Stolen

Artist: Lee Hampton

Nation/s: Wodi Wodi – Worimi – Yuin

Story: The stolen generation is not just one generation of people taken from their ancestors. Even today, Aboriginal children are forcefully removed from their families.

At the top of the artwork, there are a number of Aboriginal communities, each circle represents a different Aboriginal community. Although they are separate communities, they all share the same bond of living off the land, and handing down their stories and culture from one generation to another.

Between these communities are the swirling tracks that connect each to the next. Their people roam freely among their surroundings. The ochre background represents the land in which these kids were born, only to be moved to concrete jungles. At the center of the artwork is the white man. He brings with him, his religion and his beliefs in what he feels is good for the black man. They reach out like a cancer to the black communities, taking the children, and so the process begins to convert these kids into white man. As they reach the center of the white man ways, they are brainwashed to forget their traditions, their 60,000+ year old history and stories, and taught the way of the white man, and to worship white man’s God.

Once the metamorphosis is complete, they are sent out into the white communities to live as white children. Stolen is their care free land living ways, replaced with white man religion and structured up bringing. The white section down the bottom represents their new structured life style. They now don’t belong in either world, as they are no longer black fellas, nor are they white fellas. The intricate net of white structure ever so fragile, may appear to bond their new communities, yet could break at any given moment. Stolen from a world they know, to be cast into a white man’s world that will never truly accept them. A life lost…. A Generation Stolen.