Sometimes a song changes lives, nations, the way we understand ourselves and each other. Archie Roach wrote such a song.
Took The Children Away is a graphic telling of what happened to him and so many Indigenous children. In his Melbourne foster home, Archie found great music, and he soon knew the power of song to tell stories.
His songs, his voice, were so full of beauty, and of the truths he learned walking a difficult path through life.
Took The Children Away was born of a chance conversation with a favourite uncle. It started a national conversation, sometimes awkward, as yet incomplete. But it points us in the right direction. Australia is a better place for the life and music of Uncle Archie Roach.
