Double Native

Growing up on the west coast of Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula in the 1970s and 1980s, Fiona Wirrer-George Oochunyung had an idyllic traditional life. At the age of 16, she moved to Sydney to attend the NAISDA Dance College, where she studied with the legendary Page brothers. As a young woman, she carves out a fragile relationship with her absent father, inspiring her to better understand her Austrian ancestry and how it meshes with her Indigenous identity. The model of a modern woman, the author shares the joys and challenges that come with growing up in a divided community in this powerful and candid memoir and offers a rare insight into the burgeoning years of the contemporary Indigenous dance movement.