At the age of ten, Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts was forcibly removed from her family, community and kinship systems. She spent eight years being placed across various out-of-home care placements before fleeing the system and finally reconnecting with her Bundjalung Widubul-Wiabul kin.
Decades later, she has become a human rights lawyer, working to expose the ongoing violence visited on Black children, their families and their communities by the systems that claim to protect them.
In her debut memoir, “Long Yarn Short”, released this month, Turnbull-Roberts shares her powerful story in an effort to drive positive change for First Nations people. The book documents the heartache and trauma caused by racist family policing and has been described as an “essential read” by some of Australian’s finest writers.
Women’s Agenda spoke to the esteemed lawyer and author about her motivation to write the book and critique Australia’s history and current practices of child removal.
“The media and policing respond fast to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives when it’s in the essence of crime and harm towards non-Indigenous, things such as property, but when it comes to our safeguarding and our protection, we are not considered victims in the eyes of the state, we are not considered or taken seriously,” she explained.
Turnbull-Roberts believes that the country’s media landscape has “a long way to go” in providing a truthful and nuanced representation of Aboriginal people, “and how we address the issue of forcibly disappeared, murdered and missing Aboriginal women and children.”
“My book encapsulates the state being a part of that form of state violence, and the way abolition doesn’t have to be something that’s impossible,” she said. “Reforms can be achieved quite formatively in a better way to see better outcomes, which then actually have a ripple effect on different intersections.”
With her book, she hopes that readers will become more aware of Australia’s history.
“I think for me, being able to capture not only my story, but Australia’s story about what goes on here in this country was really the important part,” Turnbull-Roberts told Women’s Agenda.
“I really do believe in the strength of critiquing and the strength of creativity in writing and what they can bring to other people. For me, being able to put this book together, sharing my story and my journey around statutory out of home care.”
“In the book, I call it family policing. I really wanted to highlight the disproportionate impact the welfare system had on our community growing up, and that was also front-lining policing to family policing. This book is really a critique of Australia’s history and conduct of child removal and the continued child removal practices.”
Turnbull-Roberts, who was appointed the inaugural Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People Commissioner for ACT this year, said the most challenging part of writing the book was revisiting the different stages of her life, including her early childhood.
“It was really hard to go into those moments and those memories… I share some dark places, and I share some places that I don’t live in anymore, but knowing that that’s out there, I think that’s important,” she said, adding that she is aware she cannot control the way readers will interpret the book.
“I think interpretation is such a gift with every single person in the way they can respond to what they’re reading and how they feel and how they connect.”
Revisiting trauma can be both emotionally and psychologically difficult, but Turnbull-Roberts said being surrounded by “really good people” and talking to Country is helpful.
“My ancestors are my greatest teachers, and I often communicate to them, you know, especially the Country it is living, it is breathing, and Country never leaves you.”
“We are raised with that feeling and that presence of Country and its ecosystem within who we are as Indigenous people, so you never feel alone, because country needs company. Country is always within the company of you. So when I’m writing, I speak with country, and I let that hold me through that those really heavy times.”
Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts will be presenting this year’s E.W. Cole Lecture as part of Spring Fling on 17 October and the link and details are here.