Wp/nys/Sister Kates

Sister Kate's was a 'home' where children from the Stolen Generations were sent after being literally kidnapped from their parents wer family.

Sister Kate Clutterbuck MBE (1860 - 1946) was an Anglican nun well-known in Perth for her humanitarian work caring for children in need. She had worked with orphans in the London slums for 17 years until 1901 when she and several other sisters were sent to Western Australia to establish a girls' school and orphanage. She arrived in Western Australia in December 1901 with 22 orphaned English children in her care and helped establish an orphanage which became Parkerville Children's Home in the Shire of Mundaring. She retired in 1930 at the age of 70 and was awarded an MBE the following year.

In 1932 she came back from retirement. She and her friend Phoebe Ruth Lefroy ("Ruth") were interested in the welfare of Aboriginal children and opened a children's home with houses in Bayswater and Mosman Park in Perth. Initially called the Children's Cottage Home, it came to be known as Sister Kate's. It moved to Queens Park, Perth in 1934, where it remained.^[1] Siste Kate's focused on half-caste Aboriginal children after 1933 when it was authorised by Western Australia's notorious Chief Protector of Aborigines, A. O. Neville, to be a home specifically for light skinned Aboriginal children and with the explicit aim of destroying the children's Aboriginal identity and assimilating them in white society, i.e. to "breed out the black" and eliminate Aboriginal culture in Western Australia.^[2]

Sister Kate died in 1946, and although she was compassionate and devout, as an old woman she was naive and let herself be used for evil. She left a conflicted legacy, one of tragedy for many of those children and their families whose lives she touched but she was remembered with affection by others. Whilst she was alive her home cared for Aboriginal children in a well-meaning way, but failed to prepare the children for life in a Wadjela world which would not accept them, whilst deliberately trying to cut off their connections to their Aboriginal roots.

Ruth Lefroy arranged for Sister Kate's to be transferred to the Presbyterian Church (now part of the Uniting Church), as a first step in 1955 with a provisional council appointed by the Presbyterian Church then in 1956 the Presbyterian Church became the legally controlling body.^[3] Over time the home degenerated into a "disgusting place", a hell on Earth, as reported by Sandra Hill:^[2]

“

The cottage mothers were cruel; they beat us and they tortured us emotionally ... I saw girls being sexually molested by the house father ... and we just had to back out of the room because we didn't want it to be us.

”

The guilt of not helping those girls still breaks her.^[2]

Hear also:

Podcast at ^[4]

Sister Kate's Aged Care

The site of Sister Kate's home in Queens Park, Perth, now provides aged-care accommodation for former home residents and their descendants who are members of Sister Kate’s Children 1934–1953 Aboriginal Corporation (SKAC). The Indigenous Land and Sea Council (ILSC) acquired the site in February 2008 and granted it to SKAC in December 2012, as part of the government's response to the "Bringing Them Home Report" into the Stolen Generations.^[5] ILSC is a Federal Government agency which assists Indigenous people with the acquisition and management of land, salt water and fresh water. Sue Gordon spent 14 years at Sister Kate's and is a founding member of SKAC:^[6]

“

This is a place where they would be able to spend their last years together ... For a lot of them, these people are the only families we know. ... My family managed to track me down 30 years after I was taken from them, but the kids I met at Sister Kate's. They will always be my first family.^[6]

”

Sister Kates Home Kids Aboriginal Corporation

Established in 2008, this organization is made up of Sister Kates children from various generation and their descendants. They run programs to help heal and empower these families and communities from the past traumas that they experienced and still are impacted by, due to the previous government's actions and laws, in an attempt to commit cultural genocide and forced assimilation of Aboriginal people in Western Australia. ^[7]

The organisation aims to run cultural camps in the coming months^[8] and build a healing and remembrance centre adjacent to the old Home site in Queens Park.^[9]

Breed out the black - Eugenics

The concept of controlling the genetic profile of a population by force, to try and "improve" the profile by encouraging "superior" characteristics or discouraging "inferior" traits, is called 'eugenics'. An obvious criticism of eugenics is what is defined as superior and inferior is determined by whoever has political power at the time. It is also not obvious that selective breeding results in a long term resilient population, as narrowing the gene pool may lead to problems later on.

The abhorrent dangers of eugenics were exemplified by the Nazi Germany race-state genocides of World War II, e.g. the Holocaust, the Romani genocide, Slavs (chiefly ethnic Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, and Soviet citizens), the "incurably sick" (mentally and physically ill people), political and religious dissenters such as communists and Jehovah's Witnesses, and gay men. The kidnapping and attempt at forced assimilation of Aboriginal children into white society is now understood to have been genocide, as "Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group" is specifically defined as an act of genocide in the United Nations Genocide Convention.

Koorlingah Sister Kates - Some of the children who were sent to Sister Kates

Glenys Collard

See Noongarpedia page at Glenys Collard.

Graeme Dixon

See Noongarpedia page at Graeme Dixon and Echoes of the Past - Sister Kate's Home Revisited.^[10]

Ken Colbung AM MBE

Nundjan Djiridjarkan, also known as Ken Colbung, Indigenous leader. See English Wikipedia page Ken Colbung.

Graham "Polly" Farmer MBE

Australian rules footballer. See English Wikipedia page Graham "Polly" Farmer.

Sue Gordon AM

Perth Children's Court magistrate. See English Wikipedia page Sue Gordon.

Sandra Hill

See "The brutal legacy of Sister Kate's, a children's home with a mission to 'breed out the black' ".^[2]