The Morrison government has seized on environment law reform proposed on Monday. I was a federal environment official for 13 years – and I know these things cannot be rushed.
A series of four live-streamed concerts from Arnhem Land offers a welcome break from bad news and a way for Indigenous musicians to share their talents with the world.
The traditional owners have won widespread support for their fight to protect Djab Wurrung Country and their sacred trees.
Djab Wurrung Embassy
There are memorial stones scattered along songlines throughout the Australian landscape, victims and transgressors transformed into rock following epic struggles to stand as cautionary tales.
From Country to Culture:
Artist: Lisa Waup. Designer: Verner. Collection: Journeys.
Dylan Buckee
The World Heritage Listing for Victoria’s Budj Bim fish traps was ground-breaking. Here are five other Australian Indigenous sites that also deserve greater attention.
Composer William Barton in 2013. Indigenous composers have long been working in the field, but the contribution of Indigenous music and culture to Australian composition deserves greater recognition.
David Crosling/AAP
Australian composers have long referenced Indigenous music and culture in their works. A new platform paper suggests a more collaborative way forward.
Miranda Tapsell in Top End Wedding, a new Australian film about identity and belonging, directed by Wayne Blair (The Sapphires).
Courtesy of Universal Pictures
For the Barkandji people, the crisis on the Barwon-Darling represents the biggest threat to their continued survival on country since the sheep invaded.
Gurindji singers Thomas Monkey Yikapayi, Ronnie Wavehill Wirrpa and Topsy Dodd Ngarnjal sing ‘Wanji-wanji’.
Brenda L Croft
Wanji-wanji’s lyrics have remained unchanged over thousands of kilometres and the past 150 years.
Yolngu boys from north-eastern Arnhem Land perform the Bunggul traditional dance during the Garma Festival in 2018. The Yolngu have flourished for up to 50,000 years.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Of 19 World Heritage sites across the country, only two, Kakadu and Uluru-Kata Tjuta, recognise the values of “living” Aboriginal culture. None of Australia’s three sites inscribed purely for cultural values recognises Aboriginal people.
Maningrida, a community on Australia’s remote north-central coast, is a language hotspot.
Jill Vaughan
At the Maningrida football Grand Final in 2015, commentary was recorded in nine languages. But elsewhere, the threat of language loss poses a serious risk to our nation’s cultural inheritance.
Kathleen Petyarre looking across Atnangker country, Northern Territory, December 2000.
Photograph Ian North; courtesy Wakefield Press
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.
Murri sculptures (2012) by Reko Rennie (Kamilaroi) at Melbourne’s LaTrobe University.
LaTrobe University
From the Budj Bim acquaculture system to the Aboriginal flag, Australia has a long history of Indigenous design excellence. Here is our pick of 10 contemporary design classics.
Australian book clubs are overwhelmingly white, middle-aged, middle-class and female.
Shutterstock.com
Most book clubs are white and middle-class. Even today, books and reading can presume a divide between Indigenous oral story-telling and non-Indigenous literacy.
Ring trees were made by binding young branches of young trees with reeds. As the tree grew, it formed a ring.
Tim Church/Timmy Church Films.