Truth Telling Mitchelton Library with Dr Thom Blake

DR THOM BLAKE is a Queensland historian whose work has made a major contribution to truth-telling about Aboriginal history in Queensland.

He is best known for A Dumping Ground: A History of the Cherbourg Settlement, the definitive history of the Cherbourg Aboriginal settlement first published in 2001 and republished in a second edition in 2023.

The book draws on archival records, maps, letters and the oral histories of former residents to reveal the impact of government control on Aboriginal families, while honouring the resilience, cultural strength andcommunity memory that endured at Cherbourg.

A Dumping Ground won the *2002 NSW Premier’s History Award State Records Prize.* Dr Blake’s widerwork includes historical research, heritage interpretation and community-based history projects across Queensland, including work connected with Aunty Ruth Hegarty and the story of Aboriginal leader, pastor and activist Don Kawanji Brady.

At this truth-telling session, Dr Blake will speak from hisdecades of research into Cherbourg and Queensland’s history of reserves, removals, institutional control, survival and resistance.