Artist Melissa Stannard holds her rusty metal calliper to her face, staring at her grandmother frozen in time, sitting frightened, being measured "like an animal".
The old photograph belonged to the Tindale genealogies, an anthropological survey of Australia's First Nation people in the 1900s.
The genealogies were a collection of photographs and information including measurements of body parts, physical descriptions, and family details.
It is a slice of family history Ms Stannard has reclaimed since embarking on a quest several years ago to find her ancestry and, in turn, herself.
"What would it have been like having these callipers against your face measuring every intimate part of your body?
"Nothing was off limits."
Her journey has become intertwined with her artwork as she uses history and healing in her jewellery, sculpture, paintings, and prints.
Connection to culture broken
At 45 years of age, Ms Stannard knows her identity as a Yuwaalaraay, Gamilaraay and Koama woman, but it is a truth she lived most of her life without.
She said losing her mother to domestic violence as a toddler broke her connection to culture as she was passed between foster homes.
"It was really challenging, really, really frustrating, and really traumatic and painful," she said,
Ms Stannard said she always had an interest in discovering her family history, but with blonde hair and blue eyes she feared rejection.
"I was always told [I was Indigenous] from the first lady that raised me to every other household afterwards, but always told to not act, to behave that way," she said.
"I'm not stolen generation but I have a parallel kind of experience."
Not alone
Healing Foundation chief executive and proud Wuthathi woman Fiona Cornforth said searching for family history was very common within the Indigenous community.
"One in three of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population were either removed or had a parent that was removed," Ms Cornforth said.
"The records … weren't kept with survivors in mind."
It was not until Ms Stannard was accepted into Griffith University six years ago that her quest became all consuming.
It has taken her back to country in New South Wales where elders have given her the spiritual guidance she craved all these years.
After hundreds of hours of online and field research, Ms Stannard has now traced her history back six generations.
Among her treasure trove are 20 identification certificates of family members.
But it came at a cost financially and mentally.
"Charles Davenport's anthropology record was on the black and white hybrids of New South Wales, and my family is listed under mongrels with their measurement," she said of the Carnegie Institution of Science researcher.
It was the old photo of her grandmother, however, that finally put some things into place, like her fascination with callipers.
"I've instinctively been collecting old vintage wooden rulers or metal callipers," she said.
"It [life] is definitely making more sense. Things that I used to do naturally, things that I've always thought were weird about myself, or strange because I didn't fit that little box [make sense now]."
The way forward
The Healing Foundation has helped develop an online training module for archivists and record keepers to file Indigenous history to make it accessible to present and future generations.
"This work allows archivists to truly understand the contribution they make to healing and the importance of linking up to a person's healing journey," Ms Cornforth said.
"The science is only catching up now to the sophistication of healing and safety in our cultures, and our ways of being knowing and doing.
