Resources and publications

Bridging historical scholarship and Aboriginal oral tradition, this innovative book tells the story of the Gugu Badhun people of the Valley of Lagoons in North Queensland. It provides new insights into Aboriginal–European interactions, and new understandings of how Aboriginal people sustained their identities and exercised agency.

It lays bare violence and oppression, but also recognises the inter-racial cooperation and friendships which were equally part of Gugu Badhun experience. It tells of a people whose options were limited by state power and public racism but who remained proud and undaunted, making their own decisions for their collective and individual benefit.

Much of the story is told in the words of Gugu Badhun people themselves. Interviews are interspersed with commentary and analysis by the four authors, one of whom, Yvonne Cadet-James, is herself a Gugu Badhun elder.

This collaborative approach has produced a timely book for an Australia in which notions of Indigenous autonomy and self-determination are being re-imagined and re-configured.

To purchase this book please visit the AIATSIS shop via think link.

This serious of essays draws on a diversity of perspectives to document a significant social and environmental movement that is quietly gathering momentum across this vast Indigenous estate. This series of essays, drawn from an unusual collaboration between university researchers and Indigenous land owners, tells a little-known story about Aboriginal people who are living on, working on and caring for the lands and seas that they own and manage. The ongoing struggles by Indigenous people to conserve and rehabilitate the outstanding natural and cultural values of their ancestral lands deserve wide recognition and acclaim.

Information on the volume can be found here. 

This volume can be purchased directly from The Federation Press by following the link below. 

A large and profitable Indigenous heritage management industry has emerged in the wake of the resources boom of recent decades, with thousands of Indigenous heritage impact assessments conducted every year. Yet few governments have successfully reformed heritage laws to accommodate native title rights, and conflict over site destruction is regularly front page news.

The right to protect sites brings together a range of authors who explore native title and Indigenous heritage regimes around the country, and charts the history of advocacy and policy development, highlighting the successes, limitations, inequalities and opportunities of current arrangements.