STOLEN.
Cruel. Calculating. Continuing.
Late 1800s. Granny Jinny. Kidnapped as a young girl from Lama Lama Country to be a slave & more for a white family in Cooktown.

Early 1900s. Granny Jinny has a son, pop Silas. He was stolen & taken to Yarrabah. Granny Jinny followed. But they couldn’t be together. He lived in the cold dormitories. Kept apart from Mum Jinny who lived metres away in the community.

Early 1900s. Granny Rosie went to Port Douglas Hospital to have her baby. She didn’t return. Police came for Nana Georgina 5 & aunt Harriet 8. Police told them their mum was dead & stole them from their family. Two little girls grieving their mum removed to Yarrabah.

Stolen dignity. 1930s. Pop Silas & nana Georgina met in Yarri. Every part of their lives controlled. Anthropologist Tindale recording nana’s menstrual cycle.

Stolen innocence. 1940s. Mum, Aunty Carol, aunty Josie, Aunty Paula. You can wear white clothing. Speak the English language. But. You are not ‘civilised’

Stolen excellence. 1950s mum gets a western education.The only blak in the school. She can read before grade 1, play piano by ear. She is smarter than the whites. Impossible. Blaks at the back.

Stolen identity. 1970s. I am a foreigner in my own land. No one on tv looks like me, the dolls I love are white, thin, straight blonde hair.

Stolen agency. 2020. I am a sovereign blak woman. But I am powerless under the systems, the structures that contain me, constrain me, oppress me. That I live & work under. Stolen. Generations.