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Listed under:  Society  >  Culture  >  Regional culture  >  Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples  >  Aboriginal peoples
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Corroboree, c1817

This is a 17.7 cm x 27.7 cm watercolour showing Indigenous Australian men at a moonlit, night-time corroboree around a central fire in a bush clearing. Five men are dancing in a line on one side of the fire, while another six men stand on the other side, all painted with white ochre ceremonial markings on their legs, arms ...

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Indigenous Australians hunting black swans, c1817

This is a 17.5 cm x 27.7 cm watercolour of Indigenous Australian people hunting black swans among reeds near the water's edge of a large river. One man is holding a bird that is trying to escape and three people are spearing birds. At least four other people are almost fully obscured by the reeds. The river is surrounded ...

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Indigenous Australian family sheltering in a cave, c1817

This is a watercolour, measuring 17.7 cm x 27.7 cm, created by Joseph Lycett in about 1817. It depicts an Indigenous Australian family sheltering from a storm in the entrance of a cave in New South Wales. A man holds a fish and a firebrand and a woman sits on a rock nursing a baby. A third adult squats before a fire, apparently ...

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Portrait of an Indigenous Australian man, c1790

This is a portrait of an Indigenous Australian man from the Port Jackson (Sydney) area of New South Wales, created in about 1790 by an unknown artist. The man is shown from the waist up, standing with his back to the viewer and his head turned to the right-hand side. The man's facial features are exaggerated and his back ...

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Indigenous Australian man with white body paint, c1790

This is a portrait of an Indigenous Australian man from the Port Jackson (Sydney) area of New South Wales, created in about 1790 by an unknown artist. He is depicted from the waist up, with white paint on his face, arms and chest. The text 'When angry and (as I suppose) intends to fight at a future period' is written below ...

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Bennelong in European clothing, 1798

This is an engraving made by James Neagle in England in 1798. It features an oval portrait of Bennelong wearing a ruffled shirt, waistcoat and frockcoat. A number of Indigenous Australian weapons are depicted in a formal arrangement behind the portrait; these include two shields, a woomera (spear thrower), a hafted axe ...

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Indigenous Australian man, Y-erran-gou-la-ga (Mousquita), 1802

This is a colour print of a half-figure portrait drawn by the French artist Nicolas-Martin Petit somewhere near Port Jackson (Sydney), between 20 June and 17 November 1802. It shows a man named as Y-erran-gou-la-ga. There is painting on his chest and face and he is wearing a piece of reed or bone through a hole in the cartilage ...

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Indigenous Australian man, Bedgi-bedgi (Bidgee-bidgee), 1802

This is a colour print of a half-figure portrait drawn by the French artist Nicolas-Martin Petit near Port Jackson (Sydney), between 20 June and 17 November 1802. It shows a man named as Bedgi-bedgi (also known as Bidgee-bidgee), said to be of the Gwea-gal tribe. He has patterned scarification on his arms, chest and abdomen, ...

Interactive

Biography: Federation people: Richard O'Connor

Investigate Richard O'Connor's role in the move towards Federation. Examine two different types of biographies of O'Connor: one short and the other more detailed. Inspect examples of how he was visually depicted in his time. This learning object is one in a series of objects in the 'Biography: Federation people' series.

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Indigenous Australians hunting kangaroos, c1817

This is a 17.7 cm x 27.7 cm watercolour of a hunter poised to throw a spear at one of a number of kangaroos; he is lying on his front behind a fallen tree, his head and chest raised and his right arm stretching back ready to throw the spear from a spear thrower. Four other hunters wait behind trees in the distance with ...

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Indigenous Australians spearing eels, c1817

This is a 17.6 cm x 27.7 cm watercolour of two men spearing fish in a river. One has caught an eel on his four-pronged spear. The landscape is heavily vegetated with mountains in the distance and there are rocky outcrops on either side of the river. Large trees frame the image.

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Indigenous Australians defending their land, c1817

This is a 17.7 cm x 27.9 cm watercolour showing about 40 Indigenous Australian people attacking a rowboat carrying five colonists. Most of the warriors are on a steep, rocky headland and those close to the water have spears raised. Two appear to be picking up stones while those further up the cliff watch on. About ten Indigenous ...

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Two Indigenous Australians hunting emus, c1817

This is a 17.7 cm x 27.8 cm watercolour of two Indigenous Australian men hunting emus, with one man about to throw a spear using a woomera, or spear thrower. The birds are grazing on a grassy plain in the middle distance to the right of the picture, and the men are screened from them by large rocks and scrub. In the distance ...

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Indigenous Australians gathering seafood, c1817

This is a 17.7 cm x 28 cm watercolour of Indigenous Australian people and their canoes on the New South Wales north coast. In the foreground three people are spearing fish, while one sits on the rocks watching an underwater swimmer and a person diving off the rocks. Another person walks from the water carrying two crayfish, ...

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Indigenous Australians using fire to hunt kangaroos, c1817

This is a watercolour, measuring 17.5 cm x 27.8 cm, created by Joseph Lycett in about 1817. It depicts Indigenous Australians using fire to flush out kangaroos in order to hunt them. One man is ready to throw a spear using a woomera (spear thrower) and another has his arm raised to throw a boomerang. In the background, ...

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Indigenous Australians fishing by torchlight, c1817

This is a watercolour, measuring 17.7 cm x 27.9 cm, created by Joseph Lycett in about 1817. It depicts Indigenous Australians spear fishing from three bark canoes at night. In each canoe are a man with a spear and a person holding a firebrand. On the river bank, 15 adults and a child are gathered around two fires, roasting ...

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Indigenous Australian climbing a tree, c1817

This is a watercolour, measuring 27.8 cm x 17.7 cm, created by Joseph Lycett in about 1817. It features an Indigenous Australian man about 2 m up the trunk of a eucalypt tree, with his feet and one hand in notches on the trunk. He is holding a small axe in the other hand, ready to cut another notch, apparently being directed ...

Audio

Marion Scrymgour talks about her mixed sense of identity, 2008

This is an edited sound recording of a Northern Territory politician, Marion Scrymgour, talking about her Tiwi and central Australian backgrounds. She says that all her life she has considered herself to be a Tiwi Islander, like her mother. However, she has also recently 'come to accept that I've got this other different ...

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A proclamation to Indigenous Australians, 1829

This is a hand-coloured lithograph made in 1886, measuring 42.3 cm x 25 cm, based on an original timber panel made at the request of Governor George Arthur (1784-1854) in 1829. It depicts a comic-style narrative in four strips of drawings. Intended to be read from bottom to top, the drawings show: a British man shooting ...

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'John Batman's famous treaty with the blacks', c1914

This is a black-and-white engraving, measuring 40.4 cm x 57 cm, made by George Rossi Ashton (1851-1942) in about 1914. It depicts John Batman (1801-39) and an elderly Indigenous Australian man leaning over what is probably a treaty document on the decayed trunk of a large fallen tree. They are surrounded by 16 men, many ...