Brenda Matthews’ The Last Daughter: A Love Story (Blank Mag)
Brenda Matthews’ memoir, The Last Daughter, is a complex and emotional sharing. It is a harrowing story of heartbreak and trauma but ultimately love and forgiveness. It’s a powerful story, an important story. ‘Truth telling is never easy,’ says Brenda. ‘The true story of Australia has not been told. I hope my story can help bring Australians together with real love and sincere respect, in a way that overcomes the brutal painful facts of our shared history.’
At the age of two, Brenda and her six siblings were taken from their Aboriginal parents, Brenda and Gary, on false claims of neglect. They were placed into the foster system for a short period of time and then separated. Brenda was adopted by a loving white family. A family she became a part of. A family she loved. She was a much-loved daughter of Connie and Mac, and sister to Rebecca and Eugene. She spent five years knowing nothing of her Aboriginal heritage nor the family desperately fighting for her return. Then without warning, Brenda’s life was thrown into turmoil yet again when Child Welfare made the decision to reunite her with her Aboriginal family – a family who were now strangers to her. At the age of seven for the second time in her short life, she was wrenched from a secure and loving family. Brenda was the last child to be returned, the last daughter to come home.
On the surface, Brenda settled back into life with her parents and siblings but the trauma of being stolen and a disrupted childhood were deep, supressed memories. She constantly had a sense of something missing in her life. Like so many children who were forcibly removed from their parents, she was in some respects, broken. ‘But what is broken can be mended, if one can muster the courage,’ says Brenda.
Some four decades later Brenda is married to her husband, Mark, and living in Bundjalung Country in the beautiful Gold Coast hinterland. Since 2012 they’ve been hosting cultural camps together, taking teenagers on Country. Brenda is now a mother and a grandmother. The love story of Brenda and Mark is a very special one and he has ‘been such a wonderful Banaam, which is a support system.’ He has been a major part of Brenda’s healing journey and a constant encouragement for her to speak up, speak out and share her story. ‘Write it down, Brenda. Get it out…write the truth,’ Mark constantly told her.
With the support of Mark and her stepdaughters, Amy and Kiara, Brenda begins the search for her foster family and her beloved white sister – the little sister that Brenda loved and missed. They eventually find Connie on Facebook. Brenda’s sorrow is mixed with excitement and then fear. Fear of rejection. She finds the conviction to contact her white mother, Connie and learns through messages that Connie and Mac have been searching for her. Over time in an act of reconciliation Brenda accomplishes her mission of bringing her black and white families together.
The journey to get to this point of reconnection was a gruelling one, filled with lies, denials and government bungling. In Australia, between 1910 and the 1970s, governments, churches and welfare bodies forcibly removed numerous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. These children became known as the Stolen Generations. These actions have left a legacy of trauma and loss that continues to affect our First Nations communities, families and individuals today. Brenda was informed that because she and her siblings were removed in 1973, they did not meet the eligibility criteria to be recognised as Stolen Generations. In NSW, where they were born, The Child Welfare Act became the Child Welfare Act,1939, Amended in 1969, but even though the Act changed, Aboriginal children were still being removed from their families for a number of years following this.
The shock and betrayal she feels becomes an intense anger that needs a release. And so Brenda writes. She continues to write and be a voice for her family and her people, to restore the good name of her Indigenous parents who were deemed ‘neglectful parents.’ Brenda closes her eyes: ‘I can see my mother’s and father’s faces and the pain in their eyes when Dad shared with us the events of 22nd February 1973 when they took us away. He hadn't known what they'd done wrong, he and Mum. He was a hardworking man, and my mother was a loving mother who took good care of their children while her husband went out and made a living.’
Brenda’s story could have come from a place of anger and bitterness, but it is far from that. It is a love story at many levels. The Last Daughter has been described as a book all Australians should read. Brenda speaks quietly as she says, ‘We all carry stories within us. What story are we going to tell in another 100 years? The story of hurt and pain, or of healing? Individual healing turns into collective healing. We need to share truth through love and forgiveness.’
Brenda is a mother, a grandmother, a storyteller, a writer, a speaker, an Indigenous Director and Co-Founder for Learning Circle Australia. Her book The Last Daughter was published in April this year and Brenda and Mark have been on the touring circuit since its release. Whenever Brenda speaks her story is met with tears, applause and quite often, standing ovations.
Brenda is also a film director, making her feature film debut with The Last Daughter, a moving documentary about her life, produced by Gravity Films and released through Bonsai Films. It has won numerous awards including Audience Choice for Documentary for its world premiere at Adelaide Film Festival, and 2023 winner of Best Australian Film at the Gold Coast Film Festival. The Last Daughter can be viewed on Netflix.