"This painting shows my great auntie, Dot Latham, who was taken away from her Badimay mother and put into an orphanage by her Wudjula (White) father when she was 8 years old. At the time, there were massacres in the Kimberley in the North West of WA.
My Great Auntie, Dorothy Passmore (nee Latham), remembered this time as being a time of great fear and confusion. Many children were being taken from their families. My great-grandfather, Frances Latham, had abandoned his Aboriginal wife and felt responsible enough for his reputation as a leading pastoralist to put his two youngest daughters into 'care'. My Auntie Dot was placed into St Joseph's orphanage along with my grandmother, Mollie. They were 8 and 11 respectively. They lost most of their Badimay language and this experience changed their lives and the lives of their family forever.
Nana and Auntie Dot lived in the orphanage during the Great Depression and didn't leave until just before WWII.
Word of the Forrest River and King River Massacres during the 1920s and 30s had terrified many in my family and they feared they would be killed too."
Julie Dowling
