Old stories from around the world tell of drowned islands, volcanic eruptions and upheavals to the land around them. Increasingly we are realising these tales preserve actual memory, often from thousands of years ago.
Mungo Man finally returns to where he was found in the Mungo National Park.
Office of Environment and Heritage/J Spencer
The remains of the first known Australian, Mungo Man, begin their journey home today. Scientists hope they’ll still get a chance to study the ancient remains, working with the Traditional Owners.
A cross was erected during the 1996 remembering ceremony of the Sturt Creek massacre.
Pam Smith
The local Aboriginal people told stories and painted images of a massacre of their ancestors in the early 20th century, but there was no other evidence that the incident took place. Until now.
Heaven only knows what sort of excursion Wooredy and Truganini thought they had embarked upon on when G.A. Robinson took them to Recherche Bay in 1830 to make an overland trek to the Tasmanian west coast.
Cassandra Pybus
Wooredy and his second wife Truganini set off into the Tasmanian wilderness with settler George Robinson in 1830, on a “conciliatory” mission to find other original Tasmanians. Their stories bear witness to a psychological and cultural transition without parallel in modern colonialism.
George Hamilton, Meeting natives on the Campaspi plains, Victoria, June 1836.
National Library of Australia
George Hamilton published An Appeal for the Horse in 1866, a defence of animal welfare well ahead of its time. However, his compassion for Aboriginal people was conspicuously lacking.
The Dove ad published on Facebook, which the company took down after many complaints of racial insensitivity.
NayTheMUA/Facebook
Beauty brand Dove caused controversy with an ad seemingly showing a black woman turning white after using its body lotion. While Dove removed the ad, it played into the racist history of skin whitening.
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.
The Madjedbebe excavation in the Northern Territory.
Dominic O Brien/Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation
The National Gallery of Australia’s Third National Indigenous Art Triennial presents a passionate well-considered argument for an enduring Aboriginal culture.
Three main excavation squares within Boodie Cave.
Peter Veth
Sean Ulm, James Cook University; Ingrid Ward, Flinders University; Peter Veth, The University of Western Australia, and Tiina Manne, The University of Queensland
Part of the land inhabited by some of the early Australians is now submerged, but details of their life is now revealed in an excavation on an island off the continent’s north-west coast.
On expedition with Norman Tindale and local Aboriginal group at a rock shelter at Bathurst Head (Thartali) in eastern Cape York Peninsula, 1927.
Photo by Herbert Hale/South Australian Museum, Archives Norman Tindale Collection (AA 338/5/4/41)
Alan Cooper, University of Adelaide; Ray Tobler, Australian National University, and Wolfgang Haak, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology
Aboriginal people stayed settled in places across Australia for 50,000 years until Europeans arrived, showing a strong connection with the land.
A fruit cart depicting a ‘picanniny’ child: such figures were popular at a time when Aboriginal children were being removed from their families.
Author provided
What are we to make of ‘Aboriginalia’: bric-a-brac, tiles, ornaments and artworks - once hugely popular - depicting caricatures of Indigenous people? What if they are collected now in a knowing, ironic way?
In the 1840s, the eel traps of Budj Bim were described as the work of ‘civilized men’. But it took another 135 years for more appreciative European eyes to examine the complexity of western Victoria’s Aboriginal fishery.
The Founding of Australia. By Capt. Arthur Phillip R.N. Sydney Cove, Jan. 26th 1788, Algernon Talmadge R.A, 1937.
State Library of NSW
Jane Lydon, The University of Western Australia and Donna Oxenham, The University of Western Australia
Noel Pearson has accused the ABC of racism in dwelling on indigenous alienation. But many advances in the status of Aboriginal Australians have been prompted by revealing ill-treatment, which is why Ms Dhu’s family want footage of her last hours made public.
The Warratyi rock shelter is elevated above a local stream catchment in South Australia.
Giles Hamm
Archaeologists found thousands of objects in a remote Australian cave which shows Aborigines made it inland some 10,000 years earlier than first thought. So what did they find?
The facilities were poor and some inmates were subjected to unsuccessful experimentation with a “vaccine” that used arsenic compounds.
Hospital Ward Dorre Island/State library of Western Australia
New DNA research working with Indigenous Australians is answering many of the questions about when and where the First Australians emerged many thousands of years ago.
Some of Australia’s Indigenous people even used body parts to help them count.
Shutterstock/Pics by Nick