Item category 1: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Collection

Songlines are an archive for powerful knowledges that ensured Australia's many Indigenous cultures flourished for over 60,000 years. Much more than a navigational path in the cartographic sense, these vast and robust stores of information are encoded through song, story, dance, art and ceremony, ...

In this extraordinary collection, respected Barladong Noongar women Dr Marion Kickett and Tracey Kickett bring together first-person stories from First Nations peoples living in Western Australia. In some cases for the first time, Marion and Tracey tell their own stories; their close and extended...

Look into these lush green bushes. We might find something... There is alyurr! Kakkak Kapindi, my mother's mother, told us alyurr are the Lightning people's children. When the rains begin, they come out of the soil. As they grow, they shed their skins and their bright colours are revealed. Soon t...

Aboriginal design is of a distinctly cultural nature, based in the Dreaming and in ancient practices grounded in Country. It is visible in the aerodynamic boomerang, the ingenious design of fish traps and the precise layouts of community settlements that strengthen social cohesion. Alison Page an...

Since the colonisation of Australia by the British, Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have experienced great hardship - including mass death and displacement - but have demonstrated resilience, strength, compassion and ingenuity. This book offers a brief history of Austral...

Explores how Aboriginal arts can be presented to both indigenous and non-indigenous students, in a culturally sensitive manner and how these art forms can be used within a curriculum framework. Looks at schools teaching the implementation of Aboriginal arts and visits to galleries.

Provides readings and activities that enable students to gain some small insights and thus understandings into the strength of Aboriginal and Torres Strait families and communities.

For millennia, Indigenous Australians harvested this continent in ways that can offer contemporary environmental and economic solutions. Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe demonstrate how Aboriginal people cultivated the land through manipulation of water flows, vegetation and firestick practice. Not ...

On the spiritual place of Wadjemup, Rottnest Island, tourists are injuring the animals and making them sick. It's time to make a stand. In this Aboriginal Dreaming story, farting quokkas, dive-bombing seabirds and protesting snakes teach us how to look after our sacred land and its animals. Throu...

On Goonya-Wardu Country, Carnarvon, Western Australia, Walgathu the wedge-tailed eagle chick falls from his nest and then is scared to fly. The Nyingari zebra finch family take care of him. Walgathu goes in search of his eagle family, in the sandhills, the water and the claypans. An ancient law i...

What do you need to know to prosper for 65,000 years or more? The First Knowledges series provides a deeper understanding of the expertise and ingenuity of Indigenous Australians. Many First Peoples regard the land as a reflection of the sky and the sky a reflection of the land. Sophisticated ast...

Australian Aboriginal people have been on this continent for at least 68 000 years and have had a continuously developing and increasingly sophisticated culture over a time when the climate changed through an entry into, survival through and recovery from the last of the great Ice Ages. While the...

Prior to European colonisation, there were as many as 600 Indigenous languages present in Australia. Many languages have since been lost due to the displacement and massacre of many Indigenous people. This book looks at the origins of Australia's Indigenous languages, their usage today, and the f...

Plants are the foundation of life on Earth. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have always known this to be true. For millennia, reciprocal relationships with plants have provided both sustenance to Indigenous communities and many of the materials needed to produce a complex array of t...

Law is culture, and culture is law. Given by the ancestors and cultivated over millennia, Indigenous law defines what it is to be human. Complex and evolving, law holds the keys to resilient, caring communities and a life in balance with nature. Marcia Langton and Aaron Corn show how Indigenous l...

What do you need to know to prosper as a people for at least 65,000 years? The First Knowledges series provides a deeper understanding of the expertise and ingenuity of Indigenous Australians. First Nations Australians are some of the oldest innovators in the world. Original developments in socia...

Health explores the vision and knowledges with which Aboriginal people are re-shaping considerations of health and wellbeing today. It offers concepts that are not tied to Western practices, as it delves into Indigenous birthing, end-of-life care and other cultural rituals.

Reconciliation means acknowledging the wrongs that have been done to Australia's first inhabitants who suffered unspeakable hardships during and after invasion by the British, and understanding why these things happened.

From the early days of the colonies, Aboriginal people were distinct by nature of their athleticism, strength and endurance. This was noted numerous times by explorers, pastoralists and by travelers. The harbour suburb of Manly was named after the people Captain Arthur Philip encountered. Aborigi...

Indigenous people have been in Australia for many tens of thousands of years and during this time, Aboriginal people taught themselves how to live sustainably in Australia's fragile landscape. The continent, its landscapes and flora and fauna were managed, utilised and conserved. This book is mea...

Describes the approach taken by British and colonial governments towards Aboriginal European relations in Western Australia, focusing on British colonial law, during the period where magistrates and judges were recruited from the among the settlers, prior to the establishment of formal Supreme Co...

Inspired by the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and featuring outstanding Indigenous writers, First Things First is an urgent, nuanced and robust call to listen, hear and respond to questions of constitutional recognition. More than two centuries after European settlers arrived, the need to find ...

There is still much to be done to close the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and the rest of the population in terms of social and economic development, culture, land, education, health, justice and human rights. This book looks at the progress of key rights issues confronting A...

2nd part of autobiographical trilogy; moves on from her childhood in Townsville to the big wide world of Sydney during the 70s including her major period of activism in Aboriginal politics, for which she is most remembered today.

Poor old Grandfather Emu can hardly walk or see. Of all the bush animals, who will lead old Weij to the creek for food and water? And learn how Mother Yonga Kangaroo got her pouch, and the importance of taking the time to help.

Poor old Grandfather Emu can hardly walk or see. Of all the bush animals, who will lead old Weij to the creek for food and water? And learn how Mother Yonga Kangaroo got her pouch, and the importance of taking the time to help.

Balharda the bobtail felt pretty in her necklace of wildflowers. But the Bidi-bidi butterflies laughed and said she was ugly. Who will be bobtail's friend? In this Aboriginal Dreaming story, follow Balharda downriver from the desert to the sea and learn how words can hurt or heal, and how making ...