On a cold spring day in 2018, Aunty Eunice Wright sat in her wheelchair at the bottom of the steps of Victoria's parliament and asked for the premier.
The terminally ill Stolen Generations survivor briefly addressed the crowd before becoming breathless.
"I want compensation," she said.
"Justice for the Stolen Gen."
She died before she could see it.
Victoria implemented a redress scheme for survivors of the Stolen Generation in response to the tireless advocacy of survivors like Aunty Eunice.
The scheme provides a personalised apology and $100,000 to survivors of the Stolen Generations in Victoria, and it is expected up to 1,200 people may be eligible to access the scheme.
But it is not available to those who have already died.
"To not be recognised is just a travesty, to our family and to mum and her memory and everything she fought for," daughter Tina Wright said.
Yoorrook Commission hears Aunty Eunice's story on country
Aunty Eunice's family shared their story at a special Yoorrook Justice Commission hearing on Gunditjmara country.
Victoria's truth-telling inquiry aims to establish an official record of the effects of colonisation.
Commissioners from Yoorrook travelled to western Victoria to hear the family's story at the former Lake Condah mission – the place Aunty Eunice was taken from her family as a nine-year-old in 1954.
Tina said it was important to tell her mother's story on country.
"Giving evidence in a courtroom setting was not going to be the space for my Mum's story because that's where hers started, where she was removed, in a courtroom," she said.
Tina's sister Donna told the hearing the family lived a happy life as one of the last families remaining on the mission before three of the four children were taken.
They were taken while their mother was in the hospital and they were under the care of extended family.
"They were safe and loved and cared for. And that's when the police came."
Their mother eventually ended up at Ballarat orphanage, where she was forced into unpaid work caring for other traumatised children and endured physical punishments.
Eunice's father, Charles "Monty" Foster had an emotional breakdown following the children's removal and was himself taken to a psychiatric hospital in Kew, where he later died aged 54.
"[Mum] knew her father died of a broken heart," Tina told the hearing.
After taking out a loan to have their grandfather's remains repatriated to the Lake Condah Mission ceremony, the family later found his body had been mutilated, chopped up and put in the smallest box.
Donna said her mother did not begin to talk to them about what happened to her until she was in her 30s.
Once Aunty Eunice began to speak about her experience, she began to push for recognition of what her family had gone through.
Her experience was published in the 1997 Bringing them Home report.
"So that's been sitting there since 1997 … but here in Victoria, not only do they do nothing, they didn't care … it was just ignored," Donna said.
Sisters say their mum 'deserves better'
A year and a half after Aunty Eunice's protest on the steps of parliament house, Victoria announced it would introduce its own redress scheme.
"Mum passed away a few days before the announcement," Donna said.
"She never got to hear that and know what that fight led to.
"To lose your whole family, bury your whole family, fight for your rights and justice and still get disrespected... mum deserves better. We are not going to sit back and let her get disrespected, especially now she is gone."
The Victorian government has not said if it will consider expanding the scheme to include people like Aunty Eunice.
"I cannot give you an indication on whether the government will be interested, or capable, of providing reparations for those who have already passed," Treasurer Tim Pallas said.
"How far back you'd go, what level of harm was able to be indicated … it would be very difficult."
The family hope that telling the Yoorrook inquiry, which has all the powers of a royal commission, might elevate their mother's plight.
"I want Yoorrook to put mum's case forward to the state in the hope that she will be redressed," Tina said.
"How can the government inflict so much pain on one family and not be held to account?"
The Yoorrook Justice Commission has resumed sittings for two weeks of public hearings and is expected to hear evidence on child protection and criminal justice.
