An Indigenous Australian infant's death has sparked national outrage over systemic child protection failures in Aboriginal communities.

https://worldbriefly.news/death-of-indigenous-australian-infant-sparks-national-outrage-over-child-protect

#IndigenousAustralia #ChildProtection #AustraliaNews

Ancient DNA challenges 65,000-year timeline for human arrival in Australia, but experts remain divided

A new study published in the journal Archaeology in Oceania has reopened a long-standing debate about when people migrated to Australia, suggesting a later arrival that overturns decades of archaeological evidence...

More information: https://archaeologymag.com/2025/07/dna-challenges-timeline-for-human-arrival-in-australia/

Follow @archaeology

#archaeology #archeology #archaeologynews #neanderthals #homosapiens #anthropology #indigenousaustralia

Tonight I learned about the story of Kumanjayi White, who died during police action in Alice Springs.

It's quite disturbing.

#KumanjayiWhite #DeathsInCustody #IndigenousAustralia

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-03/alice-springs-coles-supermarket-kumanjayi-white-death-in-custody/105363560

The #Minjil dancers introducing us to Country in Gimuy/Cairns for the inaugural symposium of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Indigenous & Environmental Histories & Futures

#CIEHF #IndigenousAustralia #AboriginalAustralia #Indigenous

Interesting archaeological and cultural research on the interactions between the #Lapita (the ancestors of the modern cultures of #Polynesia) and the aboriginal cultures of Cape York and #FNQ that might have kick-started a flirtation with pottery and ceramics in #Australia - technologies later abandoned, perhaps due to the wealth of natural resources such as large, durable shells, which made it unnecessary.

Take-away: It's not "primitive" to not waste blood, sweat, tears and the wealth of the Earth on making and consuming technologies and products that you don't need - and it seems people figured that out thousands of years ago.

#Archaeology #Anthropology #IndigenousAustralia

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-04-10/aboriginal-pottery-jiigurru-lizard-island/103681662

Watching The Dark Emu Story in iview https://iview.abc.net.au/show/dark-emu-story.

I learned colonial Australian history in the 60s & 70s, read some interesting material raising interesting questions 20-30 years ago, taught a much better version to year 12 students some years later & then read this book.

I’d learned that Indigenous Australians were Hunter-gatherers, merely harvesting & hunting what nature provided. I’d taught (at a simple middle years level) that the first farmers were people who tended the land, cared for it, used fire to control some plants & promote growth of others,use some collected seed to increase the density of some plants etc, and cultivate the soil to replant food producing plants. I learned that this happened first in places like Sumerian, Egypt etc.

Later peoples used fencing to protect crops from animals & claim ownership of the land, invented machines to more effectively cultivate the land, selected & later bred more productive plants. Animals were domesticated, selectively bred & raised for meat & dairy. Such practices developed in fertile areas with generally reliable & sufficient rainfall, & were then transferred to less fertile areas to improve productivity.

Pascoe challenged this, using the evidence of journals & letters written by white people viewing the land & its people before white settlement. And archeological evidence is that the early farming, or gardening, or land management & the building of sophisticated fish tracks, & semi-permanent villages were taking place here well before such practices in the Mediterranean. And that they mined, & produced & traded.

And he was attacked, by right wing politicians & media, & conservative academics. He claims to be truth telling, while his critics claim he has produced propaganda to try to make Indigenous Australians more relatable to non- Indigenous Australians.

All Pascoe wants, is for people to know that Indigenous Australian culture was not as simple & unsophisticated as claimed, largely in attempts to justify the appropriation of land, the pushing of Indigenous Australians onto reserves, into missions, the “opportunities” to work as stockhands & domestic servants but nothing else, and the removal over decades of mixed race children from their families & placement into institutions (many but not all the result of sexual violence & exploitation), where many of the children were themselves abused & set on a path of crime & substance abuse. (See Jack Charles’ book https://www.penguin.com.au/books/jack-charles-9781760899158).

Good documentary, excellent & thoroughly researched book. Jack Charles’ book is a lighter read. He definitely wasn’t an entertainer but was such a treasure. I really regret not going to see him on stage before he died. #DarkEmu #TheDarkEmuStory #IndigenousAustralia