Married to a ‘British Subject’

In the archives lie stories of our past, that knowingly or unknowingly live in present. For Aboriginal families, finding records can be a critical source great healing, enhance and affirm identity, provide families with new understandings how things came to be. This essay affords agency First Nations looking for their stories, reading historical documents against grain, telling way. Through family memory, reflection, archival research, it delivers microhistory, rich feeling, one family, through experiences Mabel Ita Eatts (née Frederick), an ancestral matriarch, Jaru woman, Great Grandmother author. was member Stolen Generations later deeply influenced by exemption policy. Her story brings life struggles faced ‘half-caste’ women living Broome Derby 1920s 1930s, explicitly highlighting not only invasive oppression expressed this policy but, more importantly, actively negotiated system. paper is powerful example writes back colonising archive.