An aerial view of an Aboriginal stone arrangement in the Channel Country of Central Australia. Such arrangements may be associated with initiation ceremonies and exchange of marriage partners, as well as trade. The main structure is around 30 metres long.
Mithaka Aboriginal Corporation
We have found 140 quarry sites, where rock was excavated to make seed grinding stones, in the Channel Country of Central Australia. It’s part of a major project testing Bruce Pascoe’s hypothesis.
What happens when the distant frontier takes up residence in the family home? How are we to remember our flawed ancestors? A new book grapples with these questions.
The widespread conflict that accompanied Australian life for 140 years was arguably our most important war. We need a museum telling this story, funded on a par with The Australian War Memorial.
Jacob Junior Nayinggul (left) and Simon Baker in High Ground (2020).
Maxo, Bunya Productions, Savage Films
In depicting brutal massacres and mission life, this film gets a lot right. And the model for its central protagonist may well be a young man called Narlim, exiled from his country in the late 1930s.
Darug women Leanne Watson, Rhiannon Wright and Jasmine Seymour at Dorumbolooa.
Avryl Whitnall
It was once thought the Aboriginal names for the Hawkesbury had been lost forever. But after a remarkable find in the Mitchell Library, almost 100 place names will be restored to Dyarubbin Country.
A travel guide to some of our most beautiful Country highlights the complexity of Aboriginal cultures and white Australia’s historic ambivalence towards them.
Cahokia’s mound-building culture flourished a millennium ago near modern-day St. Louis.
JByard/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Five centuries before Columbus arrived, migrants were spreading across North America, carrying their culture with them and mixing with those they encountered in new places.
A Maliwawa macropod found in the Namunidjbuk clan estate of the Wellington Range.
P. Taçon
Two dramatic narratives arc through this documentary that marks 20 years since Cathy Freeman’s Olympic triumph: her reflections as an elite athlete, and our experience as a nation of spectators.
Delegates from 34 Native tribes at the Creek Council House in Indian Territory, now called Oklahoma, 1880.
National Archives
The Supreme Court’s July 9 ruling that half of Oklahoma belongs to the Muscogee Nation confirms what Indigenous people already knew: North America is ‘Indian Country.’
Indigenous activists have long called on teams to change names and mascots that perpetuate negative stereotypes and fail to respect painful histories.
(flickr/Joe Glorioso)
Modern dating techniques are providing new time frames for indigenous settlements in Northeast North America, free from the Eurocentric bias that previously led to incorrect assumptions.
Punta Ventana, a popular tourist attraction near Guayanilla, Puerto Rico, before and after the Jan. 6 earthquake.
AFP/Getty/Wikipedia
Puerto Rico was once home to about 110,000 Taínos, an indigenous people decimated by the Spanish conquest. Their ancient homeland was located in the area hit hard by recent earthquakes.
Some of the key points in the Uluru Statement mirror demands first made in the 1920s, including genuine Aboriginal self-determination and an Aboriginal board to sit under the Commonwealth government.
James Ross/AAP
The Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association, founded in 1924, made several demands to protect Indigenous rights, including installing an Aboriginal board to sit beneath the federal government.
Berry, and other tourist towns, are out of step with modern museum curation which is trying to include Aboriginal communities and their stories.
Shutterstock
Away from the state capitals, small museums are out of step with big city curators - presenting tourists with stories that give a blinkered view of local history.
Adam Goodes in The Australian Dream: in the film he talks of finding an identity in football and with The Sydney Swans.
Melbourne International Film Festival
Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation e Nina Maile Gordon, The Conversation
Mukurtu: an online dilly bag for keeping Indigenous digital archives safe
The Conversation71,5 MB(download)
Mukurtu - Warumungu word meaning 'dilly bag' or a safe keeping place for sacred materials - is an online system helping Indigenous people conserve photos, songs and other digital archives.
Nicholas Chevalier, Mallee scrub, Murray River, NSW, watercolour, 1871.
National Library of Australia
Captain Cook’s 1770 voyage is well known. But at this time, Indigenous Australians also travelled great distances - let’s recognise this in the 2020 commemorations.