For Indigenous people, Country is more than a landscape. But climate change, and the natural disasters it produces, present a clear and present threat to Country, culture and heritage.
The Moon is not only a guide to the best time to fish and plant food, it also provides evidence of a long connection between the people on different islands in the Torres Strait.
The abrupt downturn in seafood consumption in China is wreaking havoc on the traditional fishers of the Torres Strait and other Australian fishing communities
A king tide breaching a defence wall at Sabai Island in the Torres Strait, 2011.
AAP Image/Suzanne Long
Torres Strait Islanders argue the government has violated their rights to culture, family and life.
A student does his homework near a solar power kit in remote PNG - apparently charging his phone or looking up something on the internet.
Geoff Miller/University of Queensland
PNG is enjoying unfamiliar global attention after the APEC summit earlier this week, and the rivalry between the United States and China to exert influence in the region.
Ken Thaiday’s dance machines layer people, animal, land and sea.
Carriageworks
Ken Thaiday Snr, an internationally-acclaimed artist from Erub Island in the Torres Strait, has been awarded a 2017 Red Ochre Award. Thaiday’s work draws on dance, the people and land of the islands to produce elaborate masks and headdresses.
Mosquito control in the Torres Strait can be tough but it provides protection of the mainland from invading exotic mosquitoes.
medical entomology, tropical public health services cairns
A new study shows how Australian authorities are battling the invasive Asian tiger mosquito in Torres Strait, reducing risks of mosquito-borne disease outbreaks.
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.
In the past decade, the number of people ending up in South Australian prison cells has grown at seven times the rate of the state population.
AAP/South Australian Correctional Services Department
Since 2004, the number of prisoners in South Australia has risen seven times faster than the state’s net population growth – and nearly doubled its rate of locking up Indigenous Australians.
King tides are just one of the threats faced by the people of Saibai Island in the Torres Strait, as a result of climate change.
Brad Marsellos
While you may have heard about the increasing threat that climate change and rising seas pose to Pacific islands — already forcing some communities to move — Australia has its own group of islands that…
Bundilla elder Aunty Barbara Raymond with schoolchildren in Darwin last year, supporting the cause of Indigenous constitutional recognition.
AAP Image/Supplied by Richard Oppusunggu
Constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australia has been on the national agenda for a long time, but is back in the headlines with the news that the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader hope to release…
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott with kindergarden kids at Yirrkala in the Northern Territory. Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in the NT have the nation’s lowest retention rate, so it’s time to try more creative ways to fix that.
AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy
Tony Dreise, Australian Council for Educational Research
Tony Abbott is spending this week in North-East Arnhem Land, part of his long-held hope “to be not just the Prime Minister but the Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs”. We asked our experts: what stories…
There’s a long-term shift underway in Australia that all politicians should be watching.
AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy
Tony Abbott is spending this week in North-East Arnhem Land, part of his long-held hope “to be not just the Prime Minister but the Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs”. We asked our experts: what stories…
A still from the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s award-winning Be Deadly Online campaign.
ACMAcybersmart/YouTube
Tony Abbott is spending this week in North-East Arnhem Land, part of his long-held hope “to be not just the Prime Minister but the Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs”. We asked our experts: what stories…
Garom, a sculpture made from discarded “ghost nets” in the Torres Strait.
Australian Museum/Supplied
With more than half a million people participating in last Sunday’s Clean Up Australia Day, it’s perhaps not surprising that some odd objects came to light. Not all the rubbish was on land, and not all…
The High Court has ruled in favour of extending native title rights to a 44,000 square kilometre area of the Torres Strait Sea - the largest sea claim in Australian history.
AAP/Jordan Baker
It may have been 21 years since the landmark Mabo judgment recognised native title in Australia for the first time, but historic legal native title decisions are still taking place. The High Court of Australia…
Torres Strait Islanders use constellations, such as the shark ‘Baidam’ pictured here, for practical purposes.
Brian Robinson
Technology has, without doubt, expanded our understanding of space. The Voyager 1 space probe is on the brink of leaving our solar system. Massive telescopes have discovered blasts of fast radio bursts…
Dugongs rely on seagrass for food - damage to grass beds is a bigger threat to the species than Indigenous hunting.
sandwichgirl/Flickr
Jon Altman, Australian National University and Seán Kerins, Australian National University
In the 1990s some international animal rights and environment organisations instigated a concerted campaign to stop the hunting of pilot whales by Faroese people living in the northeast Atlantic. The thousand-year-old…