Reading List category: 

First Nations History

First Nations History
New South Wales
Bennelong and Phillip: A History Unravelled (2023)
Fullagar, Kate
Bennelong and Phillip were leaders of their two sides in the first encounters between Britain and Indigenous Australians, Phillip the colony’s first governor, and Bennelong the Yiyura leader. The pair have come to represent the conflict that flared and has never settled.
First Nations History
Black Founders: the Unknown Story of Australia’s First Black Settlers (2006)
Pybus, Cassandra
Cassandra Pybus reveals that black convicts were among our first fleet. Most of these black founders were originally slaves from America who had sought freedom with the British during the American Revolution only to find themselves abandoned and unemployed in England when the war was over.
Frontier Wars
First Nations History
Blood on the Wattle: Massacres and Maltreatment of Aboriginal Australians since 1788 (3rd edition, 2003)
Elder, Bruce
Draws together most of the information about the massacres of the Aboriginal people which has been recorded in books and journals. It also creates a level of awareness of the scale of the massacres, so that this dimension of Australian history can become part of the Australian consciousness.
First Nations History
Frontier Wars
Bunjil’s Fire
Thorpe, Bunjileenee Robbie
A historically informed, critical analysis of Aboriginal affairs and the ongoing political movement for land rights, treaty, sovereignty and the cessation of genocide. Featuring the best of blak music. Arts, Current Affairs, Environment, Human Rights, Indigenous, Local Communities, Protests.
First Nations History
Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia, 1788-1930
University of Newcastle: The Centre for 21st Century Humanities
From the moment the British invaded Australia in 1788 they encountered active resistance from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander owners and custodians of the lands. In the frontier wars which continued into the 1920s frontier massacres were a defining strategy to contain and eradicate that resistance. As a result thousands of Aboriginal men, women and children were killed. This site presents a map, timelines, and information about frontier massacres in Australia between 1788 when British colonisation began until 1930. Only frontier massacres for which sufficient evidence exists and can be verified are included. The map also includes information about frontier massacres of non- Aboriginal people such as colonists and others in Australia in the same period.
Queensland
First Nations History
Colonial Queensland: perspectives on a Frontier society (1996)
Bill Thorpe
An impressive work of historical sociology. Covers Aboriginal labour patterns, environmental history (masculinity, hunting and attempts to eliminate native fauna), issues in colonialism, post-colonialism and Australian Studies, social structure (class, race and gender), colonial political economy and intercolonial and global connections, the so-called 'Queensland difference'. (Full text available at URL)