Tjalaminu Mia's father was an Englishman who was placed in the care of Barnados as a child before being shipped to Fairbridge Children's Farm, Western Australia. Mia's Aboriginal mother was removed from her parents and placed in the care of Roman Catholic nuns at the Home of Good Shepherd. The pattern of removal was repeated for Tjalaminu and her brother Graeme Dixon: 'In 1962, at ten years of age, along with my six brothers and sisters, I was taken from my parents and extended family and placed in Sister Kate's Children's Home '.
Mia has worked as a Research Fellow at the Centre of Indigenous History and the Arts at the University of Western Australia. She was given her Aboriginal name in the early 1990s and it means Woman of Fire.
Jessica Lister is her granddaughter.
Source: Internationalist no. 311, April 1999.
