Family histories, personal narratives and race relations history in Australia

First I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I speak, the Ngunnawal people. My talk is about some of the experiences I had researching the topic of my PhD thesis, 'My One Bright Spot', which was about relationships between Aboriginal and white women in New South Wales in the first half of the twentieth century. Based on a life story of my great-grandmother, a white woman, it involved my own family history, as well as the personal and family histories of a number of Aboriginal women connected with her. In the course of my research, I came to reassess the value of family history for enlarging our understanding of Australian history, especially our understanding of race relations history, and especially, the history of the Stolen Generations