nominated by KBHAC.
The future of Kinchela
Uncle Michael and Tiffany emphasise that truth-telling is an ongoing process – institutional change is slow and intergenerational trauma cannot be addressed in a one-off event.
While the mobile education centre delivers truth-telling all over the country, the Kinchela Boys Home site has become a permanent place of truth-telling grounded in the power of tangible evidence.
The KBHAC has been campaigning to obtain ownership over it so that it can be turned into a National Site of Truth Telling and Healing with the creation of a living museum and healing centre.
In March 2022, their efforts led to it being on the 2022 World Monuments Fund Watch List as one of 25 heritage sites of worldwide significance.
The survivors return with their families on commemorative occasions.
For Uncle Michael, creating a permanent site of truth-telling is also a means to create a new sense of belonging and connection for those who have lost their homelands as a result of their forcible removal.
Former resident Roger Jarret says, ‘My love in my heart, as a kid, is still in that bloody home. It’s a fact, and returning the ownership to KBH survivors is going to allow me to return the love that I lost in that place.
‘Just the thought of going there (KBH) makes you feel a little bit better than you were before – giving you a feeling that you achieved something – I achieved my last little bit of pain easing, you know’.
This account of truth-telling in action is based on a case study from the Recognising community truth-telling: An exploration of local truth-telling in Australia report. The collaborative study between Reconciliation Australia and Deakin University’s Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation documents 25 community truth-telling projects. Read the full report.
