In this volume, Katharine Booth and Lisa Ford present the details of a watershed Northern Territory legal decision. Angela Lapham challenges our understanding of the term ‘assimilation’ in her study of Stanley Middleton. Charmaine Robson looks at Australian leprosy control policy in the twentieth century. The ‘entanglements’ of Aboriginal and European people within farming and

In recent years there have been a number of important historical works which recognise the important contribution of Aboriginal guides in the exploration of Australia. This article contributes to this field by providing a narrative history of a young Aboriginal man from Newcastle called Harry Brown who accompanied the well-known Prussian explorer, Dr Ludwig Leichhardt, on two expeditions into the interior of Australia in the 1840s. Brown was a highly intelligent, resilient and skilful man who made an enormous contribution to Australian exploration, yet has been overlooked in Australian historiography. His contribution to Australian exploration is an exemplar of Aboriginal influence during the nineteenth century which extends well beyond simplistic portrayals of Aboriginal people as useful, submissive and subservient guides. It will be demonstrated in this article that without the courageous and resolute Brown along with his perspicacity and judgement, the widespread celebration of Leichhardt's discoveries may not have been forthcoming.

At the end of August 1951, the local officer for the Western Australian Department of Native Affairs, Laurence (Laurie) O'Neill, drove to the Kalgoorlie cemetery and took his own life. What drove him to do so is not known. What is known is that his brother Jim had been buried there two months earlier after a sudden illness. Certainly O'Neill had had his share of personal tragedy, both his children having died at birth in Halls Creek in the state's north in the mid 1930s. But it may have been the case, too, that he had struggled to adjust to the shifting culture of 'native administration' in Western Australia. When he joined the department in 1941 the skills and experience he brought with him from 12 years as a mounted policeman in the Kimberley made him eminently suited to a role in 'native administration', a Perth newspaper asserting that 'Native Affairs Branch is lucky to have so competent and experienced a representative'. By the end of the decade, however, O'Neill's approach in dealing with Aboriginal people was no longer viewed as appropriate for a Native Affairs officer, and his views were described as being 'diametrically opposed to those of the department'.

Noongar, the Aboriginal peoples of south-west Australia, have observed and interacted with Europeans since before the dawn of the nineteenth century. 1 Historians have long relied on expedition journals and the diaries of colonists for constructing interpretations of south-west

In 1838, amidst French imperial aggression in Tahiti, the reigning Indigenous monarch Queen Pomare wrote the first of many letters as a 'sister Queen' to Britain's Queen Victoria. In it she asserted her and her people's right to seek the protection of the British government who, after all, had brought colonisation to her shores. Two years later, Wurundjeri elder Billibellary, counselled a gathering of his clanspeople on a newly selected site of residence in Narre Narre Warren, a few miles remote from the burgeoning British settlement of Melbourne. Following his reportedly spirited address, he and other residents walked off the Narre Narre Warren station in a sovereign withdrawal of cooperation with colonial authorities. Earlier that same year, a few thousand miles to the east of Melbourne at Waitangi in Aotearoa New Zealand, a gathering of Maori chiefs walked out on treaty negotiations with a British delegation. Although some would eventually sign what became known as the Treaty of Waitangi, others permanently withdrew their consent and refused the British appropriation of full sovereignty over Maori land and its inseparable people. This article argues that these seemingly isolated moments of protest constitute the observable tip of a wider process underway within many indigenous communities in the late 1830s and 1840s.

Late on Thursday afternoon, 18 April 2013, Uncle Tom Trevorrow the Ngarrindjeri elder who worked tirelessly to create a just and equitable future for his community, and in the process brought countless black and white people together over more than a quarter of a century, sat down to continue working in the office of his beloved Camp Coorong, near Meningie, South Australia. He had just completed an interview for an international documentary on endangered languages with Ernie Dingo. Moments later this remarkable statesman suffered a heart attack just two weeks before his 59th birthday. His sudden passing left his family, many friends and the Aboriginal community across Australia, and internationally, bereft and in deep shock. For many it was, and still is, difficult to imagine a world without Tom.

The Australian Museum during 1880s and 1890s encouraged the collection and trade of Aboriginal remains paying freelance collectors for skulls, skeletons and whole bodies. The Australian Museum's curator Edward Pierson Ramsay Ramsey would occasionally turn to a worldwide network of commercial dealers in natural science when he was unable to get specimens.

For most of the period of white settlement in Western Australia the labour of Aborigines was an essential factor in rural production. This was especially true in the pastoral industry. Not only was it an industry based on the expropriation of Aboriginal lands by white settlers, it was also an industry largely maintained by the exploitation of cheap Aboriginal labour. Despite the fact that these workers had the reputation of being 'the best stockmen in the world' they were excluded from the provisions of industrial awards and worked and lived under conditions that would not have been tolerated by a white workforce. On 1 May 1946 workers on some two dozen stations in the Pilbara region struck. The degree of co-ordination and solidarity they displayed first amazed and then infuriated both the white pastoralists and their representatives in the State Government. While the mass media either ignored or condemned the strike, sections of the metropolitan labour movement sprang to the defence of the strikers and notable actions of solidarity were organised. The dispute took a number of turns with some employers agreeing to the conditions the workers sought. At one stage the State Government also agreed to substantial reforms but this was later withdrawn. Some workers returned to the industry but others decided that their withdrawal would be permanent.

As an 'appreciation' of

This volume of Aboriginal History presents a diverse group of papers concerned with historical and political issues and experiences of aboriginal peoples in their interactions with the 'outsiders', the adventurers, government officers, traders and settlers who came uninvited into their countries from foreign lands.They focus not only on indigenous Australians but also on indigenous minorities in New Zealand, Canada, the United States of America and Norway.While some papers deliberately use comparative approaches in their discussion others concentrate on only one of these regional settings, leaving the reader to draw out some of the similarities and differences for him or herself.The lengthy gestation of this collection reflects the complexities of bringing together papers from such a diverse range of authors, some of whom responded to initial calls for papers and others of whom fortuitously happened to submit papers which coincided with this theme.I hope that the final collection is not only of interest but also generates further inquiries which may lead to more discussion on these topics in future.Common themes highlighted in this collection of papers include the early contact experiences of indigenous groups with explorers, traders and others; the process and effects of land alienation, land rights recognition and negotiations; the impact of assimilationist policies; and the realities of contemporary indigenous international networks.