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The Women’s Club presents Lynda Holden in conversation with Ingrid Matthews on This Is Where You Have To Go.
In 1970 Lynda was eighteen. She was unmarried and pregnant when a doctor told her she had to go to Our Lady of Mercy in Waitara, where her baby was taken for adoption. After twenty-six years, Lynda was finally able to make contact with her lost son, but the much wished for reunion did not go well. Spurned on by pain and anger, she looked into the records, and found a web of lies about her family, the baby’s father, and her ‘consent’ for the adoption. Her Aboriginal identity, her son’s Aboriginal heritage, had been erased from her life records by the Catholic Church.
So began a quest for justice. Lynda filed against the Catholic Church in an attempt to right their wrongs. In this powerful memoir, she sheds light on the lasting impacts of forced adoption on mothers, children, and their families; and gives voice to countless women who have been silenced for generations.
About the authors
Aunty LYNDA HOLDEN is a proud Dhungutti woman, mother and grandmother. Lynda is deeply passionate about social justice and human rights and is dedicated to her family and community. She has worked in nursing, midwifery, mental health, human rights, law, and social justice, and advocates for Aboriginal Peoples in all these areas. Lynda holds qualifications in nursing, midwifery and law, and has taught in all these disciplines, to university students and the general public. Lynda currently advises corporate partnerships on vaccine uptake in Aboriginal communities, practices law, and sits on the NSW Law Society Indigenous Committee.
JO TUSCANO is co-author of Back on the Block, the story of Bill Simon, a Biripi man, member of the Stolen Generations and an inmate of the notorious Kinchella Boys Home.
About the convenor
INGRID MATTHEWS is convenor of the Justice and Democracy Circle at The Womens Club, where members discuss a broad range of topics including womens leadership on climate action and the place of children in a democratic polity. Ingrid is a lecturer at UNSW Law and Justice, where she specialises in decolonial curriculum and pedagogy, jurisprudence of colonisation, and creation of criminality in colonised populations. She is a white Australian living on unceded Boorooborong (grey kangaroo) clan lands of the sovereign Darug people.
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