Award-winning journalist and Griffith journalism lecturer Nance Haxton has taken out silver and bronze awards at the World’s Best Radio Program awards in Manhattan.
Nance won for her documentary about the “kanakas” from Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands who worked in brutal conditions on the cane fields and cotton farms of Queensland and Northern New South Wales.
The former ABC journalist dedicated her awards to the more than 60,000 descendants of the “kanakas” living in Australia today.
“I want to thank the South Sea Islanders who trusted me with their stories, who enabled me to bring this issue to better worldwide recognition,” Nance said.
“We have not confronted our past in terms of the so-called blackbirding of Indigenous cultures in the Pacific. Many kanakas were brought to Australia against their will or under false pretences.
“Many people are calling for Australia to come to terms with its past, and for this chapter of history to
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