AustLit

Merrilee Lands spent her formative years living with her mother in the La Grange Aboriginal mission, near Broome. At the age of ten she was separated from her mother to live in a dormitory with other children, eventually moving to Perth to complete her schooling. Winning an American Field Service Scholarship in Year 12, Lands spent the following year in Buffalo, near the Canadian border.

Some time after returning to Australia, Lands returned to Broome and began collecting oral stories from her people. She subsequently joined the staff of Magabala Books when this Indigenous Australian publishing house was established by the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre in 1987. Lands compiled and illustrated the first title published by Magabala Books, Mayi : Some Bush Fruits of Dampierland (1987) a work that includes the traditional names of 'bush tucker' plants in five local Aboriginal languages. She has also worked with the Dampierland Oral History Project.

In 2004, Lands was working in her first year as a Yawuru language teacher at Cable Beach Primary, Broome. Land's teaching position was a part of an Aboriginal Yawuru language programme at the school; an initiative aimed at building the 'cultural identity and self esteem' of indigenous students. (Note: Yawuru is one of the traditional Aboriginal languages spoken in the Kimberley region.)