I think it will inspire me more, to get out and do more.
- Sue Blacklock
TINGHA Elder Sue Blacklock has been taking in vulnerable kids for as long as she can remember. Today Sue was honoured before the whole country, as she was made a Member (AM) of the General Division of the Order of Australia for her service to the Indigenous community and advocacy for improved child welfare, kinship care and cultural identity.
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“(It) just blew me away. I wasn’t expecting it,” she said.
“I think it will inspire me more, to get out and do more.”
An Aboriginal Elder, Sue and her late husband Mervyn provided a safe place to stay for many children over the years.
“Kids who was homeless, we never said no. If it wasn’t us, they’d come and ask - my boys, they’d bring them home and say, ‘Mum, they got no place to go, can they stay for the night?’ but they ended up staying there forever,” she said.
“We didn’t turn any of them down, we never threw anyone out. We never said no to anyone, we just took them in. We had about 20 in our care once. Like, with my family. We had 20 in a three bedroom home. But they was happy. They had three meals a day, they had a home to go to, they was going to school.”
We never said no to anyone, we just took them in.
- Sue Blacklock
Sue said every child who turned up at her doorstep was treated the same, and they’re all still a part of her huge family. This inspired her to do something for what she believes could be considered a second wave of the stolen generation; Indigenous children going into out-of-home care.
“They’re still taking our kids, there’s still 15,000, I think, still in care that we want to get out,” she said. To begin changing these statistics, Sue helped develop a tool called Winangay to help train Aboriginal out-of-home care support workers. Winangay means ‘to know, to think, to love, to understand’.
Sue has taken part in several government campaigns and senate inquiries, and was appointed the first Ambassador for Children at the University of South Australia’s Australian Centre for Child Protection in 2014. She was also given the Aunt May Yarrowyck Award for dedication to the community in the Inverell NAIDOC Week celebration last year.
She aims to, wherever possible, keep Indigenous children living with blood relatives or within the Aboriginal community.
“Stop the tears, the heartache and the pain, just keep our kids together,” she said.
“They don’t know their identity, they don’t know where their tribe came from, they don’t know any of their family - but we want to stop that. We want to be notified of any that’s been taken from the beginning, so we can find homes for them.”
“They’ve got to be safe, wherever they are.”