Barbara Cummings

Barbara Cummings (1 January 1948 – 1 September 2019) was an Australian Nangiomeri woman and member of the Stolen Generations. She was brought up at the Retta Dixon Home in Darwin, Northern Territory.

She became an activist, social worker, writer and advocate for members of the Stolen Generations and contributed to the development of the Bringing Them Home report which became the basis of the Australian Government's 2007 Apology to Australia's Indigenous peoples.

Life in the Northern Territory Cummings was born at the Bagot Aboriginal Reserve in Darwin, which had previously been the site of the Kahlin Compound. In 1948 Cummings also was taken from her mother and placed at the Retta Dixon Home, alongside her two brothers. which was an account at her time at the Retta Dixon home and the harsh treatment, which included abuse and emotional deprivation, that the children received there.

This book told not only her story but the stories of the people around her and included numerous interviews with others in which she sought their account of what had happened and see if she had missed anything.

In her later life Cummings also worked to support victims who were testifying at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and, from 2015, former Retta Dixon inmates makings applications for compensation through the National Redress Scheme.

Legacy Cummings legacy is significant and, following her death, a condolence motion was passed in the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly in which the then Chief Minister Michael Gunner stated:

Publications Cummings, Barbara (1990). Take this child - : from Kahlin Compound to the Retta Dixon Children's Home. Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra.

The title of this book is taken from a quote by Retta Dixon, for whom the Retta Dixon Home was named, in which she said that God had told her to "ake these children, and train them for Me". Cummings also said that this quote reflected the attitudes of successive governments and policy-makers.