A Question of Colour

Description:


*Shortlisted for the WA Premier's Book Awards: Premier's Prize for an Emerging Writer*

*Shortlisted for the 2021 Queensland Literary Awards: Queensland Premier’s Award for a Work of State Significance*

*Shortlisted for the 2021 Queensland Literary Awards: The Courier-Mail People’s Choice Queensland Book of the Year Award*

'These two children have been in our Home in Townsville for more than two years, and in view of their very dark colouring, have not been assimilated into the white race. Every effort has been made to place them in a foster home without success because of their colour.' Queensland State Children's Department correspondence, 21 June 1960.

The removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families remains a dark chapter in Australia's history. Pattie Lees was just ten-years-old when she and her four siblings were separated from their mother on the grounds of neglect and placed into State care. Believing she was being shipped and exiled to Africa, Pattie was ultimately fated to spend the rest of her childhood on the island once dubbed 'Australia's Alcatraz' –Palm Island Aboriginal Settlement, off the coast of Queensland.

A Question of Colour; my journey to belonging provides a first-hand account of Pattie's experiences as a 'fair-skinned Aboriginal' during Austral