A group of young Indigenous people, who grew up in foster care, have travelled to the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) to discover and reconnect with their kin and culture.
The trip to Canberra was organised as part of a not-for-profit program that supports Indigenous children leaving foster care.
"What we're trying to achieve is for these young people to do research on the family and where they come from and who they are and what their tribe is," Sheena Olsen from Uniting's Aboriginal Aftercare service said.
"[It allows them] to have some kind of knowledge of where [their] Aboriginality... is from because they don't know.
"We've got some young kids here who don't even know their mum and dad's last name because it was never told to them while in care."
Ms Olsen said cultural support programs and initiatives like this were crucial to helping Indigenous children into the future.
"It creates resilience and a sense of belonging back to their culture," she said.
"Then these young people become resilient to any issues they face in the future, whether it's racial discrimination [or] harassment."
While at AIATSIS, the group was given a tour of their collection and the opportunity to use the institute's online database to construct a rough ancestry.
"[To] explore some pictures, maybe some writings, whatever we might have in this collection that relates to their family," the manager of the family history unit at AIATSIS, Narelle Rivers, said.
"I do believe that so far they have already begun to find some pictures and resources that relates directly back to their family, which is fantastic."
'My Nan was first woman in tent embassy'
One of the those to discover some new family faces was 21-year-old Monak Morris from Taree in New South Wales, who was put in foster care at the age of 10.
"I knew who my family were but I didn't known what they were doing or what they've done or what happened to them or anything like that," Ms Morris said.
"I found out that my Nan was actually the first women to be in the tent embassy and she actually came down to protest in Canberra [and when she did] they stole her children in Taree.
"I've found out a fair bit about how my family was treated back in the day."
Ms Morris also said she had discovered how the families of her half-brothers and sisters were related and connected to her own.
She said she planned on sharing the information she discovered on the trip with her extended family.
"I've got a whole bunch of photos that I'll actually take back to Purfleet Taree, where my Biripi mob come from," she said.
"I'll be able to show them the photos and we'll be able to reconnect more and probably give [AIATSIS] more information about our people."
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