Kerry Churnside remembers looking after her Uncle Horace when she was a little girl.
"He was in a wheelchair because of his leprosy; he had weak hands and legs. We would push him out into the sunshine every morning; he loved the sun," she said.
"My mother went to the Health Department in Port Hedland and said she wanted Horace to stay with us at home. She was frightened she'd never see him again if he left."
Horace was allowed to be cared for at home but the Ngarluma elder's story is an uncommon one.
Many Indigenous people believed to have had leprosy or other infectious diseases were forcibly removed and sent to lock hospitals and leprosariums.
One such leprosarium was located at the historic town of Cossack from 1910 to 1931.
Archaeologist Jade Pervan said visiting the site and talking to elders reinforced her understanding of what happened there.
Dr Pervan said hundreds of Indigenous people were sent to the leprosarium in the two decades it ran, where they were subjected to harsh treatment and discrimination.
Patients had no means of communicating with loved ones, which left families fearing for their wellbeing.
Removed from their lands
Section 12 of the Aborigines Act 1905 gave the chief protector of Aborigines the legal power to arrest and exile any Indigenous person who was suspected of having diseases such as syphilis, leprosy and tuberculosis.
Dr Pervan said this Act, like many 20th-century policies, underpinned the history of racially based medical incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Non-Indigenous people with venereal diseases were not subjected to such measures.
"There was a clear difference in between how Indigenous and non-Indigenous people were treated at the time."
The use of leprosariums was widespread, with several across the north of Australia including one on Channel Island in the NT and Peel Island in Queensland's Moreton Bay.
When the Cossack leprosarium closed in 1931, 17 patients were transferred to another site in Darwin.
Historical documents show that during their incarceration at Cossack, Indigenous patients were subjected to worse conditions than their European counterparts.
Indigenous patients had to build their own huts and had to labour at the leprosarium constructing pathways, while European patients had quarters and proper beds.
Dr Pervan said patients remained on the islands until they were deemed cured by the medical profession and often when released they were labelled "lepers" for life
"The medical treatment at the leprosarium probably did little to cure the disease," she said.
"Leprosy is not easy to catch. You have to have prolonged regular contact with infectious people to catch it.
"It is likely that the conditions under which Aboriginal people were incarcerated at the Cossack leprosarium probably did more to spread the disease than would otherwise have happened if left in traditional settings."
Importance of truth-telling
Ms Churnside said it was important that the history of the area was uncovered.
She said she was proud to be a part of the truth-telling process.
"You see if somebody put something up there and to talk about the area and what happened, you know they need to tell the other side of the story, the dark side of the story."
Dr Pervan said all Australians had a role to play in "truth-telling" to ensure history was portrayed accurately and respectfully.
"Even today there is reluctance by white Australians to come to terms with incontrovertible evidence about our violent past.
"Any form of truth-telling is complex, nuanced and often uncomfortable, but without it Australia as a nation cannot move forward in reconciling with it past," she said.
