Zuri
Content Warning: These stories are about violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation and may include references to suicide or self-harming behaviours. They may contain graphic descriptions and strong language and may be distressing. Some narratives may be about First Nations people who have passed away. If you need support, please see Contact & support.
‘It was just a life of just surviving. There was never nurture in my life.’
Zuri is a First Nations woman in her 60s. She is legally blind in one eye. A member of the Stolen Generations, she lives with intergenerational trauma from childhood neglect and abuse.
‘Not having parents or guardians really contributed to my psychological way of being,’ she told the Royal Commission.
Zuri was made a ward of the state very early in life. The woman who adopted her mother later took Zuri and her sister into her charge. They weren’t ‘legitimately adopted out’, they ‘were stolen’, she said. ‘She was a very bitter, angry, horrible woman … She was just a tyrant, just so cruel.’
When ‘Nana’ was abusing her, Zuri used to say, ‘God blind me’.
‘And well, what’s happened?’
When Zuri was seven, she returned to live with her mother, who had become an alcoholic.
She went off the rails in high school. ‘I really felt that nobody did care for me. So, it was just me looking after me … I was the biggest rebel.’
She also had her first operation on her eyes. ‘I lost my sight significantly and I couldn't continue school because I couldn't see the blackboard.’
Her mother said sending her to university would ‘just be a waste of education’.
When Zuri was ‘caught shoplifting’, she was ‘put in a hostel for being an uncontrollable child – in moral danger’.
In her late teens, the state tried to ‘rehabilitate’ her in a home for the blind. She again experienced a ‘feeling of rejection’.
‘Once upon a time, if you had any type of disability you were locked up because you were an embarrassment to society.’
After that she was ‘in the bikie scene, the fashion scene, the fitness industry scene, the surf scene, the church scene’. She always felt like a misfit, because she didn’t have ‘the faculties that everybody else had’.
‘There was never any supports around me. Basically, I had to live by my gut, as opposed to living by the law or going to school and getting that education that everybody else gets, because that's how you operate in this system.’
She did everything to get out of the rut of ‘no education’. About 14 years ago, she studied social sciences at university, but failed as she couldn’t do the assessments due to ‘reading fatigue’. ‘I was shattered. You get excited and then fall.’
Recently, Zuri returned to Country to work on First Nations projects for a community health organisation. She says there is a lack of culturally-appropriate services for First Nations people with mental health issues.
‘I've gone through so many different counsellors and psychologists to help me, because I don't fit in this system.’
She is supporting a women’s group and feels they are on the right path to ‘being heard, being seen, being listened to, being taken seriously’.
She is passionate about teaching children ‘where they fit and how they fit’.
‘To really allow kids that whole self-determination. It starts from when they are little. If they are seen and heard, then they will be confident people. You're a seed just like a tree, you know, and your roots will go deep.’
Disclaimer: This is the story of a person who shared their personal experience with the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability through a submission or private session. The names in this story are pseudonyms. The person who shared this experience was not a witness and their account is not evidence. They did not take an oath or affirmation before providing the story. Nothing in this story constitutes a finding of the Royal Commission. Any views expressed are those of the person who shared their experience, not of the Royal Commission.