The Stolen Generation paradox: how Dorothy’s grandkids were left to die
Today, one woman’s powerful account of how her own daughter became a victim - and then a perpetrator - of shocking violence. Of how bureaucrats terrified of creating another stolen generation left three indigenous children to be murdered. But Dorothy Papertalk, an articulate and dignified Yamatji-Wajarri lady, wants you - and all of us - to listen.
Read more about this story at theaustralian.com.au and see the video by subscribing to our YouTube channel.
I just wanted to keep my grandies safe
Kumanjayi Little Baby remembered as a ‘peacemaker’
This episode of The Front is presented by Claire Harvey, produced by Kristen Amiet and edited by Tiffany Dimmack. Our team includes Lia Tsamoglou, Joshua Burton and Jasper Leak, who also composed our music.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, August twenty four, twenty twenty six. A fleet
Speaker 1: of military style drones to detect people, smugglers and illegal
Speaker 1: fishing vessels. It's a fresh move by the Department of
Speaker 1: Home Affairs to boost surveillance of Australia's borders. Australia's sparkling
Speaker 1: new navy warships will be much heavier than planned because
Speaker 1: they'll be loaded up with heavy combat and radar systems,
Speaker 1: and that's prompting questions about their speed, range and endurance
Speaker 1: in future conflicts. Those are exclusives live now at the
Speaker 1: Australian dot com dot au today. One woman's powerful account
Speaker 1: of how her own daughter became a victim and then
Speaker 1: a perpetrator of shocking violence, Of how bureaucrats, terrified of
Speaker 1: creating another stolen generation, left three Indigenous children to be murdered.
Speaker 1: But Dorothy paper Talk, an articulate and dignified West Australian,
Speaker 1: wants you and all of us to listen.
Speaker 2: I may be one man Nigenous lady, but I've got
Speaker 2: a strong, strong The way things are going in this town,
Speaker 2: our young children have no hope of life if we
Speaker 2: don't start doing something. Now that's truly gone to me
Speaker 2: more loss of them.
Speaker 1: This is Dorothy paper Talk. She's a yamachi wagero woman
Speaker 1: from Red Earth Country in Western Australia. Dorothy's telling her
Speaker 1: story with journalist Ross Thomas.
Speaker 3: I was approached by the pro bono lawyer for Dorothy
Speaker 3: paper Talk, who said to me, do you think that
Speaker 3: you could dig hard enough to get to the bottom
Speaker 3: of this? So that's like a red rag took so yes,
Speaker 3: we said yes. I started in April. It's taken me
Speaker 3: this long to get it to press.
Speaker 1: Dorothy's daughter, Margaret Hawke, was living in port Headland, on
Speaker 1: the edge of the pilbro in Western Australia's northwest.
Speaker 4: She was a methamphetamine addict.
Speaker 3: She was living in a house, a welfare house in
Speaker 3: port Headland, with a number of members of various mobs
Speaker 3: of her succession of partners. The house was filled with
Speaker 3: extraordinary domestic violence substance abuse, which the children were either
Speaker 3: the victims of or watched their mother become the victims of.
Speaker 4: We are talking beatings with.
Speaker 3: Iron bars, scissors, rock fist boot nothing like I've ever
Speaker 3: seen before. Dorothy Papertook, several years ago, made the first
Speaker 3: of her at least five appeals to the Department of
Speaker 3: Chile Protection to remove her grandchildren, who she said were
Speaker 3: clearly unsafe.
Speaker 4: The Department old.
Speaker 3: Protection did not listen to her and did not act,
Speaker 3: and then on July the nineteenth in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: after a math fuel bender, Margaret Hawk, the mother of
Speaker 3: the three children, Jamelia who was ten, Under who was seven,
Speaker 3: and baby Kelvin who was four months, murdered them in
Speaker 3: an unbelievable rampage not ten minutes after they were dropped
Speaker 3: home from school. No one did to help them, and
Speaker 3: you couldn't.
Speaker 2: Save them, and I didn't give a chance to say
Speaker 2: goodbye to them.
Speaker 3: She was charged with three counts of murder. She was
Speaker 3: sentenced in twenty twenty three by the Supreme Court by
Speaker 3: a judge who happened to be the first appointed Supreme
Speaker 3: Court Aboriginal judge in Western Australia and who also grew
Speaker 3: up in Port Headland. He sentenced her to life imprisonment
Speaker 3: with a minimum of twenty five years. The court heard
Speaker 3: that the succession of indigenous and other male partners who
Speaker 3: had brought. The incredible domestic violence on this woman had
Speaker 3: led to her substance abuse methamphetamines, all kinds of drugs,
Speaker 3: plus alcohol, and they were still actively threatening her even
Speaker 3: though two of those Indigenous partners were actually in jail.
Speaker 3: The father of the two eldest children was a drug
Speaker 3: trafficker from Iran. He was in jail and still threatening her,
Speaker 3: And I think she got to the point where her
Speaker 3: despair was so intense she saw no other way out.
Speaker 3: The night before the murders, she'd gone to the refuge
Speaker 3: in town. They had told her they were sorry, but
Speaker 3: that they were full. They got her a taxi home,
Speaker 3: and the next day she killed the children.
Speaker 1: This grandmother has spoken to you in such moving terms
Speaker 1: about those children. Their lives must have been awful, their
Speaker 1: short lives. They were obviously living in fear.
Speaker 4: Lost. All feel.
Speaker 2: The hot flames of fire, the torture they went through
Speaker 2: every time when I go out and visit the grave
Speaker 2: for their birth base.
Speaker 3: We are talking to a completely broken Indigenous grandmother. She
Speaker 3: has not been able to reconcile what her daughter did,
Speaker 3: but more importantly, she cannot reconcile the institutional neglect that
Speaker 3: left her grandchildren still in an incredibly violent home despite
Speaker 3: her multiple attempts to try to save them. I have
Speaker 3: obtained internal DCP reports that show Jamelia had been smashed
Speaker 3: in the face by a rock used by her mother
Speaker 3: not eight days before the murders, that police were called
Speaker 3: to the house at least twenty two times to intervene
Speaker 3: in incidents of domestic violence in which the police picked
Speaker 3: the children up and took them to Dorothy so that they.
Speaker 4: Would be safe.
Speaker 3: There is no doubt that these children were at extreme
Speaker 3: risk of harm. There is no doubt that those children
Speaker 3: should have been removed into the care of their grandmother,
Speaker 3: who was not only Indigenous, but had been looking after
Speaker 3: them most of the time anyway. So there was the
Speaker 3: indigenous grandmother, which the Aboriginal child Placement principle wants children
Speaker 3: who have to be removed to go straight to the
Speaker 3: nearest and dearest. In that kin, she was there holding
Speaker 3: out her arms waiting for those children to be given
Speaker 3: to her, because she knew how unsafe they were. DCP
Speaker 3: would not give those children to that grandmother. I have
Speaker 3: sent the DCP an extensive list of questions asking them
Speaker 3: about all the things that I have seen in their
Speaker 3: internal reports, and they have given us a statement saying
Speaker 3: that this is obviously a tragedy and that child removal
Speaker 3: is last resort and that systems will change as a
Speaker 3: result of this case. I was hoping for a maya culpa.
Speaker 3: I did not get one.
Speaker 1: It's reminiscent, of course, of the story of Kumanjai Little Baby,
Speaker 1: the five year old girl who died after being abducted
Speaker 1: from the town camp where her mother was living.
Speaker 5: It was never a matter of if police were going
Speaker 5: to charge forty seven year old Jefferson Lewis, but only
Speaker 5: a matter of time, and yesterday afternoon they did exactly that,
Speaker 5: charging mister Lewis with one count of murder and to
Speaker 5: other offenses.
Speaker 1: There's been reporting that her mother was also the victim
Speaker 1: of serious domestic violence, and in response to that disappearance
Speaker 1: and death, there's been a big change in the Northern
Speaker 1: Territory about the way kinship care is administered. So the
Speaker 1: principle is now supposed to be that the child's welfare
Speaker 1: comes first. What is the situation in WI. Has there
Speaker 1: been any kind of change like that and would that
Speaker 1: have made a difference in this case anyway? Given that
Speaker 1: the department seemed to just be ignoring the kinship request
Speaker 1: to have the children.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: The legislation in WA is similar, if not the same,
Speaker 3: as in other states in the country, and that is
Speaker 3: the Aboriginal placement principle is that if at all possible,
Speaker 3: if a child needs to be removed from an unsafe
Speaker 3: home with an unsafe parent, then you know the absolute
Speaker 3: priority is to try and place that child with family first.
Speaker 3: And in this case, family was available. Family was not
Speaker 3: only available, but desperate to have those children.
Speaker 4: Desperate. And that's what I don't understand.
Speaker 3: I don't understand how that grandmother and her clearly competent
Speaker 3: caregiving could not have been seen as the only option
Speaker 3: for those children.
Speaker 2: I told my granddaughter whenever she felt unsafe to run
Speaker 2: from the house, to run to the.
Speaker 4: Phone box, they call grandma. They felt very scared all.
Speaker 2: The time, crime because mommy was getting followed by the daddy.
Speaker 3: When we have evidence of Jamelia, the ten year old,
Speaker 3: running from a house attack to the street payphone to
Speaker 3: call the cops. She was responsible for her little brother
Speaker 3: and a four month old baby, and there was the
Speaker 3: grandmother sitting not ten minutes away, having made five at
Speaker 3: least five appeals to DCP to say, please, I want
Speaker 3: to be the children's legal guardian. I look after the
Speaker 3: most of the time. Already, please give them to me,
Speaker 3: because I'm telling you they're not safe.
Speaker 4: Nothing happened.
Speaker 2: They just pushed everything under the carpet.
Speaker 4: They did nothing at all.
Speaker 2: They just turned the blind eye. And this is what happened.
Speaker 1: Coming up how the Stolen Generation story where Aboriginal children
Speaker 1: were taken from their families, looms over this modern child
Speaker 1: protection crisis. One of the things that springs to mind
Speaker 1: when you read about violence in remote Indigenous communities is
Speaker 1: that the remoteness is part of the problem. That it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to get police or nurses or ambulance workers
Speaker 1: to come to these communities. It's very difficult for there
Speaker 1: to be any kind of consistency in services for child protection,
Speaker 1: for example. That's not really the same import Headland, though,
Speaker 1: is that this is a pretty major center. It's not
Speaker 1: like Yundmu or the town camps in Alice Springs. How
Speaker 1: do you think remoteness plays into these if at all.
Speaker 3: Well, let's not forget this is one of the richest
Speaker 3: mining towns in the country. This is the world's biggest
Speaker 3: bulk export port. This is a town of seventeen thousand people.
Speaker 3: This town has three thousand Aboriginal people. I don't understand
Speaker 3: how a town this big and this relevant to the
Speaker 3: mining industry could somehow exist outside of the laws. And
Speaker 3: a former director General of the Department of Communities agreed
Speaker 3: to speak to me if I was to conceal his identity,
Speaker 3: and he said to me that if these children had
Speaker 3: been in Perth, they would definitely have been removed from
Speaker 3: their mother. So why the change in that regional town.
Speaker 3: I also had a call in the midst of the
Speaker 3: time that I was in port Headland from an anonymous
Speaker 3: source within the DCP in Perth saying, don't let the
Speaker 3: port Headland So the Department Child Protection tell you that
Speaker 3: they're not a well resourced and significant office. There is
Speaker 3: at least twenty five people working here. And I ask
Speaker 3: this particular anonymous source from Perth what percentage of the
Speaker 3: children at risk in this town are Aboriginal and the
Speaker 3: reply was ninety eight percent. It is not a small problem.
Speaker 1: The difficult thing about telling these stories is often that
Speaker 1: they are so bleak that we don't want audiences to
Speaker 1: turn away. We want our audience to read these stories,
Speaker 1: to watch the video, to see Dorothy's appeal. How do
Speaker 1: you navigate your way through telling this story and honoring
Speaker 1: Dorothy's wishes for this to be public, knowing that that
Speaker 1: this is our hard story for people to consume.
Speaker 3: It's a hard story for people to consume, but it's
Speaker 3: a necessary story for us all to read. Dorothy has
Speaker 3: given me permission to not only publish the children's names,
Speaker 3: but they're photographs, which I think is highly unusual and
Speaker 3: gives a measure of the desperation that she does not
Speaker 3: want her grandchildren's death to count for nothing. She has
Speaker 3: also been in almost daily contact with me. I have
Speaker 3: spent an enormous amount of time with her, and she
Speaker 3: tells the story of intergenerational Indigenous violence from the inside,
Speaker 3: and I haven't heard that story before. She says that
Speaker 3: in her world, parents are not parenting, and if they're
Speaker 3: not parenting, then their children should be removed. And she says,
Speaker 3: you know, people say to me, why would you want
Speaker 3: to create another stolen generation? And she says, well, at
Speaker 3: least our children would be alive, alive and beautiful, she says.
Speaker 3: And the interesting thing about spending a lot of time
Speaker 3: in Headland is that a number of Indigenous people I
Speaker 3: spoke to said that the DCP is terrified of being
Speaker 3: seen to create another stolen generation and that is perhaps
Speaker 3: what drove them not to remove the children, the Hawk
Speaker 3: children in this case before they were murdered, because fears
Speaker 3: of political blowback were greater than the fears that these
Speaker 3: children were absolute risk of critical injury or death.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you Roz for telling this story, and thanks
Speaker 1: to Dorothy for being so courageous to share it with us.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Yeah, my pleasure.
Speaker 1: You can read Roz Thomas's story right now at the
Speaker 1: link in our show notes. The Australian has a long
Speaker 1: history of fearless, nuanced reporting of life in Indigenous communities.
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