Artist Sandra Hill was taken from her family because of her light skin and told her father and died and her mother didn’t want her. She has bitter memories of Sister Kate’s home and the lies she was told about her background. But she has triumphed and become a respected artist and speaker.
WITH the right spirit and the right heart, one person can make a difference, says local indigenous artist Sandra Hill, who has made a lot of difference in her time.
Sandra is a Noongar woman of the Wardandi and Minang language groups, whose traditional land ranges from Bunbury and Busselton to Margaret River and Denmark and Walpole to Albany.
Sandra was six when she, her brother and two sisters were taken from the care of their mother who was, at the time, living and working in Port Sampson in the north of the state.
The children were transported to Perth and placed in Sister Kate’s Orphanage for “half caste” children, to be fostered out as part of the assimilation policy of the time.
“The welfare came and took us while Dad was doing a stint in the army,” she said.
“I was almost seven, my oldest sister was eight, my younger sister was five, and my little brother four.”
The children were flown from their home and put into a cell in Roebourne Prison.“We threatened to run away, so they locked us in at night,” Sandra said.
She was at Sister Kates for two years.
“It was a nightmare, it was absolutely horrendous,” she said.
“When I was in that home it was emotional and physical torture.
“They used to force feed me, and to this day I can’t eat anything I had at the home.
“I made the big mistake one day that I wet my bed — once in my life. They stood me on the milk churn and put the sheets over me, and made the kids all walk past.”
During this dark time in Sandra’s life, one moment of beauty stood out.
Each morning the children would attend church and in the church was a painting of an angel.
“This big painting of the most incredible angel, it was the only beautiful thing in the whole two years,” Sandra said.
In that time Sandra went for the occasional holiday with a family in Perth, who eventually fostered her and later her older sister too.
“My little sister was fostered elsewhere, and my little brother stayed at Sister Kate’s to the age of 12, when he was sent out to work, and then thrown out to fend for himself at 15,” Sandra said.
When she arrived at her foster home, Sandra found that she no longer had to do jobs or seek permission for every little thing.
“They gave me papers and beautiful coloured pencils and I started trying to draw this beautiful angel, trying to capture the essence of this mother woman. I haven’t stopped drawing since,” she said.
Sandra stayed with her foster family until she married.
For many years, she had no idea about the stolen generation she was a part of, and believed what welfare people had told her – that her father was dead and her mother had abandoned the children.
In 1989 she saw John Pilger’s The Secret Country, a documentary which told the truth about Australia’s treatment of indigenous people — and the film changed her life.
“It was the beginning of the journey I’m still on, to find my family, right the wrongs and get some equality for my people,” she said.
“I do that through my art, educate people through a medium that doesn’t alienate them.”
In 1983 Sandra’s older sister, who was a Jehovah’s Witness, was doorknocking in Koondoola when she came across an indigenous person who found her familiar, and asked who her family was.
“They got talking, and she said our Dad had passed away,” Sandra said.
The person informed the sister that that was pretty odd, since he’d just been fishing with her father last week.
The sisters finally found and met their father, but kept coming up against brick walls in their efforts to find their mother.
“It turned out my foster mother had her address,” Sandra said.
“We organised a meeting, it was pretty strange, I hadn’t seen her since the age of seven.”
Because they were told as children that their mother didn’t want them, Sandra said that she grew up hating her.“But as soon as I walked into the house she was the spitting image of my sister, so I knew it was her,” she said.
“Mum and Dad didn’t stay together after we were taken.
“Dad did five years in the army and 14 years in the navy and still had no rights. It was not until the late ’70s that he got a pension.”
In 2004 Sandra and her family were finally able to secure funding to get a proper grave for her father,
with a returned naval services headstone.
Over the years, Sandra pursued her passion for art as strongly as she fought for justice for her people and family.
In the 1970s and ’80s she started painting, and in 1981 had her first exhibition in Subiaco.
Her first solo exhibition was in 1993 in Guildford, where every piece of work sold.
Sandra said that she had very much admired Sir Ronald Wilson for what he was doing and how he was responding to the Bringing Them Home program. “He kept me going,” she said.
“I had the gall to write to him and ask him if he would open my exhibition, which was about Aboriginal history since 1905. He accepted — it was the only exhibition he opened in his life.”
Sandra worked in a number of capacities over the years, including training people to foster indigenous children.
She has also made confronting presentations to professions including police officers, teachers and judges on the history that indigenous people live with.
“When you make people feel from the heart, it’s a way of making them feel the inhumanity of what was done to the culture; when people feel it in their hearts, there’s no justification, and that’s what people need,” she said.
“With the right spirit and the right heart, one person can make a difference — all we ever ask for is a second chance.
“That’s my passion, getting information out, allowing people to understand so that they can open their hearts to Aboriginal people. I think the wider community wants to embrace us but doesn’t know how.
“I hope to see a wider acceptance of the indigenous community.”
Sandra moved to Balingup in 2007, and was offered the use of the studio where she now works.
“I feel like I’ve come home. This country is my home and I feel very comfortable here,” she said.
“Who wouldn’t love Balingup?”
Sandra’s most recent art achievement is the completion of two cows for the Margaret River Cow Parade, both of which were farewelled and sent to Margaret River last week.
“Ours is the only Australian Aboriginal cow going in the parade,” Sandra said.
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