Blood Memory is dedicated to the courage and strength of Truganini - a note on her life follows:

Truganini (born circa 1812) was the daughter of Chief Mangana of the Bruny Island people. By the time she was 17 she had been raped by sealers, had seen her mother stabbed to death by whalers, her sisters abducted and enslaved by sealers, her uncle shot, her step-mother kidnapped by convicts who took her to China, and her husband-to-be brutally murdered by timber fellers in front of her eyes. In 1832 Truganini was taken with her husband, Woorrady, by George Robinson, a preacher hired by the governor to influence the last 300 or so Tasmanians to surrender and move to Flinders Island, to assist in rounding up the rest of the Aboriginal population, partly to protect them from massacre at the hands of European sealers and whalers, and partly to instill in them European habits. The settlement on Flinders Island, however, failed miserably, with many of the Aborigines dying of disease under Robinson’s well-meaning custody. By 1838 Truganini had accompanied Robinson to Port Phillip to attempt to repeat the experiment. There, Truganini became part of a defiant core group that was sent back to Flinders Island and then to Oyster Bay. She was considered the last full-blooded Tasmanian Aborigine and died on the 8th May 1876, ending a tragic period in Tasmanian History. Truganini died May 8th, 1876 at age 64 and despite her request to be buried at sea in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel, she was buried at the women’s Penitentiary in Hobart. Two years later her Skeleton was taken to the Tasmanian Museum where it was on display until 1942. In 1976 Aboriginal rights workers cremated her remains and scattered the ashes near her birthplace as she had requested. Samples of her skin and hair remained in Britain’s College of Surgeons until 2002 when they were returned to Tasmania for appropriate burial. There is a belief amongst many indigenous peoples that the history, customs, and spirituality of their culture are carried from generation to generation not only by teaching but also in their very blood. When the last of a culture dies, with them dies this “blood memory”.