Behind the medals, starting blocks and immense national pride, Cathy Freeman is a woman still coming to terms with the gross injustices borne by her family at the hands of Australian authorities.
Ten years before she was born, the Olympian sprinter's Aboriginal parents sought the simple privilege of spending the Christmas of 1963 with their closest family in Queensland. The plan was to travel from Ayr to Woorabinda where their grandparents and their siblings lived. But permission to visit the community was required, and their request to the Director of Native Affairs and Superintendent to visit Woorabinda was rejected on the grounds that her parents, Norman and Cecilia, were unmarried.
![Olympian Cathy Freeman. She will reveal a deeply personal family story as part of social justice initiative.](/web/20161119182126im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/p/b/s/0/9/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsrdr1.png/1479355016929.jpg)
Living under "The Act" – legislation dating back to 1897 that tightly controlled Queensland's large Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population, separating parents from their children – Woorabinda residents and their families' basic civil rights went ignored.
"I think daughters carry those setbacks and struggles of their parents. I feel that my mother is impacted upon by those memories of her life back in the 1960s, I can sense it when I'm with her," Freeman said, speaking exclusively with Daily Life on the eve of the launch of the Fighting For Fair social justice initiative for which the athlete will publicly face her family's deep, unspoken scars.
![Cathy Freeman carries both the Aboriginal and the Australian flags during a victory lap after winning the women's 400m ...](/web/20161119182126im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/k/v/l/q/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsrdr1.png/1479355016929.jpg)
"I think that the memories are still quite overwhelming for a lot of people like my mother, it definitely impacts a lot of people of my generation or earlier."
As one of 12 speakers at Thursday's Your Right is My Right storytelling event, Freeman will open up about her parents' struggle – and how the injustice has influenced her own life.
"It is challenging, that personal management of the way it makes me feel, the sadness that is attached to that story," she said. "In a sense it draws me nearer to my mother [who is] having to sustain and manage the scars of that era.
"It certainly has changed part of my character … I feel like I'm personally ready to face this part of my identity which is so central to [my life]. It's a big part of who I am and I have no doubt that it will continue to be that way," she said. "I'm a family girl and I'm very proud of where I come from."
Freeman will share her story alongside Peter Greste, Michael Caton and Carlotta on a stage co-hosted by Maurice Blackburn Lawyers and New York-based storytelling platform, The Moth.
Determined to "fight for what is right", she hopes voicing her family history so publicly will allow her five-year-old daughter to one day understand the context of the equality that is so fundamental to Freeman's life.
"It's having a profound impact on me," she said of the storytelling process. "It's very cathartic, it grounds me but also humbles me and inspires me … It's all very personal soul-bearing stuff."