2019

1. 25 May

   Prime Minister Scott Morrison appoints Ken Wyatt as Australia's first-ever Minister for Indigenous Australians who is actually Aboriginal.

2. June

   Yorta Yorta soprano Deborah Cheetham premières Eumeralla, a War Requiem for Peace, a performance sung entirely in the reclaimed Gunditjmara language, and sold out weeks in advance.

3. 8 June

   Ashley Barty wins the French Open tennis Grand Slam singles title in Paris as only the second Aboriginal woman (after Evonne Goolagong-Cawley) and is ranked World Number 2.

4. 24 June

   After defeating German Julia Görges in the the Birmingham Classic, Ngaragu woman Ash Barty becomes the first Australian woman in 43 years to reach the top of the tennis singles rankings, after Wiradjuri woman Evonne Goolagong's triumph in 1976.

5. 6 July

   After a 17-year campaign, the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape near Portland, a 6,600-year-old Aboriginal aquaculture site in south-west Victoria, is added to the UNESCO World Heritage List. Older than the pyramids, the site proves that Aboriginal people built channels and pools to harvest eels, and also permanent stone houses. The site is considered one of the largest and oldest aquaculture sites in the world and became the first Australian World Heritage site to be nominated exclusively for Aboriginal cultural values.

6. 9 July

   A class action Hans Pearson took to the federal court in September 2016 on behalf of an estimated 10,000 Aboriginal workers in Queensland who had their wages stolen last century is settled with the state government for $190m. His class action covered 1939 to 1972, when he and his fellow Aboriginal workers had their pay given to the state under the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897. It is Australia’s fifth-largest class action settlement.
   

7. 14 July

   The Queensland government launches the “Tracks to Treaty” commitment, aimed to give Aboriginal communities greater self-determination and better delivery of services, lift the representation of Aboriginal voices to government, and begin work on negotiating one or more treaties to create a positive shared future.

   [Tracks to Treaty is about] understanding our past, our shared history… but also telling the truth in all of that, and ensuring that truth then lays the path for the future generations. — Leeanne Enoch, Environment Minister and Quandamooka woman ^[1]

8. 1 August

   Elders bury the remains of 11 Kaurna people in the Glenelg area, SA, which had returned to country from the UK to Canberra earlier this year. The remains of another 800 Kaurna people are still in storage at SA Museum warehouses. ^[2]

9. 10 September

   Dujuan, a 12-year-old Arrernte/Garrwa boy from central Australia, speaks at the UN Human Rights Council demanding the Australian government to stop sending 10-year-old children to to prison and support Aboriginal-led education models. All Australian states and territories allow 10-year-old children to be arrested, charged and sent to prison. Raising the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 would bring Australian standards into line with international law. ^[3]

10. 10 September

    The Illinois State Museum in the USA agrees to unconditionally return 42 culturally significant objects of the Aranda people of Central Australia, and Bardi Jawi people of the northern Dampier Peninsula in Western Australia. The Aboriginal nations plan to return them to country and use them in the maintenance and revival of cultural practices, and support intergenerational knowledge transfer.

    The Return of Cultural Heritage project identified some 95,000 Aboriginal objects held in more than 200 overseas collecting institutions around the world. ^[4]

11. 16 September

    Voting opens for representatives to the First Peoples’ Assembly in Victoria, which will help determine the framework for a treaty. More than 30,000 Victorian Aboriginal people are eligible to vote for 73 leaders until 20 October. It is the first time Aboriginal people have ever been able to vote for such an assembly. ^[5]

    We cannot underestimate that power the assembly will give to that [treaty] negotiating. For the first time, we have an elected voice in Victoria. — Jill Gallagher, treaty advancement commissioner ^[5]

12. 26 October

    34 years to the day since the Anangu people received the land rights for the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, the board closes the Uluru climb after a unanimous decision made in 2017.

13. 4 November

    Ngaragu woman Ash Barty wins the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) Finals in Shenzhen, China, becoming the first Australian woman to win the season-ending tournament since Evonne Goolagong Cawley won the crown for a second time in 1976. She is also the first Australian woman since rankings were introduced in 1973 to finish the year as world number one. Her A$6.4 million prize packet is the biggest winner's cheque in tennis history.

2020

1. January

   Opera Australia revives the musical Bran Nue Dae, 30 years after the original debuted in 1990. The musical achieved popular and critical acclaim for giving Aboriginal voices centre stage, tackling tough issues with humour and challenging mainstream perceptions of Aboriginal people. It tours Sydney in January, Perth (February), Brisbane (July) and Adelaide (August) among other locations. Aboriginal director Rachel Perkins made it into a movie in 2009.

2. 29 April

   250th anniversary of Captain James Cook claiming possession of Australia for the British Crown.

10,000

1. Present day Australian climate establishes.

2. Aboriginal people at Wyrie Swamp near Millicent, 340 kms south-east of Adelaide, South Australia, use returning boomerangs to hunt waterfowl.

120,000

1. Analysis of pollen and charcoal giving a date of 120,000 BP suggests that people were using fire to clear land in the Lake George basin in the Southern Tablelands of NSW, about 30 kms north-east of Canberra. ^[6] Experts also found signs of human disturbance in rainforest pollen patterns in a drill core from the edge of the continental shelf, 80 kilometres east of Cairns.

   Similarly, research presented to the Royal Society of Victoria in 2019 by a group of academics found that blackened stones at Moyjil (Point Ritchie, Victoria), were between 100,000 and 130,000 years old. While cautious, the authors concluded that human habitation was the most likely explanation for "marine shells, stones in unexplained depositional context and fire resemblance to hearth". ^[7]

13,000

1. Land bridges between mainland Australia and Tasmania are flooded. Tasmanian Aboriginal people become isolated for the next 12,000 - 13,000 years.

2. At Kow Swamp near Cohuna, 230 kms north of Melbourne, Victoria, Aboriginal people weare kangaroo teeth headbands similar to those worn by men and women in the Central Desert in the 19th century.

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References