Pattie Lees from Mount Isa had a tough upbringing, but it was when she started being successful that she was called a "coconut" — a derogatory term meaning dark skinned, but white on the inside.
Ms Lees knew she needed to tell her story of her struggles as a light-skinned Aboriginal woman and her experience as a member of the Stolen Generations, and that is how she came to write her book, A Question of Colour.
"Those are … difficult things to unravel," she said.
The past
The daughter of an Irish father and an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mother, Ms Lees, 72, was removed from her mother's care at just 10 years old.
She was first sent to a Townsville orphanage before being moved to the Palm Island Aboriginal Reserve.
"We started as five [siblings] when we left Cairns in 1958 and little by little, they split the litter — two were adopted or fostered out and three of us went to the orphanage to Palm Island," she said.
"We go to Palm Island and there was a thing that they thought we got off at the wrong [port] and should have been at Magnetic Island because we were 'migaloo' which I didn't know at the time was 'white.'"
Writing her truth
Ms Lees said some people might be confronted by the book but it was her role as a storyteller to tell her truth.
"My son and I, we're storytellers," she said.
"I talk about things that are very rarely talked about because we sometimes always attacking the non-Indigenous people about what they did to us and the damage.
"But nobody's talking about what our own people do to each other and I was a victim of that when I went to Palm Island because of my colour, lack of acceptance and rejection.
"You're not black enough to be black, you're not white enough to be white."
Challenge of success
As an Australian AM and the CEO of Injilinji Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporation Aged Care, Ms Lees said growing up no one ever expected her to succeed.
"If life doesn't go well for you, you're just another Aboriginal, down-and-out in Beverly Hills — that low expectation that is around our mob all the time," she said.
"But if you have any success in your life they will kind of allocate that to the white blood — so you're challenging all your life."
Ms Lees' book, A Question of Colour, was released this week.
