How Indigenous law has enabled people to survive and thrive in Australia for more than 2000 generations. The sixth in a series on First Knowledges; others cover songlines, architecture, design, land management, botany, and astronomy.
Collection of resources giving a view of Australia’s First Peoples, including stories about their treatment in the past and about their aspirations and demands today. Particularly focusses on the Frontier Wars and the related issue of the involvement of Indigenous Australians in our defence forces.
Australia is dotted with memorials to soldiers who fought in wars overseas. Why are there no official memorials or commemorations of the wars that were fought on Australian soil between Aborigines and white colonists? Why is it more controversial to talk about the frontier war now than it was one hundred years ago?
Based on a forum held at the National Museum in Canberra c. 2003 this book presents a series of essays by leading contributors on the subject of conflict between Aborigines and settlers.
The Gulf country was a harsh and in places impassable wilderness. To explorers, it promised discovery, and to bold adventurers like the overlanders and pastoralists, a new start. For prospectors, it was a gateway to the riches of the Kimberley goldfields. To the 2,500 Aboriginal inhabitants, it was their physical and spiritual home. From the 1870s, with the opening of the Coast Track, cattlemen eager to lay claim to vast tracts of station land brought cattle in massive numbers and destruction to precious lagoons and fragile terrain. Black and white conflict escalated into unfettered violence and retaliation that would extend into the next century, displacing, and in some areas destroying, the original inhabitants.