Elsie Masson outside Government House, Darwin.
Wayne Collection, Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum.
One of the 'first white women' to travel in the Northern Territory, Elsie Masson's attitudes to the Aboriginal people she met expressed the contradictions of racial thought at this time.
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
The image, depicting a group of Indigenous people resisting their enslavement, predates the next oldest image by 75 years.
An engraving of Dirimera and Conaci by Giuseppe Mochetti taken from a daguerreotype of April 5 1852. Acc no 77930P .
With acknowledgements to the Archives of the Benedictine Community of New Norcia.
Aboriginal children are rarely named in the colonial archive. But the remarkable story of Dirimera and Conaci reveals two boys who, while removed from their land, had a keen sense of sovereignty.
Detail from Julie Shiels’ 1954 poster White on black: The annihilation of Aboriginal people and their culture cannot be separated from the destruction of nature.
State Library of Victoria
It is 50 years since anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner gave the Boyer Lectures in which he coined the phrase 'the great Australian silence'. How far have we come since?
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.
In the forests around the Murray River, Victoria's Watti Watti people have trained trees to mark significant cultural locations in the landscape.
Aboriginal protectors Walter Roth and Archibald Meston between them collected over 700 objects for the Queensland Museum.
State Library of Queensland
Like many Australian museums, collectors for the Queensland Museum played a role in the violent dispossession of First Nations people.
Indigenous Australians – just on 3% of the population – comprise at least 10%, and generally 12%, of elite footballers.
Where else but on the sports field can an under-educated and even a troubled Aboriginal youth achieve celebrity status and social mobility?
Social media has become a place of vitriolic myths about Indigenous peoples in the wake of the Gerald Stanley trial for the killing of Colten Boushie. Here, a vigil in support of Colten Boushie’s family on Feb. 13, 2018.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
Social media posts since Gerald Stanley’s acquittal have been saturated with vitriolic rants and myths. If reconciliation is to be more than an aspiration, settlers must acknowledge our culpability.
The painting Group of Natives of Tasmania, 1859, by Robert Dowling.
That colonial wars were fought in Tasmania is irrefutable. More controversially, surviving evidence suggests the British enacted genocidal policies against the Tasmanian Aboriginal people.
Isabel Daniels weeps as she speaks of her murdered cousin, Nicole Daniels, at the opening day of hearings at the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Winnipeg in October 2017.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods)
Canadians should be listening closely to stories coming from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. We need to hear the truth and then help justice move forward.
Fossilised ancient human footprints at the Mungo National Park. How are we to engage with a history that spans 65,000 years?
Over the past half century, Australia has experienced a 'time revolution' with Indigenous history pushed back into the dizzying expanse of deep time. The latest discovery reminds us that science, like history, is an ongoing inquiry.
A scene from Bangarra Dance Theatre’s 2014 work Patyegarang. An Eora woman, Patyegarang became the main informant for William Dawes, the first European to sympathetically chronicle the language and culture of the Sydney landowners.
Just 210 of nearly 13,000 biographical entries in the Australian Dictionary of Biography are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men and women. A new project aims to change this.
The academy has changed substantially since Plato’s time.
Australian universities are teaching 'identity politics' at the expense of Western history, according to an Institute of Public Affairs report. But unis make decisions based on student demand, not politics.
Natassia Gorie Furber and Hamilton Morris in Sweet Country.
An Aboriginal man shoots a white landowner in self-defence, triggering a tragic tale of racism in 1920s Northern Territory.
The 2016 Standing Rock protest was only the most recent manifestation of the indigenous American values inherited by European settlers on this land.
Anti-immigrant policies ignore that American ideals like liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness can be traced back to the indigenous pioneers who once moved freely across North America.
A photo of Stoney Squ-w Mountain in Banff by the Bow River.
The word Squ-w has an innocent origin, but its use in English has long been derogatory and racist. Place names which use this word should be changed.
Aboriginal dancers from Pinjarra perform at the unveiling of the counter-memorial in Esplanade Park, Fremantle, April 9 1994.
Courtesy Bruce Scates
A Fremantle monument to three white explorers was revised in 1994 to acknowledge the violence committed against Indigenous owners. As Australia struggles to reconcile its racist past, perhaps this monument shows a way forward.
Australia’s first memorial to Indigenous service people.
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.
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.