Benjamin Law and Bruce Pascoe

The Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian author, 73, has written more than 30 books including the 2014 bestseller Dark Emu. In 2018 he received the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. I’m more Cornish than Koori. Well, they’re correct – I have fair skin. The amount of Aboriginal genetic material in my body hasn’t made me black of skin. [But] I knew [I was Aboriginal] because my uncle told me when I was about nine. At 17, I was working for my uncle casually in the summer holidays, and he introduced me to a lot of family. Around 30, my daughter asked me about photographs in the album I’d never questioned: “Who’s this person? Why do they look like that?” Who were they and what did they look like? Well, my great-grandfather was a dark-skinned man. And there was an auntie in there, also dark skinned.