YouTube video by Adoptee Literary Festival

Mark Steel, comedian, shares the soundrack of his life with Lauren Laverne.

"Unless we teach the truths of our troubled history in our school systems, our garden can’t help but be stunted; if we rise to the challenge, imagine how lush it could be."

Adoption, Reunion, and the Father Who Spent 55 Years Looking.

Memorial, celebration, grieving- purpose beyond the technique, and still interwoven in the process. It is easy to get distracted by the how of art, but not the point. The why- mourning, connection, co...

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. Maya Angelou Introduction Eleven years written by strangers is a personal account reflecting on my foster care records and reveali…

Yothu Yindi's "Treaty" was released on 18 February 1991. The producer credit on that record belongs to Mark Moffatt. Mark Moffatt was my father. I did not learn that from a registry, a caseworker or an agency file. I learned it from a DNA test. He died in Nashville on 6 September 2024, aged 74. I never met him. This episode is not about the coincidence. It is about what sits under it: a country that makes promises in public and does not keep them. "Treaty" named one of those promises in 1991. The National Apology for Forced Adoptions, delivered on 21 March 2013, is the same object thirteen years on — twenty Senate recommendations, a national framework that was never built, birth registers never harmonised, no single point at which an Australian adoptee can be told the truth about their own origin without paying a private company for it. An apology that is not followed by the thing it apologised for is not a reckoning. It is a closing statement. — A NOTE ON ATTRIBUTION "Treaty" belongs to Yothu Yindi and to Yolŋu people. This episode claims a production credit and a fact of paternity, nothing more. Land rights and forced adoption are not the same injury and no equivalence is drawn between them. — KEY DATES 18 February 1991 — "Treaty" released 29 February 2012 — Senate Community Affairs References Committee reports on the Commonwealth's contribution to former forced adoption policies and practices; 20 recommendations 21 March 2013 — National Apology delivered at Parliament House 6 September 2024 — Mark Moffatt dies in Nashville, aged 74 READ THE FULL ESSAY https://thoughtlessdel.substack.com/p/treaty-produced-by-my-father MORE FROM THOUGHTLESS DELINEATION Website: https://bouel.com.au/ Substack: https://thoughtlessdel.substack.com/ Thoughtless Delineation is an independent forensic investigation into adoptee rights, identity erasure and institutional accountability, written by Shane Bouel — a forced adoption survivor. #adopteevoices #forcedadoption #adopteerights #adoption #nationalapology #australia #treaty #adopteestories

The April 1975 effort matched more than 2,800 infants and children evacuated from Vietnam with adoptive families. Today, the adoptees are searching for clues to their past—and reflecting on the complicated legacy of their evacuation