Caprice : A Stockman's Daughter
St Lucia
:
University of Queensland Press
,
1991
Z152202
1991
single work
novel
'A fictional account of one woman's journey to find her family and heritage, Caprice won the 1990 David Unaipon Award for unpublished Indigenous writers. Its publication marked the beginning of Doris Pilkington Garimara's illustrious writing career.
Set in the towns, pastoral stations and orphanage-styled institutions of Western Australia, this story brings together the lives of three generations of Mardu women. The narrator Kate begins her journey with the story of her grandmother Lucy, a domestic servant, then traces the short and tragic life of her mother Peggy.
Kate was born into the institutionalised world of the Settlement, taught Christian doctrine and trained for a career as a domestic. Gradually and painfully she sheds this narrowly prescribed identity, as she sets out on the pilgrimage home.' (Source: Publisher's blurb)
Under the Wintamarra Tree
St Lucia
:
University of Queensland Press
,
2002
6013129
2002
single work
life story
autobiography
'Doris Pilkington Garimara was born on traditional birthing ground under a wintamarra tree. This is her life story which follows on from her mother, Molly Craig's story in ~Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence. Doris begins with the basic migration of her Mardu ancestors from the Western Australian desert to the cattle stations and settlements on its fringes.
Generations later, living in a workers' camp with her family on Balfour Downs Station, three-year old Doris' life is forever changed when she is removed by authorities to Moore River Native Settlement. This institution, for children judged to be identifiably of mixed race, was the place Molly had so famously escaped from a decade before.
The life of an institutional orphan, as seen through the eyes of a child, is movingly revealed... Leaving behind the regimentation of assigned routines and endless regulations, Doris goes to Perth to train as a nurse's aide but the racist culture of an institutional upbringing leaves an indelible mistrust of her own people. This is the obstacle she has to overcome when as a wife and mother she makes the courageous but difficult choice to find her mother and father, and to begin the journey to reclaim her Mardu heritage.' Source: Publisher's blurb
Home to Mother
Janice Lyndon
(illustrator),
St Lucia
:
University of Queensland Press
,
2006
Z1265739
2006
single work
biography
children's
Molly, Gracey and Daisy are on the run, determined to escape the confinement of a government institution for Aboriginal children removed from their families. Barefoot, without provisions or maps, tracked by Native Police and search planes, the girls follow the rabbit-proof fence 1,600 kilometres north, knowing it would lead them home. Source: Publisher's blurb.
