In February, the Prime Minister of Australia, the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull announced an additional $20 million funding over two years when he tabled his Closing the Gap – Prime Ministers Report 2016 in Parliament.

The funding will allow us to ramp up our work to collect, preserve, understand and share Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ heritage and culture. And keep safe this knowledge for all Australians by digitising and protecting it from being lost.

Read more.

We’re sharing our extensive collection of content with the world via the National Library of Australia’s Trove. We’ve been working hard on a project with the NLA to load our unique catalogue and index records onto their database.

Approximately 60,000 records on items in our collections have now been added. They’re important for family history research, native title claims and the establishment of keeping places in remote communities.

Read more on the NLA's Trove blog.

Two remote Aboriginal art centres - Djilpin Arts and the Tjanpi Desert Weavers - showcased and sold their distinctive and beautiful sculptural fibre art at a market day at AIATSIS as part of our celebrations for International Women’s Day 2016.

The artists also held a weaving master class for 15 lucky participants. All sale proceeds from the master class and market day went directly back to the community art centres and to the artists.

Check out some photos.

Digitised versions of the significant and foundational collection of sound recordings by Dr Luise Hercus, held in our archives, were presented back to Dr Hercus as part of the celebrations for her 90th birthday.

Dr Hercus was one of the first researchers to receive support from AIATSIS for her fieldwork. Her collections contain over 1000 hours of sound recordings that cover over 56 languages and dialects.

Read more about this event.

A report into the current state of knowledge, practice and responses to violence against women in Australian Indigenous communities was released by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS).

Co-written by AIATSIS researcher Dr Ray Lovett, the report is a timely summary of the published literature on Indigenous women and violence – an issue of national importance.

Find out more about the report.

Amendments to the AIATSIS Act 1989 passed through parliament and received royal assent in February.

“These changes to the AIATSIS Act represent a renewed purpose for this fifty-year-old institution, with its proud history of promoting, preserving and understanding Indigenous peoples’ heritage and culture,” said Professor Dodson

Find out more.

The updated Indigenous Law Resources database has just been launched. In total, the project has made freely available almost 700 new documents, dating from 1831 to 2015. Particularly noteworthy inclusions are important new resources relating to Land Rights, Discrimination, Intellectual Property and Cultural Heritage.

AIATSIS was able to provide 28 digitised documents to the project.

Check out the database.

29 February 2016 marked the 40th anniversary of the inaugural National Aboriginal Country and Western Festival. The Festival took place at Narrabundah Oval here in Canberra and featured a host of musical talent throughout the day.

AIATSIS curator, Associate Professor Dr Blake Singley recently unearthed some rare film and sound recordings from the first Festival. Dr Singley was interviewed by ABC radio field reporter Louise Maher about the recordings.

Read more about the first Festival and the Dr Singley’s interview transcript.

This new release from noted author Bronwyn Carlson “explores the complexities surrounding Aboriginal identity today”.

Dr Carlson draws on a range of historical and research literature, interviews and surveys to explore Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal understandings of Aboriginality and the way these are produced and reproduced across a range of sites and contexts.

Copies of the book can be purchased via our website.

Encounters with Indigeneity: Writings about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples was published by the Aboriginal Studies Press in 2014.

It was written by Jeremy Becket from University of Sydney and was recently reviewed by one of our researchers, Belinda Burridge.

Belinda believes that Jeremy’s book “offers valuable ethnographic insights into the history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the Australian state”.

Read Belinda’s full review in the Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology.

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