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| Your Aboriginal |
| Who am I? |
| The Journey Still Walkin' Uncertain Beginning Being State ward Truth and Lies Never Fitting In Your Aboriginal Assimilation Love of Two Mothers A False Father Adoption My Art Links |
| Pretty much from the time I could understand it, I was told that I was a foster child. This was done with absolutly no malice attatched. However I was never told tha I was Aboriginal, instead I had come to believe that I was Fijian. So imagine my utter surprise when told one afternoon in the Welfare Office at Bathurst that i was Aboriginal. This happened when I was 13, Thinking back I wonder what the motivation was to tell me at that time and not before, all those years beforehand when told I was a foster child. What a terrible age to be told, as if your not already on the brink of trying to understand who you are and where you fit into the world around. My Aboriginality seems to have been a constant source of frustration for me, and my struggle for an identity has run many gauntlets. Its been frustrating becasue not always have I been comfortable with it, this no doubt is a direct effect of seperation from ones blood family and heritage. Just when I think that I have found a place of peace with it all, questions will arise within me and ask, "yes, but are you really Aboriginal?" and of I go again trying desperatly to find the real me in the mess. You would think that by the age of 38 I would know my identity. But still the journey continues. Being raised white, being educated white for all those years has a deep effect upon the rest of ones life and way of being. But no matter how much you think you belong, there is always an inner knowing ....that you do not. What follows is a major Identity crisis, and your contantly asking, "who am I?" Am I white? Am I black? White? Black? Sometmes I think I will never know! Next >> |
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| My mum Laurel and my foster/adopted parents Marie and Bill Egan |