The Last Daughter
Documentary film written and directed by Nathaniel Schmidt and Brenda Matthews
In cinemas

The preamble to the Australian Human Rights Commission Bringing Them Home report pays tribute to “the strength and struggles of many thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people affected by forcible removal. We acknowledge the hardships they endured and the sacrifices they made. We remember and lament all the children who will never come home.”

The Last Daughter pays tribute to something further. It amounts to a personal victim impact statement which exposes the deep pain of being stolen, manipulated, lied to and denied agency during an experience of forceable separation.

Film maker Brenda Matthews tells her story of being plucked from the loving embrace of her Aboriginal family, being placed with a white foster family and then returned to her family of birth, all within 5 years. She did “come home”, in the words of the Human Rights Commission, but there was far more to her experience.

Her film moves backwards and forwards as her fractured memories of growing up in two cultures grow clearer. Historical family film clips are interspersed with interviews with members of both the families she identifies with. Nobody involved in this saga was unharmed.

However, what comes through are the strengths of Aboriginal and working-class Australian culture.

Brenda’s foster parents were lied to about her family situation by the welfare authorities who claimed that her father was an alcoholic. The couple took Brenda into their family because, as Mac Ockers says: “We had room in the house, we were eating well and paying the bills.”

“We thought we were the heroes, but we ended up being the villains of the piece, really.”

It is Brenda who, after years of dealing with incomprehensible memories and a deep sense of loss, reached out to bring all the sides of her upbringing together. In her detective work she had to deal with an unmerciful, black-letter law that determined that her case fell outside of guidelines, thus denying that she was a member of the Stolen Generations.

Officially, Australia says a great deal about reconciliation. The Last Daughter illustrates its complexities and shows the strength and healing that come from true solidarity and compassion.

The Last Daughter is a part of a broader educational effort by Brenda Matthews, which includes a book, discussion guides and a website.

The Bringing Them Home report is dedicated “with thanks and admiration to those who found the strength to tell their stories to the Inquiry and to the generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people separated from their families and communities.”

Brenda Matthews deserves thanks and admiration for taking charge of telling her story in The Last Daughter and for sharing her pain and courage to empower others.