Cover art from “Annie Muktuk and Other Stories,” Norma Dunning’s first book filled with sixteen Inuit stories which portray the unvarnished realities of northern life via strong and gritty characters.
(University of Alberta Press)
Anthropologist Percy Leason thought he was painting the extinction of Victoria’s Indigenous people in the 1930s. He was wrong, but his portraits, part of a new exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, are surprisingly sympathetic.
What does the shrinking of the Colorado River mean for Native American religions?
Ken Lund
Historically, indigenous peoples used the natural seasonal cycles of weather, plants and animals as part of their religious calendar. What will be the impact of climate change on their practices?
Alexis Wright won the Miles Franklin award for her 2006 novel Carpentaria.
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
Do you read Australia’s First Nations writers? If not, why not? The time is well overdue for non-indigenous Australians to engage with the original inhabitants of the country.
Cape York Partnership founder Noel Pearson, speaking on Q&A.
Q&A
Cape York Partnership founder Noel Pearson told Q&A that Indigenous Australians were ‘the most incarcerated people on the planet Earth’. Is that right?
A Menominee Tribal biology class in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
U.S. Department of Agriculture Follow
The Dani people were part of a thriving agricultural society long before Westerners ‘discovered’ them in the 1930s.
Yurri and Wanjel - the Gemini stars Castor and Pollux in the Wergaia traditions of western Victoria, Australia.
Stellarium/John Morieson and Alex Cherney
Many of the constellations we know in the night sky come from myths of the ancient Greeks. But similar stories are told by the oldest living cultures on Earth, including those of Australia.
Footbridge over the Coapa River in Chiapas, Mexico, which supports local silvopasture (forestry and livestock grazing).
Lameirasb/Wikipedia
Many human-wildlife conflicts are rooted in struggles over land. Some countries, notably Mexico, have found ways to protect both nature and the rights of indigenous people and forest dwellers.
Workers wash freshly harvested bananas on a banana plantation near Parrita, Costa Rica.
AP Photo/Kent Gilbert
While Costa Ricans pride their country for being an oasis of stability in Latin America, the nation has struggled with restrictive laws and social attitudes toward immigrants from Nicaragua.
The so-called ‘prison tree’: over time, myth has coalesced into a ‘fact’ for which there is no evidence.
Author provided
There is no evidence to support the marketing of an ancient boab in Western Australia as a tree that once held Aboriginal prisoners. The story is a myth that elides the tree’s deep significance to Indigenous people.
Indigenous games like ‘Honour Water’ can teach Indigenous values and ceremonial practices.
Honour Water/Elizabeth LaPensée
A strengthening movement of Indigenous designers and developers is working to show Indigenous cultures, teachings, languages and ways of knowing through video games.
An activist at a protest rally at the White House against the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines in Washington, D.C.
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
For the Blackfeet, Lakota and other Native American people, water does more than sustain life – it’s the place of the divine.
People have camped in the long grass since colonisation. From this perspective, bans on the practice are a denial of Indigenous agency, culture and rights to country.
Photo: K. Pollard
In contrast to perceptions of other homeless people sleeping rough, Darwin’s “long-grassers” are applying a long cultural tradition to deal with the situation in which they find themselves.
On expedition with Norman Tindale and local Aboriginal group at a rock shelter at Bathurst Head (Thartali) in eastern Cape York Peninsula, 1927.
Photo by Herbert Hale/South Australian Museum, Archives Norman Tindale Collection (AA 338/5/4/41)
Teachers – get to really know your kids, their families, their community and its history, and what’s going on at home. While school policies are important, relationships are the real keys to success.
John Gast’s ‘American Progress’ (1872), depicting the US’s westward expansion.
Jared Farmer/Wikimedia Commons
Global indigenous and human rights movements that oppose the oil, coal and gas industries are charting a path for a fair and just transition to a low carbon energy future.
A march in Perth on Australia Day this year in support of Indigenous people.
Angie Raphael/AAP
Changing the date of Australia Day celebrations – as the City of Fremantle has done – is a move towards a less racist future. And when it comes to challenging insularity, there are other positive signs in Western Australia.
Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University
Chair and Member from North America of the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) and Professor in Political Science, Public Policy and Indigenous Studies, University of British Columbia