AustLit

Over the past five years I have been researching the autobiographies written by Aboriginal women where the story of removal has been a constant theme. Children were taken from their families and the horrendous effects of those acts permeate the autobiographical writings. These autobiographies have been a rich source of personal, social and racial history and testify to an Aboriginal survival and renaissance towards self-determination and racial pride. In examining these autobiographies I traced a burgeoning aggression that reflected an emerging Aboriginal identity. This identity fractured the contradictory existence of recorded detail amassed by the State about the lives of Aboriginal people and allowed the authors to tell their own stories. - Introduction