New Norcia Mission was the collective name for the St Mary's Mission (from 1848) and the St Joseph's Native School and Orphanage (from 1861) which were 'segregated' and run as separate institutions by the Benedictine monks and nuns at New Norcia, 120 kilometres north of Perth, Western Australia. Schooling was focused on practical skills and young people worked at the Mission after school age.
The New Norcia Mission was scheduled under the 'Industrial Schools Act 1874', giving the Abbot 'complete control' over the children on the mission.
In 1974, with a 'new appreciation of the importance of Aboriginal family and culture' the Mission was closed.
In 2001, former residents of New Norcia organised a reunion. An account of that reunion is given by Massam, and indicates the complexity of relationships between people who grew up in out of home care and the people and institutions that accommodated them:
'The reunion was about bonds between people, not structures. It brought together people who had publicly and vehemently criticised the Sisters and the institutions at New Norcia with others who had spent their savings to finance a return. Most often the women and men who gathered could speak in more than one voice, from more than one standpoint about their childhood. Women who had fought all their lives against the threat that their own children might end up in care brought grandchildren to town, proud and keen that the next generation might meet 'the ladies who looked after Nanna'. Again and again, the reunion was about relationships that had persisted through dreadful, and sometimes wonderful, experiences and held firm over many years. That There was Love in This Home: The Benedictine Missionary Sisters at New Norcia p.211'
Last updated:
21 July 2023
Cite this: http://www.findandconnect.gov.au/guide/wa/WE00945
First published by the Find & Connect Web Resource Project for the Commonwealth of Australia, 2011
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