The local Aboriginal people told stories and painted images of a massacre of their ancestors in the early 20th century, but there was no other evidence that the incident took place. Until now.
Wooredy and his second wife Truganini set off into the Tasmanian wilderness with settler George Robinson in 1830, on a “conciliatory” mission to find other original Tasmanians. Their stories bear witness to a psychological and cultural transition without parallel in modern colonialism.
George Hamilton published An Appeal for the Horse in 1866, a defence of animal welfare well ahead of its time. However, his compassion for Aboriginal people was conspicuously lacking.
Beauty brand Dove caused controversy with an ad seemingly showing a black woman turning white after using its body lotion. While Dove removed the ad, it played into the racist history of skin whitening.
A Fremantle monument to three white explorers was revised in 1994 to acknowledge the violence committed against Indigenous owners. As Australia struggles to reconcile its racist past, perhaps this monument shows a way forward.
The National Gallery of Australia’s Third National Indigenous Art Triennial presents a passionate well-considered argument for an enduring Aboriginal culture.
Sean Ulm, James Cook University; Ingrid Ward, Flinders University; Peter Veth, The University of Western Australia, and Tiina Manne, The University of Queensland
Part of the land inhabited by some of the early Australians is now submerged, but details of their life is now revealed in an excavation on an island off the continent’s north-west coast.
What are we to make of ‘Aboriginalia’: bric-a-brac, tiles, ornaments and artworks - once hugely popular - depicting caricatures of Indigenous people? What if they are collected now in a knowing, ironic way?
In the 1840s, the eel traps of Budj Bim were described as the work of ‘civilized men’. But it took another 135 years for more appreciative European eyes to examine the complexity of western Victoria’s Aboriginal fishery.
Jane Lydon, The University of Western Australia and Donna Oxenham, The University of Western Australia
Noel Pearson has accused the ABC of racism in dwelling on indigenous alienation. But many advances in the status of Aboriginal Australians have been prompted by revealing ill-treatment, which is why Ms Dhu’s family want footage of her last hours made public.
Archaeologists found thousands of objects in a remote Australian cave which shows Aborigines made it inland some 10,000 years earlier than first thought. So what did they find?
New DNA research working with Indigenous Australians is answering many of the questions about when and where the First Australians emerged many thousands of years ago.
There is plenty of evidence to show Australia’s Indigenous people had ways of counting big numbers, yet the myth persists they couldn’t count more than a handful of things. Why?
Research first published in 2001 has been used to question of whether Aboriginal People were the First Australians. So why not re-test those results with improved techniques and equipment?