‘They were slave traders’: how an Indigenous historian found peace by unearthing her family’s past

Shauna Bostock, an Indigenous academic and author, has written a book piecing together her family history, Reaching Through Time. Photograph: Dan Peled/Guardian Australia

It was late at night in 2008 when Shauna Bostock’s phone rang. It was Uncle Gerry, from Sydney, sounding “strangely incredulous”. He couldn’t quite believe the news he had just heard. “Guess who our white ancestors were?” He paused for dramatic effect. “They were slave traders. Imagine that!” Snorting with laughter, he added: “Those white ancestors of ours must be rolling in their graves knowing we turned out to be a mob of blackfellas.”

Until then, the Bundjalung woman had only known of Augustus John Bostock, “the whitefella who gave us our family name”. Uncle Gerry’s news ignited in her “a burning desire to know more”. But it also left her feeling numb. Bostock realised she “simply didn’t have the words to describe how I felt”. Now, in her book piecing together her family history, Reaching Through Time, she has found those words.