Many of our public commemorations honour people and incidents that brought great harm to others. We need to look at what that says about us, and how we build more inclusive public memorials.
Mount Gambier’s Blue Lake is in a volcanic crater.
Pierre Roudier/flickr
Indigenous people recorded stories that provide much detail about eruptions in Australia. They can help us date natural events in the past and are legitimate sources of scientific information.
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.
A group of youth walked 1600 kilometers to bring attention aboriginal issues in 2013 at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario. They hold up the Cree flag.
By Paul McKinnon/Shutterstock.com
Research shows that the Globe and Mail has created a script in which marginalized youth can only be dealt with as failures or criminals, impacting the way they are perceived in society.
Indigenous children depicted in an etching playing the game of marngrook, which some have claimed inspired the game of Australian rules.
Wikimedia Commons
The revival of the idea of Indigenous influence on the origins of Australian rules football diverts attention from another, much more uncomfortable story about Indigenous relationships to football.
Detail of Brook Andrew, Sexy and dangerous 1996.
courtesy National Gallery of Victoria
A 20th-century image of an anonymous ‘Aboriginal Chief’ becomes an investigation of power, colonialism and queer sexuality in the hands of Brook Andrew.
The piles of rock where Murujuga’s rock art is found, in close proximity to industry.
Jo MacDonald
Murujuga, or the Burrup Peninsula, is home to over a million rock artworks. But as concern grows about the impact of industrial pollution on the art, the WA government continues to play down the area’s heritage value.
The 2007 midwinter solstice illumination of the main altar tabernacle of Old Mission San Juan Bautista, California.
Rubén G. Mendoza/Ancient Editions
At many Spanish missions in the US and Latin America, the rising sun illuminates the altar on the winter solstice or other symbolic days. To the faithful, these events meant that Christ was with them.
Vincent Lingiari looks on as Prime Minister Gough Whitlam swigs champagne after the symbolic handback of the Gurindji people’s land.
Rob Wesley-Smith
A new book reveals the drama and comedy of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s famous “hand back” of Gurindji land in 1975, following the Wave Hill Walk-Off 50 years ago – and the bittersweet aftermath.
Gurindji ranger Ursula Chubb pays her respects to ancestors killed in the early 1900s at Blackfella Creek, where children were tied with wire and dragged by horses, and adults were shot as they fled. They were buried under rocks where they fell.
Brenda L Croft, from Yijarni
The Gurindji people of the Northern Territory made history 50 years ago by standing up for their rights to land and better pay. But a new book reveals the deeper story behind the Wave Hill Walk-Off.
The Papunya elders who organised the event were less concerned about their team winning and more about ensuring each community got a fair go.
Barry Judd
Twenty eight unarmed men, women and children were killed at Myall Creek on June 10, 1838. It was a sad, sombre place - but descendants of the perpetrators and victims have transformed it with a healing ritual.
David Gulpilil as Jagamarra Jurunba, Mark Weaver as Bellyup, Dougie McCale as George and Cameron Wallaby as Pete in Satellite Boy.
A Satellite Films production Photo by Matt Nettheim SAB
The French capital will light up to the sights and sounds of Cleverman, Samson and Delilah, and The Sapphires.
A picture of strength: lifelong activist Bonita Mabo OA in front of her portrait as a young woman, which features in her granddaughter Boneta-Marie Mabo’s first solo exhibition.
Josef Ruckli, courtesy of the State Library of Queensland
Boneta-Marie Mabo’s art responds to a colonial past in which Aboriginal women were fetishised as “black velvet”. But it also celebrates strong women, including her activist grandmother Bonita Mabo.
There’s too much evidence of violence in Australia’s past to hide behind euphemisms.
The Founding of Australia, Algernon Talmadge, 1937.
Detailed historical research on the colonial frontier unequivocally supports the idea that Aboriginal people were subject to attack, assault, conquest and subjugation: all synonyms for the term ‘invasion’.
The figure of the ‘noble savage’ has deep roots in Australia colonialism.
Shipwreck of the Stirling Castle, John Curtis, 1838.
Liberal MP Dennis Jensen’s comments about the ‘noble savage’ lifestyle tap into a centuries-old stereotype about Indigenous people.
A meeting to plan the 1938 Day of Mourning in Sydney is addressed by Jack Patten, a leader of the Aborigines Progressive Association (APA), which had three aims: full citizenship rights; Aboriginal representation in parliament and the abolition of the NSW Aborigines Protection Board.
Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW – MLQ059/9
Researchers aim to record the experiences of the last people to live under the control of the Aborigines Protection/Welfare Board in NSW as part of a complete history of its far-reaching impacts.
Drawings by male warriors – like Black Hawk’s ‘Dream or Vision or Himself Changed to a Destroyer or Riding a Bufalo Eagle (1880-1881)’ – often depicted visions perceived during meditation and fasting.
New York State Historical Association, Fenimore Art Museum/John Bigelow Taylor
Genetics and linguistics show Aboriginal people spread iconic boab trees around north west Australia.
Aboriginal gargoyles are the Australian War Memorial’s only overt representation, albeit unintentional, of a violent history of colonisation.
James Sinclair
The Australian War Memorial promises to tell ‘our story’ about the nation’s war experience – but it silences many stories about Australia’s nationhood and glosses over Indigenous experience.