Australian Aboriginal culture
Aboriginal culture in Australia is not easy to discover. For a long time it wasn't taught at school, so many non-Indigenous Australians know little, if anything, about Aboriginals.
This website is a collection of contemporary Aboriginal issues sourced mainly from Aboriginal newspapers. As I learn more I try to put each puzzle piece into place.
I think anybody who does a course on Aboriginal culture just sees Australia so differently. It's very enlightening and gives another dimension to being Australian. —Anna Bell, co-ordinator Aboriginal Support Group Manly Warringah Pittwater [3]
Learn more about Australian Indigenous culture
Only 35% of Australians believe they have a high level of knowledge about Aboriginal culture [1]. Select from the following categories to learn more about a specific field of Aboriginal culture [4]:
Arts
Self-determination
Economy
Education
Health
History
Land
Language
Law &justice People Politics & media Spirituality Sport
How much do you know about Aboriginal culture? Take the Aboriginal knowledge quiz!
Prepare your visit & travel to Aboriginal Australia
Planning a trip? Want to experience Aboriginal culture? Get the most out of your trip by following these handy tips
for your visit.
Tips for visiting Aboriginal Australia
Aboriginal Australia Information Deficit Syndrome – AAIDS
You might be here because you too are suffering from the Aboriginal Australia Information Deficit Syndrome. Millions
of Australians do and a cure seems far away.
The Aboriginal Australia Information Deficit Syndrome (AAIDS)
Glossary of Aboriginal Australia terms
When you are learning about Aboriginal culture there are many unfamiliar words. This glosary of Australian Aboriginal terms explains them.
Glossary of Aboriginal Australia terms
What can you do to support Aboriginal culture?
Read what happened to me when I displayed the Aboriginal flag and read tips about how to help and promote Aboriginal culture.
Support Aboriginal culture
Photo Galleries about Aboriginal culture
- Australia Day ceremony: Aboriginal people perform a ceremony to open Australia Day.
- Uncovering Aboriginal rock engravings: An achaeologist and an Aboriginal elder supervise the discovery of hidden engravings.
The Aboriginal cultural heritage is a treasure cave, and once you walk inside and begin to glimpse at its crystalline insights, truths and tenets, it is impossible to look at the world in the same way again.—John Danalis, author [2]
Aboriginal culture resources
Check out these resources which help you get started or deeply immersed into Aboriginal culture. Browse also books by Aboriginal authors to get an unfiltered, first-hand account.
Book: The Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia deeply explores Aboriginal culture providing maps, diagrams, illustrations and artworks by Indigenous artists.
Book: First Australians for the first time tells Aboriginal history from the perspective of Australia's first people. It is the companion book to the DVD of the same name.
For so many Indigenous Australians, whether living in remote settlements or in towns and cities, the crisis in Aboriginal Australia is lived as a daily reality and marked by the parade of funerals for love3d ones, the noise and pain of drunken violence, the visits to hospitals and prisons and the numbness of pervasive despair. —Prof Patrick Dodson, Aboriginal Elder [5]
[1] Australian Reconciliation Barometer 2008, comparative report p.21 [2] 'Riding The Black Cockatoo', John Danalis, Allen & Unwin, p.194 [3] 'Protecting a rich heritage', Peninsula Living, 2/2010 p.14 [4] Image: Aboriginal man ornamented for a corroboree, State Library of Victoria, image no b22485 [5] 'Time to heal rifts of past', Koori Mail 412 p.10