A great granddaughter’s soul-stirring quest to reclaim her family’s history.
Powerful and poignant, Her Name is Nanny Nellie offers us the rare privilege of bearing witness to a family reclaiming its history. In 1925, the Australian Museum commissioned three statues of ‘full blood’ Aboriginal people: a child, a man and a woman, exhibited as nameless objects to be studied as examples of a ‘dying race.’ The woman was Nellie Walker, Irene Walker’s great grandmother and director Daniel King’s great, great grandmother. Now Irene is on a journey to retrace Nellie’s life and to reconnect the other families to their ancestors’ statues and re-display them, this time with their names, identities and dignity. This is far more than a symbolic quest; it is an opportunity to change how we remember and represent, and to give names to the nameless.