Stuff the British Stole: July 8
This week a story on the forced removal of children and subsequent displacement.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under Programming
Tonight on Stuff the British Stole, Marc Fennell travels to kunanyi / Mount Wellington and the opulent halls of Government House to unravel a story of heartbreak and injustice, and also to London.
In 2022, a tattered and bruised black doll was sent from Britain to the First Nations people of lutruwita / Tasmania, carrying with it a devastating story of a stolen child. Marc Fennell takes you from London to the mountain of kunanyi and the opulent halls of Government House to unravel a story of heartbreak and injustice that will leave you reeling.
From the early 1820s to about the mid-1830s, wars raged between the settlers and the Indigenous people of what we now call Tasmania. In the aftermath of this conflict, Sir John Franklin was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania’s former colonial name) in 1837 for a four-year term. During his time in office, he and his wife, Lady Jane, requested an Aboriginal orphan child for their daughter.
Mathinna, an Indigenous child and daughter of a chieftain, was not an orphan, but she was still stolen and sent to live with the Franklins for four years. However, just four months before his term as Governor was due to end, the Franklins abandoned Mathinna and left her at the orphan asylum in Hobart, taking her doll with them to England.
The story of Mathinna and her doll goes to the heart of one of the major injustices of colonisation—the forced removal of children and subsequent displacement. It portrays the tenderness of the girl’s connection to her doll and memories of her family, and the visceral sense of loss when it is taken. The loss of the doll symbolises the loss of innocence, displacement, and theft.
At the same time, Marc ventures to the UK to understand the Franklin family: Why did they want this girl in the first place? Was there ever a chance of taking the girl with them? Why did they abandon her? To understand the girl, we need to understand the family that took her in and ultimately abandoned her.
8pm Monday on ABC.
- Tagged with Stuff The British Stole
