Spanning different timelines, the central thread of Debra Dank's powerful memoir We Come With This Place is a story of life in the bush and Debra's upbringing as a stockman's daughter.
As a young man, Dank’s father Soda worked unpaid on a pastoral station. He was one of many light-skinned children born to Aboriginal women who were assaulted by their white station managers.
We continue to have this one-sided conversation about the trauma and the horror, but we don't have a truthful, balanced conversation about it. It was done to us, not by usDebra Dank
After witnessing the sexual assault of his mother, Soda was falsely accused of stealing livestock and chased from his country in the Northern Territory and across the Queensland border by armed white pastoralists.
Dank catalogues the inter-generational trauma that continues to haunt Soda as he starts his own family.
I talk about all of those awful, awful things that occurred to us, but I am not allowed to talk about who did them to us because it upsets others.Debra Dank
The book grew from Dank's PhD work to record Indigenous non-linear ways of understanding time and space.
Alongside the brutality of frontier violence, the book also tells the dreaming stories of Dank's people. It is a soaring ode to spiritual connections to Country and ancestors.
When as an Aboriginal person, you are in your Country, it's absolutely indescribable. My kids and I always say how much we can breathe when we are at home.Debra Dank
Dank felt deeply honoured when she won a record four prizes at the 2023 NSW Premier’s Literary awards. She said it was a ‘vindication and acknowledgement' of Aboriginal life and practice.
Hear Debra Dank in this episode of the SBS Book Club. Listen in the SBS Audio app, Listnr, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
CREDITS
Executive producer/host - Sarah Malik
Sound engineer - Micky Grossman
