What amazes me is how anyone can lock you up on the grounds of your culture: Robert Kitchener

“They didn’t want us to be black.” At the age of four Robert Kitchener and his brothers were taken from their parents and then separated from each other. He was “locked up” in Kinchela boys home and later, Berry Training Farm. It was people like Billy Craigey and Dan Munroe who hid him so he wouldn’t be sent to Tamworth boys home – the cruellest and worst of all the NSW homes. As an 18 yr old Robert was struggling to materially care for his children, with no help from the state, but kept them from being taken away, for which he is proud; though he says: “I’m not happy in myself and I never have been, as a result of my hardest day.”

Keywords: Identity; childhood; racism; stolen generations; values; Redfern

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