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Personal Narrative-One Mean

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The following story was published anonymously in an Aboriginal newspaper [15].
Like many of our mob, my first label was ‘abandoned’, then ‘ward of the State’ which was the start of a journey that for many years I felt wasn’t mine to have.
Years later, when I found my way home, both parents had passed on, although the stories and labels that I grew up believing were a misrepresentation of the actual truth.
More fitting words would be ‘stolen’ and ‘assimilation’ though - as sad as my story may be -1 wouldn’t change a thing, even if I could today because now it’s my story and it’s me who is steering the canoe.
Yeah, I spent a lot of my life wallowing in self-pity, blaming everyone else and everything else for the way I was - until only a few years ago when I realised that this is what …show more content…

When I did start finding my strength, pride and courage and started to man up, taking personal responsibility for my behaviour, only then was I handed the full extent of the law.
Even while in prison, while trying to stand up for not only my rights, but also the rights of our people, I was dealt with harshly and spent a lot of time in management units being very closely watched.
They didn’t like to see a brother doing the right thing. After all, it even goes against what most of them were taught about our mob.
But even in bad times, my spirit was growing and over time, they started to say that this time I wasn’t going to give up or myself like I did so many times in the past.
The difference for me was that when I did give up on life, it wasn’t mine to begin with. So why would I take responsibility for something that wasn’t mine to begin with.
I never owned that part of my life and was never given a real choice, like the policies of the day, their theories were a huge gamble and everything was based on chance, assumptions and

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