How do you return Aboriginal remains to their place of origin when you have no record of where they came from? Look to a chemical element that’s laid down in teeth as people grow up.
Detail of the Connecticut Inscription, with image enhancement.
Centre for Rock Art Research and Management database
Etchings over much earlier Aboriginal engravings show foreign whalers made contact with Australia’s remote northwest long before colonial settlement of the area.
An image of the landscape around Bairnsdale in the late-18th century. D. R Long (Daniel Rutter), between 1856 and 1883.
State Library of Victoria
Aboriginal songs found in the notebooks of a Victorian anthropologist shed light on the mystery of a ‘captive white woman’ that has been debated for generations.
“New Hollanders” depicted in a 1698 edition of the explorer William Dampier’s journal.
Courtesy of the Pacific Collection, Hamilton Library, University of Hawai'i-Mānoa
Jo McDonald, The University of Western Australia and Peter Veth, The University of Western Australia
They were looking to study rock art at a remote desert site but what they found showed people had been using the place almost since the first people arrived in Australia.
A sample of the Eucalyptus giunnii plant, sometimes called a cider gum for its ability to produce an alcoholic drink without human intervention.
Shutterstock/Modest Things
Sap from one tree collected in hollows in the bark, and natural yeast fermented the liquid to an alcoholic drink used by Aboriginal people. Europeans called the tree a cider gum because of the taste.
Venus shines bright in the sky above Victoria.
Flickr/Indigo Skies Photography
The planets we can see in the sky were known to the ancient Greeks as ‘wandering stars’. But they appeared much earlier in the stories and traditions of Australia’s Indigenous people.
A bough shelter made for the funeral of W. Willika in the remote Northern Territory community of Barunga.
Photo: Claire Smith
In remote Northern Territory, most Aboriginal people have been buried in unmarked graves. Archaelogists are carrying out painstaking detective work to help communities find their loved ones’ remains.
It is hoped that the Royal Commission will bring a renewed enthusiasm for suitable and properly adapted customer service provision that values Indigenous consumers and take their circumstances into account.
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
With enough will and resourcing, many of the structural issues that make financial services a trial for many Indigenous consumers can be overcome. But we need more regulation to deter sharp practice.
Indigenous Australians have a strong relationship with the natural world.
from shutterstock.com
Traditional Aboriginal healers are recognised as having special facilities for healing in childhood and are encouraged to develop their skills. They are often taught by their grandparents.
Artist Nyapanyapa Yunipingu is assisted by art centre worker Jeremy Cloake at Buku-Larrnngay Art Centre,Yirrkala.
Siobhan McHugh
White people hugely influence the Aboriginal art world – but that can be a good thing, according to the artists.
A sculpture of William Ricketts looms over those of Arrernte and Pitjantjatjara men at the sanctuary in Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges.
Chris Haych/flickr
A mossy sanctuary in Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges houses 92 sculptures, mostly of Arrernte and Pitjantjatjara men, women and children. They are steeped in primitivism, yet the park is a popular tourist attraction.
Aboriginal demonstration in Brisbane in 2014.
Shutterstock/MWHunt
A damning inquiry has revealed the extent of the abuse suffered by British children sent abroad between 1920 and 1970. But it skirts around Aboriginal cultural genocide.
Indigenous artists, including Josephine Mick, experience the immersive multimedia DomeLab, part of the Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters exhibition.
George Serras, NMA
A new look at some of the oral traditions of Aboriginal Australians shows a deep understanding of three red-giant variable stars, long before European observers.
A sacred paperbark tree at Djiliwirri, the most sacred homeland of the Indigenous elder and public intellectual, Dr Joe Gumbula, in 2004.
Aaron Corn
Dr Joe Gumbula was a master-singer of Manikay, the exquisite Yolŋu tradition of public ceremonial song. While the songs contain incredible knowledge, scholars have rarely treated them as an intellectual tradition.
Front cover of Tjarrany Roughtail - the book features a collection of Dreaming stories.
Magabala Books
The National Gallery of Australia’s Third National Indigenous Art Triennial presents a passionate well-considered argument for an enduring Aboriginal culture.
A fruit cart depicting a ‘picanniny’ child: such figures were popular at a time when Aboriginal children were being removed from their families.
Author provided
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?
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne