Item category 1: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Collection

An overview of traditional Aboriginal religious paintings.

Review: "In a landmark essay, Stan Grant writes Indigenous people back into the economic and multicultural history of Australia. This is the fascinating story of how fringe dwellers fought not just to survive, but to prosper. Their legacy is the extraordinary flowering of Indigenous success – cul...

Beautifully illustrated, Australian Dreaming is an Aboriginal history of the Australian continent and its people, as told by Aboriginal story-tellers. Through traditional myths and legends, it gives an explanation of the formation of the landscape and the creation of many outstanding geographical...

Aboriginal people have been in Australia for at least 40,000 years, speaking about 250 languages. Through examination of published and unpublished materials on each of the individual languages, Professor Dixon surveys the ways in which the languages vary typologically and presents a profile of th...

Places the Aboriginal occupation of Australia within a broad framework of human evolution and habitation. Discusses the pioneering studies that delve into the mists of antiquity, and engages with current controversies, including the extinction of mega fauna, land management practices and social d...

When Captain Cook landed at Botany Bay, about 250 distinct languages were spoken across the continent. Yet Australian Indigenous languages actually share many common features. Bob Dixon has been working with elders to research Australian languages for half a century, and he draws on this deep exp...

Bilingual in Noongar Balardong and English. The story of the mud crab, the magpie goose and the pied cormorant who meet together to dance a corroboree. They all dance until they are exhaused when the magpie goose man and his family decide to become birds, the pied cororant and his family decide t...

AUSTRALIAN. To speak any language, you need to know not just a list of words, but also an understanding of how to put them together into sentences, as well as have the right form of the word to convey the meaning you intend. The 'Ballardong Noongar Dictionary' is a resource publication. Explore 5...

For countless generations, coastal country in the west Kimberley region of northwest Australia has been the home of Dambeemangaddee Traditional Owners. Barddabardda Wodjenangorddee- We're Telling All of You describes the deep history of this country. In it our senior people describe our country's...

It doesn't get any better than this. Ash Barty, the greatest Australian tennis player of the modern era, rewrote history by winning the 2022 Australian Open and becoming the first Australian woman to do so since 1978. The Barty Party has moved at an incredible speed since she first broke through ...

Kerry Arabena opens doors to unexplored ethical possibilities for living in 21st century. Converging wisdom from Indigenous peoples philosophic traditions with scientific and ethical understandings of contemporary modern thought has yielded new understanding of our universal indigeneity, citizens...

"Forty-four attempts have been made to change the Australian Constitution since Federation in 1901 but only eight of those attempts have been successful. In 2022, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese decided to launch another attempt at constitutional amendment. His intention: to hold a referendum pro...

MULTICULTURAL STUDIES. 'An excellent diagnosis of Australia's mind-set.' - Jeff McMullen journalist, author, film maker. Associate Professor Sarah Maddison is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow at the University of New South Wales. She has published widely in the areas of young women an...

Rediscover this much loved book featuring the cheeky antics of dogs in a remote outback community, and experience Kriol, a lively language from the north of Australia. Mandeitaim aibin wok la main anti kemp en yu sabi wanim aibin luk? So begins this Kriol edition of the cheeky book set in a remot...

Bill Harney grew up in a mixed marriage at a time when they were not accepted. From his early years he showed that he could prosper in both indigenous and non-indigenous communities. He became a successful businessman . In this interview he recalls the hard school that is bush life, he explains ...

A unique collection of Niyikina knowledge about plants, bush tucker and bush medicine.To the people of the West Kimberley their country abounds in plants that meet their every need. Whether it be nutritious food, treating skin disorders and ailments such as pain or athritis, making milk supliment...

Interviews with successful Aboriginal women; by Australian actor/singer.

Adelaide Crows superstar Andrew McLeod is one of the greatest AFL players of the modern era. Yet despite the glories, McLeod's story has rarely been easy. Off the field, he has been dogged for years by a debilitating knee injury and devastating personal conflicts that have threatened to take him ...

When Dark Emu was adopted by Australia like a new anthem, Bruce found himself at the centre of a national debate that often focussed on the wrong part of the story. But through all the noise came Black Duck Foods, a blueprint for traditional food growing and land management processes based on ver...

Aust'n. Between 1936 and 1954 the Western Australian Government conducted Courts of Native Affairs that heard murder and manslaughter cases where defendant and victim were Aboriginal. Cases which for every other citizen carried the status of Supreme Court trials were reduced to summary hearings c...

In 1957, Ella Simon of Purfleet mission near Taree, New South Wales, applied for and was granted a certificate of exemption. Exemption gave her legal freedoms denied to other Indigenous Australians at that time: she could travel freely, open a bank account, and live and work where she wanted. In ...