Frances Peters-Little, growing up at Birchgrove in the 1950s, returns to her grandmother in Walgett every year. While she is there, she says, ‘I become a different person then’. Country racism, she says, was different. Pure arrogance. But in 1985, when interviewed by Plater, she reflects that the most vicious racism comes from other Koori people. ‘You can’t be Aboriginal if you grew up in Balmain or if you did you might be Aboriginal but you’re not as Aboriginal as someone else who grew up on Moorie Mission. How dare they? Who’s our panel of critics here? … It’s almost like there’s a vested interest in some people maintaining this stereotyped idea of what an Aboriginal person is and where they come from’. She also recalls the hundreds of Koori people who survived the early settlements and had to forget they were Aboriginal, ‘so they did, they denied it'. (Plater, pp. 180-182, 245)
