The Wire

A memorial service was held today for one of the leading activists of the stolen generations, who passed away recently at the age of 64. Joy Williams was born in 1942 and when she was just four weeks old she was taken from her mother Dora and placed in an Aboriginal Children’s home in Bomaderry in NSW. She was removed from this home at the age of four and placed at the Lutanda Children’s Home in Wentworth Falls, NSW, where Joy claimed she suffered neglect at the hands of the state and as a result suffered from several psychiatric disorders. On 1993 Joy Williams became the first indigenous person to take a case against an Australia government over the policy of state sanctioned removal. She launched a case against the Aboriginal Welfare Board, the body conducting the removal, claiming damages for negligence, wrongful imprisonment and breach of fiduciary duty by the state authorities. While she fought all the way to the High Court to seek justice, her case was eventually rejected. Professor Peter Read is the Deputy Director of the National Centre for Indigenous Studies at the Australian National University. He attended the memorial service for Joy, held in Wollongong today, and told The Wire about Joy’s removal from her mother.