'Be careful what you wish for,' wrote Aesop, 'lest it come true.' Debra Dank had long been desperate to visit the National Archives, to paint a fuller picture of her family, to add flesh to the name-bones and the few precious stories she possessed. What she discovered would shatter everything she thought she knew about her family and her past.
She had been aware of her father's five siblings, some of whom had died before she could come to know them, but there were always whispers and gaps and silences. Certainly, her parents had experiences that affected how Debra grew up, but hers seemed to be one of the very few Aboriginal families who had escaped having children stolen, who had viewed this horror from a seemingly safer distance. But the information she uncovered revealed that her paternal grandmother had given birth to ten children. Four had been taken from her.
Ankami is written from the perspective of those left behind, those who search always for the faces of stolen and lost Aboriginal children, now known only through a few cruel, thoughtless words written by a violent pastoral manager and a paternalistic colonial administrator, a footnote in a yellowed letter.
This is a story about absences and the secrets that come with them, about unknown but somehow still present family. It is a story about what those speaking silences may be trying to tell as families sit around fires at night or celebrate together at a festive table. It is a story about the lost opportunity to grow with aunts and dads, the knowledge not shared and learned, the memories not made and a love that must remain one-sided and yearning.
Ankami is a book like no other, a searing, unforgettable and deeply human account of sorrow and incomprehensible loss, and the essential power of memory. A Gudanji/Wakaja and Kalkadoon woman from the Barkly Tablelands in the Northern Territory, Dr Debra Dank is an Enterprise Fellow with the University of South Australia. She has spent 40 years working in primary, secondary and tertiary education roles, in urban and remote areas across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and the Northern Territory. She is interested in multiform narrative and its practice in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities and the role semiotics plays in that. Her book, We Come with This Place, won numerous honours in 2023, including four New South Wales Premier's Awards and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Debra is passionate about the environment, especially as her Country, on the Beetaloo Basin, is under threat of being fracked. From the award-winning and critically acclaimed author Debra Dank, comes a book about the discovery of having family members taken, and the secrets that come with that absence.
Shortlisted for the 2026 Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction
Longlisted for the 2026 Stella Prize
