Australian Left Review
Article Title
Daisy Corunna's Story
Abstract
Daisy Corunna told her story to her grand-daughter, Sally Morgan, not long before she died. Daisy was taken from her mother in her early teens, to work as a virtual domestic slave for her white natural father, Howden Drake-Brockman, and his family. In the same way, her own daupter, Gladys, also fathered by a Drake-Brockman (possibly Howden again) was taken from her at the a1e of three and placed in a children's home. A previous cbild, whom she never saw again, abd already been taken from her; and it was many years before Daisy and Gladys were able to be together again. Fearing that Gladys' own children would be taken away in turn (particularly after the early death of their father), neither Gladys nor Daisy told them of their Aboriginal heritage. The stories recounted in Sally Morgan's book are the result of her determination, after she became an adult, to seek out that heritage, and to publish what she bad discovered.