First People Then And Now

Sovereign Subjects: Indigenous Sovereignty Matters (Australian Cultural Studies)     Aileen Moreton-Robinson, a Goenpul woman of the Quandamooka people from Stradbroke Island in Southeast Queensland, is an Australian academic and writer about Indigenous rights.   Sovereign Subjects is a thought provoking book that puts under the microscope the implications for Indigenous people living in a country founded on their dispossession, and […]

Sweet Country     Sweet Country is a film set in the Australian frontier in the 1920s. It is the story of an Aboriginal stockman who kills in self-defence a white station owner. The Aboriginal stockman and his wife go on the run in the remote outback pursued by a posse. A gripping, cruel and violent tale of racial tension and […]

Close The Gap Day     All people in the world have a fundamental right to health equality. On 15 March 2018 National Close The Gap Day in Australia is an annual event aimed at promoting awareness of the gap in health and life expectancy between Indigenous and non-indigenous communities. In February 2018 the Australian Prime Minister, Malcom Turnbull, presented […]

Jupiter Mosman Discovers Gold At Charters Towers,1871     Jupiter Mosman (c.1861-1945)   On 23 December 1871 Jupiter Mosman discovered gold at Charters Towers in North Queensland.     The Charters Towers gold fields went on to become one of the riches fields in Queensland. Gold production came to a halt in 1917  but the gold never ran out.  To this […]

Yagan: Hero Of The Australian Aboriginal Resistance   The story of Yagan is about the invasion of Aboriginal lands in Western Australia by the British.     The Indigenous people of southwest Western Australia were and are generally known as Nyoongar. Yagan’s own group of people from the Swan River area are the Bibbulman. The Nyoongar fiercely defended their rights […]

First People Then And Now   Aboriginal Australian Classics For Christmas Reading   Aboriginal Men of High Degree: Initiation and Sorcery in the World’s Oldest Tradition.  By A.P. Elkin In this anthropological classic, Elkin writes about Aboriginal “medicine men” or “men of high degree”. He looks into their personal qualities, role,and function in traditional Aboriginal society. Some of their super […]