Content Warning: Mentions of Suicide and Impacts of Stolen Generations
Honi Soit operates and publishes on Gadigal land. We work and produce this publication on stolen land where sovereignty was never ceded. The University of Sydney is a colonial institution that profits off the idea that Western ideologies are more worthy than the knowledge and practices of First Nations peoples.
Honi Soit is a publication that prioritises the voices of those who challenge these Western rhetorics and ways of teaching and learning. The University of Sydney, and other institutions built on this stolen land, materially profit from the lands they dispossess. We strive to continue Honi Soit‘s legacy as a radical left-wing newspaper providing students with a unique opportunity to express their diverse voices and counter the violent biases of mainstream media.
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Rand Khatib (R) interviews Johnathan Binge (J).
J: My name is Johnathan Binge. When I do music, people call me Caution: different ways, different people. I’m Gamilaraay, Dunghutti and Gumbaynggirr. I was born on country in Moree NSW and I’m currently living in Naarm.
R: Johnathan, can you tell us what the Stolen Generations are? Did they ever end?
J: The Stolen Generations were a systematic set of policies made to punish black parents in various ways; sometimes for refusing work, sometimes just for the skin colour of their kids and the differing pigment. Essentially, it was the forced removal of young ones from their parents and that started a little bit before and continued on through when ‘white australia’ policies were being enacted. The way that I rationalise it is that Stolen Generations are continuing because the same policies that created institutions like, in my Pop’s sake, the Kinchela Boys Home would eventually lead and feed into child protection services that still systematically strip black babies from their families to this day.
R: So, you’d say the Stolen Generations didn’t end?
J: I would say they’re still continuing just within the legal limitations of today. If you look at the sheer numbers, more young Blackfullas and black babies are being taken from their families today than said time period of the Stolen Generations. Just for context; my pop is still alive today and is currently talking about his experience with the Kinchela Boys Home. That would eventually lead to me being taken from my mother and my younger brothers being taken from our mother, just within a different context and different time period.
R: This really leads to the next question which is about your experience with institutionalised out-of-home care.
J: My experience with institutionalised out-of-home care was being in placement from 2014 until the day before I turned 18 in 2018, living in an out-of-home care unit run by Berry Street here in Naarm. That experience really was like a feed-in and continuation of a very specific point in my young life where it was just straight turmoil.
We had been stripped away from our mother, taken from her for a while. She would end up being suicided and then, when I chose to continue the stuff I was doing as a young person, which weren’t very good things, eventually my younger brothers and I were split from each other and they were put with their grandparents in Melbourne, who owned a house and were working at the time. I, not wanting to further separate from them and go to another state, opted to go into care rather than to go with my family back home because I knew it would further tear apart mine and my brother’s connection.
My experience in the out-of-home care system only inflamed tensions at the time. I was already going through a lot of negative stuff, things that were continuations of when I lived with my mother. Being involved in certain things in the street and being entrenched in, what you would call, “street culture.” Especially when I shifted into a unit with my brother boy, who I had grown up with for a while and was into the same things I was into, and then we had the opportunity to live together which only opened up more possibilities to go out and keep enabling that behaviour and being each other’s confidant. In hindsight it wasn’t a great experience.
What I will say about the out-of-home care system is they exist solely to further serve to uphold colonial rule, and within that comes policing young black bodies and young peoples’ bodies in general. The way out-of-home care units are set up is cut and paste, and the layout is planned to ensure full supervision of the young people residing there; they act as compounds where the outside world is made to feel separate and closed off. Small things like the doors being deadlocked at times. At certain points in the night, depending on what’s happened through the day or what worker is running nights in the unit, you were limited to plastic cutlery and drawers would be locked with a key as punishment.
At the head of the unit, right at the front door, there would always be this big, police-like, interview room window. [It was] just a room that had a keyed door with a view of the workers office, where they would have a full view of all the young people throughout the house and right down the hallways to be able to watch and see if you were in your room or if you were attempting to abscond from the premises. That environment, especially at that time and in the mental space that I was, would only serve, not just as a barrier but also as a continuous thread that would make me want to leave. The second you leave, the workers, depending on if they remembered to set the alarm, would know when you left the building. They would be forced to refer to their duty of care and make a missing-persons, essentially request and have auto-approved an arrest warrant, directly with the police. They would work hand-in-hand with the police to make sure that young people would come back and stay in placement. There’s a lot that comes with that.
R: How does the theft of children from black families feed cycles of trauma?
J: It just feels like a revolving door. We grow up with the stories of our people being taken. You grow up knowing that these things happened and, especially to the outside world, essentially gubbas, who have this prevailing [view] that the Stolen Generations were so long ago and would never happen in today’s time, let alone to a young Aboriginal person. Then it does happen. You’re left wondering ‘what is my real place in the world. Do we only exist to be at the mercy of police, prisons and the white justice system?’
To me, it was only that reinforcement that yes, my mum was right. Yes, my people were right when they say these things happen, and can and will happen to you. They did. There is so much that stems from that reinforcement, what happens to a young person when they’re left to sit with these sorts of thoughts and have to hold space by themselves and sit with the same questions I had: why does the system exist in this way? Why is this happening to me? Am I an inherently bad person like they say I am? That’s something I was left to battle for a long time. I fear it is something that young people today are still fighting with — those feelings of abandonment, those feelings of persecution, the experience of oppression when it comes to police rule over young peoples’ bodies and autonomy. Not just the police but the workers that you grow to have unsure relationships with. The people you interact with on a day-to-day. You have to question: what is their intent? You have to question everything you say to this person because they have a duty of care, and can and will tell authorities what you say to them. Every single thing that you do is then scrutinised and looked over with a fine-toothed comb and cataloged in their case notes. It’s inhumane to have young people go through this and live through this sort of mental state. I know because it fucked me up a lot.
All of this don’t even compare to the loss of a young person’s ties to their culture. You can lose links to your family identity and have them artificially replaced with ‘cultural care plans’. Have the continued loss of a Blackfulla’s right to learn language, and in that way the state is willingly participating in assimilationist practices. Every one of these young mob will have their own family and down the line, their descendants might be so disconnected to culture it’s like that lineage didn’t even exist. In my mind that’s the future ‘white australia’ wants and would celebrate, rather than ‘tolerate’. It’s a continuation of genocide.
R: What do you think the solution looks like both short-term, immediate support, but also long-term healing and systemic change?
J: For short term, it’s simply young Aboriginal people, young BIPOC people with their families and their communities and those communities, families, and parents, being supported to take care of these children and potentially to get over their traumas and things that are happening in our communities that are reinforcing these feelings and behaviours. Addressing systemic change within a community, and making sure people are housed and fed: basic rights that everyone should have inherent. Within a capitalist system, those rights are purposely withheld and you have to jump through hoops and do what feels like crawling through broken glass on the steps of the ruling class to have your rights afforded to you. Especially low-income households,parents living on the dole or through Centrelink systems. All of it’s made to feed into the system as it exists – and it works fine for those who created it. For our communities, they only serve to keep us in the position that we are currently in and have historically had that spot designated for us. Making sure that mob have the opportunity to house, share and raise their children is imperative to keeping culture alive.
Long-term solutions — fucking land back. Mob have the solutions, we’ve had these solutions for thousands of years. We just have to uphold our sovereignty and stay working within that power. It’s as simple as that for me.
R: How can activists support to keep black babies in community and support the fight for land back?
J: Being engaged within community is an important thing. Understanding who is within your immediate community, especially who you work with —black people, mob, BIPOC. You need to understand who is there and what their needs are. Just as you would go out and put your body on the line to stop arms going out to apartheid ‘israel’, you put your body on the line to make sure these kids aren’t being taken from their parents and families. That’s one thing. Two is resourcing and educating parents on what their rights are, especially concerning child protective services, and the way that you can combat them. It’s already so hard to get access to well-trained legal aid that is going to go and bat for you and stick up for the rights and the rights that your kids have to live with their parents. If there are people in the community that know law and know this section of the law, going out and talking to parents; mothers, fathers, whoever it may be and keeping them educated and resourced, helping them go out and attend whatever supports they need. We know court systems will make it so hard for parents to get back and for young people to be within their households.
I think you have to know the people first though. You have to be within the community talking, trying to be that support. It takes time and real commitment, so you need to understand the struggle will continue with or without you. At that point it’s not just work, it’s lifelong walking with ‘australia’s’ First People. It’s not one thing to be a shoulder to lean on. You could also be a car for travel, the shield that stops police coming to houses and forcefully taking children away from their parents. These are things that have to happen within the community when you know it.
R: Do you have any final thoughts about mutual aid being a support network for communities?
J: Mutual aid goes back to the way mob operate. Simply put: meeting the needs of individuals in your community. It’s such an innate way for us to take care of each other that comes with compassion. It’s so innate to the way we have existed but it gets transferred into the prevailing culture whether through callouts for financial support [links and resources listed below article], driving people out to funerals or day-to-day needs, or be as simple as pooling resources local ways – utilising your immediate community to achieve small or big tasks. It’s a call back to the strength in community days where the needs of the people are met by the people. It comes solely out of love.
R: Do you have any final reflections?
J: For any other young person that has ever gone through the system. I know how fucking disgusting it is and how hard it is to pull yourself out of that. I’m sorry that it’s been left up to you to pull yourself out of that. I’m not the smartest person in the world, if I could do it — you definitely can. It goes back to the strength of our community and making sure we’re in touch with our people, that’s for mob specifically. BIPOC communities operate on compassion and love. As long as you are connected, and I know the system makes it really hard for you to stay connected, you really need to do the work to continue that bond. Eventually, if you keep fucking fighting it and you don’t let it push you over anymore, you can come out the other side still alive. It’s a long road. Stay staunch.
Some mutual aid accounts to follow:
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This piece will be published in print in the University of Sydney’s Women’s Collective publication, Growing Strong 2025. Pick up a copy from the Welcome Week stalls between 19th to 21st February on Eastern Avenue.