Long Yarn Short

by Turnbull-Roberts, Vanessa

• ISBN13: 9780702268687
• ISBN10: 0702268682
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2025-01-01
• Publisher: University of Queensland Press

Summary

At just ten years old, Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts was forcibly removed – stolen – from her family, community and kinship systems. After eight years in various out-of-home care placements, Vanessa fled the system, reconnected with kin and returned to country for the very first time. Only then did she begin to heal. In this book, Vanessa embarks on an extraordinary work of truth-telling, exposing the ongoing violence visited on Black children, their families and their communities by the systems that claim to protect them. As a survivor of out-of-home care, a practising lawyer fighting for the freedom of others and now also a mother herself, she takes an unflinching look at the heartache and trauma caused by racist family policing, the shameful rates of child removals and the steady pipeline of First Nations children into the criminal justice system. Long Yarn Short is a story of struggle, grief and love; a call to action from one of the most powerful voices of her generation. As a leading expert in children's and young people's rights, Vanessa invites readers to imagine solutions for a better world and demands that they listen when she says, ‘ We are still here.'

Author Biography

Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts is a proud Bundjalung Widubul-Wiabul woman, who has degrees in both law and social work, and was recognised with an Australian Human Rights Medal in 2019. She is a human rights lawyer and Fulbright scholar whose current research is focused on unveiling the intersections of human rights, child removal and the implications of forcible removal. In 2024, Vanessa was appointed the inaugural Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People Commissioner for the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).

Table of Contents

st Nations memoir, First Nations Australian, Indigenous peoples, Aboriginal writers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writing, Indigenous perspectives, Black Australian writing, biography, autobiography, memoir, Australian storytelling, life-writing, political activism, contemporary non-fiction, country, kinship, Indigenous history, Indigenous knowledge and culture, First Nations and BIPOC communities, Aboriginal identity, First Nations languages, First Nations histories and cultures, sovereignty, environmental, political and social changes, cultural heritage, post-colonial history, memoir, out-of-home care, foster care, Australian law, welfare, child removal, Stolen Generations, racism, family policing, policing, First Nations autobiography, truth-telling, children’ s rights, families, crossover, criminal justice