As NAIDOC Week begins, we are honoured to share one of the most important conversations we've ever had.

In this deeply moving first part of our two-part interview, Megan and Shannon sit down with Aunty Brenda Matthews, proud Wiradjuri woman, author, filmmaker, speaker, Director of Learning Circle Australia and survivor of the Stolen Generations - to listen, to her story, the one behind the headlines and history books.

Taken from her family as a very young child, Brenda and her siblings were stolen from their loving mother and father. Brenda was placed with a white family, where she found love, safety, and the only home she could remember. It was where her earliest memories were formed.

Then, she was taken again.

While being reunited with her family should have been a moment of pure joy, and for her family it was, for a little girl who had grown up between two worlds, it meant stepping into another life she didn't yet understand. From that moment, Brenda began carrying questions of identity, belonging, and truth that would shape the course of her life.

With extraordinary grace, she shares the reality of being separated from her family, the lifelong impact of those decisions, her search for justice, and the remarkable love that carried her through it all.

This conversation is not about politics. It is about people. It is about listening to lived experience with open hearts and recognising that reconciliation begins with truth.

As Australia marks the beginning of NAIDOC Week, we invite you to pause, listen, and walk alongside Aunty Brenda as she courageously shares a chapter of our nation's history through the eyes of someone who lived it.

Next week, in The Way Home, Brenda shares her remarkable journey of healing, forgiveness, cultural reconnection, and the hope she now carries for future generations.