Woman, 88, who has just received her first birth certificate paves way for other Aboriginal Australians

An 88-year-old Nanatadjarra woman, who has only just received her first birth certificate, is giving hope to other Aboriginal Australians who are yet to obtain essential identity documents. After presenting member of the Stolen Generations Maisie Harkin her first birth certificate, the WA Government announced they had expanded the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages’ community engagement work to make it easier for Aboriginal people to apply for personal documents. The registry’s community engagement team regularly works in the State’s regional communities to identify and reduce barriers to accessing registry services and help people obtain personal records. Senior community engagement officer Marnie Giles was one of the registry’s team members who helped Ms Harkin to obtain her birth certificate, which previously held her back from obtaining a passport and her sense of identity. Born in 1937 east of Laverton as a child of parents from different races, Ms Harkin had spent her childhood avoiding police who would raid bush camps and take away mixed-race children under the then policy of separating them from their families. “We were in the bush, and the police were after us,” Ms Harkin said. “They knew we were around, but our people kept moving to avoid the police. “They were bringing all the children back to Mount Margaret or to Mogumber.” Ms Harkin then became a resident of the Mount Margaret Mission, which became her home for more than a decade, and was given an English surname. She described mission life as “terrible”. “We were stuck in this yard. We were the ‘part Aboriginals’, we weren’t allowed to go out. You make your friends and, you know, you have some connections there,” she said. In 1953 during an expeditionary visit, Ms Harkin’s information and photographs were collected by an anthropologist and associate. Maisie was spelt as “Mazie” and her age was written as “15!”. Despite her challenges, Ms Harkin went on to work as a nurse in Perth and Melbourne, get married and raise her own children. Yet one thing still missing was her birth certificate, which proved a barrier. In one instance, not long after taking up residence in Kalgoorlie-Boulder in 2007, Ms Harkin was unable to join her church group on a trip to Israel. “The others, they went. (But) I didn’t have that identification,” she said. “I was disappointed because being brought up at the mission you were taught Christianity and being taught the Bible, we wanted to see what’s over there.” Recently, after years of no success, Ms Harkin had tried again to obtain her documentation — and she was put in touch with Ms Giles. Ms Giles had gone through the Aboriginal History Research Services to seek records of those of the then Native Welfare Department and Aboriginal missions of the past and was met with no luck. Persisting, the officer went back to the department and requested they took another look. “I was able to meet with one of the very experienced researchers and he had a little bit of a light-bulb moment where he was able to pull out a document (admission record from Mount Margaret) that hadn’t been looked at before,” Ms Giles said. “And within that, we were able to find a date of birth and her mum and dad, and we were able to register from that.” Ms Harkin said she was “really pleased” to have finally received her birth certificate. “I’m very glad and I’m grateful for the help that I’ve been given to receive my birth certificate,” she said. “It’s the document that we all need, to say who you are and where you’re from. “It was a long journey to get to this point.” Knowing her place of birth had allowed Ms Harkin to visit her country, which is now inside a mining precinct. “I’m connected to that land and it’s important,” she said. “That’s why the people go back to the land.” Ms Giles said she believed the expansion of the registry’s community engagement team would help more people such as Ms Harkin find out more about themselves. “We now have the capacity to be able to do the research, to know who to ask and leverage the connections that we’ve made because of the travel and that work that we do,” he said. The expansion had been assisted through partnerships with Aboriginal organisations and collaborating with research agencies.