Aunty Thelma Chilly can remember when children would hide, panicked by strangers who entered the family home.

Many families were still segregated by race, their lives were surveilled by the government.

"We had mission managers that used to come into homes; they used to check in cupboards and check on children," she said.

" If they weren't satisfied, they would take those children away. "

The rule book to survive? "Act like you were a non-Aboriginal person," the proud multi-clan nation woman said.

Australia's first truth-telling commission — the Yoorrook Justice Commission — recounted this era as a time where, "Aboriginal children were taken to missions, to foster homes, to orphanages where the walls were high and the rooms chilly".

"They were placed with white families who told the

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