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MHS Library | The Secret River

Background: Aboriginal people and place

Aboriginal People and Place - Barani: Sydney's Aboriginal History

Indigenous Australians overview - Australian Museum

Breastplate - Cora Gooseberry B008454 
Photographer: Stuart Humphreys © Australian Museum (from the website)

Aboriginal population in Australia (Creative Spirits)

A history of Aboriginal Sydney

Audio: Weh Stanner and the Great Australian Silence

WEH Stanner and the Great Australian Silence - Download audio from this link.

In the 1950s and 60s the anthropologist WEH Stanner changed the way Australians thought about ourselves and our country.

His essays and lectures, notably his 1968 Boyer Lectures, revealed the richness of Aboriginal culture and what he called the 'cult of forgetfulness' practised by white Australians about the fate of this unique culture following European settlement.

But Stanner has been a victim of this same national amnesia—his essays have been out of print for decades and he's little known outside academic circles.

History of convict Australia (Sterling Documentaries)