Telling their truth: the Queensland Indigenous community defying a government with healing voices

Frank Malone, an elder in the Queensland community known as Cherbourg, was among the last generation to grow up, as he puts it, under ‘the Act’. Photograph: Joe Hinchliffe/The Guardian

As a boy, Frank Malone thought what was done to him – and to those around him – was normal.

Normal that he needed a permit to travel 5km down the road to a neighbouring country town that, unlike his own, had shops. Normal that a siren would sound at 5pm every day, warning everyone off the street and into their yards.