Australian Story on ABC and ABC iview profiles Sue-Yen Luiten – Fifty years after the end of the Vietnam War, adoptee Sue-Yen Luiten has returned to her country of birth in an effort to track down the family she left behind.
Luiten was just a few weeks old when she was adopted by an Australian couple, but she’s spent her adult life trying to piece together her biological puzzle.
“There’s so much ambiguity and unknown,”
– the Melbourne-based architect tells Australian Story.
“Who do I look like? Where did I start from? What have I left behind? What if my biological mother and father are looking for me and I’m just sitting here not doing anything at all?”
Luiten is also helping other adoptees find their birth families, heading up an international organisation, Vietnam Family Search.
“It’s like we’re an exclusive sort of family in a weird way,”
– says friend and adoptee Barton Williams.
Last month Luiten took that ‘family’ to Vietnam, cycling around the Mekong Delta and providing DNA kits to mothers in the hope the results will help connect adoptees with their biological families.
Australian Story filmed with the group as they were welcomed by local communities, including mothers separated from their children during the war. The group is now holding its collective breath, hopeful the DNA results will provide some answers.
For Luiten, the trip has been life changing. “As an adoptee driven to look for my mother, that journey can be incredibly lonely. Now there’s a community there that can hold each other.”
Producer: Jennifer Feller and Marc Smith.
Australian Story on ABC and ABC iview – Monday 26 May 2025 at 8:00pm
Media Release – ABC
TV Central ABC content HERE
Australian Story on ABC and ABC iview profiles Sue-Yen Luiten
