Sally Morgan grew up unaware that she was Aboriginal. When, as an adult, she discovered her Aboriginal heritage, she was consumed by the desire to understand its significance:
What did it really mean to be Aboriginal? I'd never lived off the land and been a hunter and a gatherer. I'd never participated in corroborees or heard stories of the Dreamtime. I'd lived all my life in Suburbia and told everyone I was Indian. I hardly knew any Aboriginal people. What did it mean for someone like me? [1]
By delving into her family's past and eliciting the personal histories of her mother, grandmother and great-uncle and incorporating them into her autobiography, Sally Morgan is claiming the dreadful legacy of culture contact between white and Aboriginal Australia as integral to her identity as an Aborigine.
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