Doris, then aged three, grew up in Moore River, believing she had been abandoned by her mother. After their mammoth trek, she moved to a cattle station, married an Aboriginal stockman, Toby Kelly, and had two daughters, Doris and Annabelle.But when she went to Perth for medical treatment, the authorities took the two girls. So in 1941 Molly absconded again, managing to take Annabelle with her, and returned to Jigalong, again walking most of the way. The “full-blood” Aborigines, it was believed, were becoming extinct.Molly was taken to Moore River, a mission north of Perth. Aged 14, she ran away with her sister, Daisy Kadibil, and her cousin, Gracie Fields.

“The land symbolises so much to us: it’s our family, our parents, our grandparents. It’s the umbilical cord, the bond between mother and children.”Molly was taken – abducted, in effect – from Jigalong, a remote township on the edge of the Western Desert, under a policy introduced early last century and not abandoned until 1965. Conceived in response to the perceived threat to “White Australia” from the intermingling of Aborigines and Europeans, its aim was to integrate mixed-race children into white society and “breed out” their colour. “The first step in the journey of healing is to reconnect with the land,” Doris said. It is also assisting the psychological recovery of those belonging to the Stolen Generation, who were brought up in Christian-run missions and orphanages, cut off from their language and culture. Survival’s international campaign is thought to have helped sway public opinion.For Aborigines, afflicted by chronic health and social problems, the restoration of native title rights is mitigating the historic effects of dispossession and alienation.

It also supported the Martudjara in a lengthy battle to reclaim ownership of their ancestral lands, which culminated in a High Court decision last year recognising their “native title” rights to 136,000sq km, an area the size of England.It was the largest victory for Aborigines, who have lodged a series of similar claims since a watershed High Court ruling in 1992 that indigenous people owned the land before European colonisation. The area was later used by the British to test ballistic missiles.In the early 1980s, the Martudjara began moving back to their desert homelands, setting up two new communities, Parnngurr and Punmu, with the help of Survival International, one of the three charities featured in this year’s Independent Christmas Appeal.Survival, a charity that campaigns for the rights of tribal peoples, funded water boreholes for the two communities. Molly and two other girls, all taken from their families, escaped from an institution in 1931 and walked 1,600km back home by following a fence that ran the length of Western Australia.Doris’s father belonged to the Martudjara people, who were evicted in the 1950s and resettled in government camps on the fringes of the Great Sandy Desert. So the appropriation of their ancient lands was an especially cruel blow for Australia’s indigenous people, who were subjected to a government policy of removing mixed-race children from their parents and assimilating them into the white community.Doris, 66, is a member of the “Stolen Generation”, as is her mother, whose story inspired the internationally acclaimed feature film, Rabbit Proof Fence.

It was like the spirits of our ancestors were welcoming me back It felt like a special place for me, the earth itself. I took my shoes off and stood on it, my birthing place.”The connection with the land described so eloquently by Doris in an interview at her home in Perth is the core of Aboriginal tradition, spirituality and beliefs. There were feelings of warmth all around me, and a breeze was passing through. Nauru’s President, Rene Harris, dismissed the citizenship idea, saying it would undermine the country’s identity and culture.. Fifty years after Doris Pilkington was forcibly separated from her family, she persuaded her mother, Molly Craig, to take her back to the place where she was born; under a mulga tree on a cattle station in Western Australia’s remote Pilbara region. It is also concerned that failing Pacific states could become havens for terrorists and drug smugglers.Mr Downer said in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper that he had ordered officials to draw up options for Nauru because he could not “just turn my back” on the country once it ceased to be useful as a place for processing asylum-seekers.He later played down the idea of giving Australian passports to Nauruans and resettling them, observing that other Pacific nations might expect similar treatment.