Archie Roach - Tell Me Why for Young Adults

I would sincerely like to acknowledge the contributions from the Elders and young people in this book that were made possible by a unique and powerful partnership between Culture is Life, the Barpirdhila Foundation and the Archie Roach Foundation.

My deepest thanks to Aunty Lorraine Peeters, Aunty Iris Bysouth, Aunty Eva Jo Edwards, Uncle Sydney Jackson and Uncle Jack Charles and to the young people who have shared their reflections: Maya Hodge, Lauren Sheree, Deklan John Garcia, Seth Westhead and Neil Morris.

Thank you also to Belinda Duarte, Culture is Lifes CEO, Thara Brown and Shelley Ware, project leads and curriculum writers dedicated to honouring all our stories and strengthening our connection with educators.

Strong women have always played an important and significant role in my life. Mum Dulcie taught me how to be a better person. My big sister Myrtle was the one who taught me who I am and who my family was. Ruby had that nurturing spirit and always looked out for me. My cousin Kath connected me to my fathers people and country. And I was blessed to have had two dedicated music managers, Julie Hickson and Jill Shelton over my thirty-year career.

To the singer-songwriters and musicians I have worked with over the years, thank you for bringing my songs to the stage and beyond. To the people who have worked tirelessly and helped me to bring my story to life thank you.

And to all my family who have looked after me since Ive been back on country youve been a big part of my healing.

Archie Roach AM, a Gunditjmara and Bundjalung man, was born in Victoria in 1956. Taken at the age of two from parents he never saw again, he was placed into foster care. He started writing songs after meeting his soulmate, the late Ruby Hunter, when they were both homeless teenagers. His heartbreaking signature song, Took the Children Away, from his 1990 ARIA award-winning debut album Charcoal Lane, has become an anthem for the Stolen Generations. The song was the first to win an Australian Human Rights Award and the album was featured in US Rolling Stone magazine s Top 50 in 1992, won two ARIA awards and went gold in Australia. Archies recording history includes twelve albums, soundtracks, film and theatrical scores and his books include the award-winning memoir Tell Me Why, accompanied by a companion album, and the picture book Took the Children Away, illustrated by Ruby Hunter.

In November 2020 Archie was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame and was awarded an ARIA for Best Male Artist and Best Adult Contemporary Album for Tell Me Why, the latest in a long line of honours which include the 2020 National Indigenous Music Awards Album of the Year for Tell Me Why, the Ted Albert award for outstanding services to Australian music (2017) and the Order of Australia (2015), awarded for services to music and social justice.

www.archieroach.com

The Archie Roach Foundation logo represents my mothers spirit animal, the wedge-tailed eagle, and my fathers spirit animal, the red-bellied black snake. It is also about me coming full circle, back to who I was taken from. I didnt know my mother and father, but I have stories about them. Thats why we have stories to let us know who we are and where we are from, to join us up, connect us, to complete the circle.

SIMON & SCHUSTER

simonandschuster.com.au

www.SimonandSchuster.co.au/Authors/Archie-Roach

LET LOVE RULE

Oh when darkness overcomes us

And we cannot find our way

And thought we keep on searching

For the light of day

Oh we hear the children crying

And we dont know what to do

Gotta hold on to each other

And love will see us through

Let love rule, let it guide us through the night

That we may stay together and keep our spirits calm

Only fools will shun the morning light

Cause loves the only thing thatll keep us all from harm

Oh you know I love this country, every rock and every tree

The grasslands and the desert, the rivers and the sea

Oh you know I love all people, wherever they are from

Oh yes I love the people who call this land their home

Let love rule, let it guide us through the night

That we may stay together and keep our spirits calm

Only fools will shun the morning light

Cause loves the only thing thatll keep us all from harm

Let love rule

Let it guide us through the night

Let love rule

Let love rule

Let it bring the morning light

Let love rule

The journey that started with a letter from my loving sister Myrtle, sparked a search that has continued to this day.

I am still on that journey. Courtesy of a Freedom of Information request, made while writing Tell Me Why, I got my official ward file. In it were details Ive spent a lifetime yearning to know. Its been a harrowing read, especially the harsh and offensive words used to justify taking Gladys, Diana and myself that dark day on Framlingham.

Other file notes acknowledge the abuse I suffered at the hands of the woman from the second foster placement, used as evidence to transfer me to my third and final foster placement with Mum Dulcie and Dad Alex Cox.

I read many handwritten letters, penned lovingly by Mum Dulcie to social workers at the Family Welfare Division of the Social Welfare Department in the early 1960s about my progress at home and school, and her hopes for my future. By the early 1970s, anguished by my disappearance, Mum Dulcie wrote to them, eager for news about my whereabouts. Reading those words made me feel sad.

My own research revealed more stories about Archie, my father. I knew a little about the time he spent with my mothers people, his tent boxing days and his tragic story on the streets of Melbourne and, finally, in a cell. A rare photo of him as a much older man, wearing a dressing-gown, found in Dawn: A Magazine for the Aboriginal People of NSW from March 1961 places him at the Bethesda Mission, Fitzroy.

My father died in 1962, aged fifty-one.

I have also tried, in vain, to find more photos of my mother, Nellie. The only one I have is on the back cover of this book. My mother also died young at forty-nine years old in 1969. She was living in Silvan, not far from where I lived with the Coxes.

Id never known much about my fathers family, my Bundjalung heritage. I did learn about three of my Bundjalung great-grandmothers from the small New South Wales town of Lawrence, settled near the banks of the Clarence River. An Elder told me that my old people were put on some of the larger river islands in the Clarence River estuary. Life on the island was harsh for my great-grandmothers; the overseers would torment them, chasing them on horses, whipping them for their own amusement. In desperation for a better life, they jumped into the river, swimming against the treacherous tidal current to escape to Lawrence, to freedom. It made me proud to hear their story.

Its only been in recent years that Ive had a chance to visit the town where my father was born and lived until showman Jimmy Sharman came to town and took him into his employ as a tent boxer. The little tidy town of maybe 400 people has a few buildings over a couple of streets, including an old radio station, now home to the Lawrence Museum.

Wed come across Lawrence purely by chance back in 2007. We were touring the Journey album and had got lost trying to find our way back to the highway from Grafton on our way to Byron Bay. I was with my son Amos, Shane Howard, Dave Arden and Jill. When I saw the sign Lawrence, my skin prickled that was where Dad was from. We broke schedule and drove straight there.