by topic — Aboriginal Australians

A comprehensive guide to undertaking Indigenous family history research throughout Australia. Includes an online request form as well as links to organisations such as Link-Up, which assists in family tracing and reunion of Indigenous people who were removed.

Published for the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee (NACC) by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in 2004, this CDROM contains the electoral roll for over 27,000 Indigenous people (aged 18 and over) who voted to elect 41 members of the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee ( NACC ) on 24 November 1973.

NACC voters had to be an Aboriginal person or Torres Strait Islander and registered on the Commonwealth Electoral Roll. The total number of Aboriginal adults eligible to enrol for the NACC elections was 53,000 and the total number of Aboriginals in Australia at the time is estimated at 116,000.

The NACC was the first national representative organisation in the Australian body politic for Australian Aborigines. Altogether there were 41 National Aboriginal Consultative Committee Electoral Districts: New South Wales 8; Victoria 3; Queensland 9; South Australia 4; Western Australia 8; Tasmania 1; and Northern Territory 8. Electors residing in the Capital Territory were included in the appropriate Electoral District for the State of New South Wales.

In 1977 the Federal Government dissolved the NACC and replaced it with the National Aboriginal Conference (NAC), which in turn was abolished in 1986. The NAC was subsequently superseded by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), established by the Federal Government under Bob Hawke through the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Act 1989 (the ATSIC Act), which took effect on 5 March 1990. ATSIC was then formally abolished on 24 March 2005 by the Federal Government under John Howard.

The Australian Electoral Commission has guides ' Electoral Milestones for Indigenous Australians ' and a 'History of the Indigenous Vote' at Australian Electoral History.

The Australian Indigenous Index or INFOKOORI is a State Library of NSW index to the Koori Mail: the fortnightly national indigenous newspaper, published in Lismore, NSW, since May 1991, that focuses on the Indigenous people of Australia.

INFOKOORI is also an index to biographical information from other periodicals held by the NSW State Library besides the Koori Mail including: Our aim : a monthly record of the Aborigines' Inland Mission of Australia. (1907–1961), Dawn : a magazine for the Aboriginal people of N.S.W. (1952–1969), New Dawn (1970–1975) and Identity: Aboriginal Publications Foundation (1971–1982).

You can access Dawn and New Dawn, for full-text online versions of these 2 periodicals. Published by the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board, they contain family history information such as births, deaths, and marriages, as well as hundreds of photographs. They also contain articles about conditions and activities on reserves, stations, homes and schools in NSW.

Historical information about Aboriginal people and communities is also being added from other newspapers published in NSW that are held by the NSW State Library, such as the Armidale Express, the Dubbo Dispatch and Wellington Independent, the Australian Evangel , Today, the Daily Examiner (Grafton) and the North-western Watchman (Coonabarabran).

The National Archives has created the Bringing Them Home (BTH) name index which aims to help Indigenous people find information about themselves, their families and their country from National Archive records relevant to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their history. This index was created in response to the recommendations of Bringing Them Home, the report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, released in 1997.

The BTH name index index contains: names of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; names of non-Indigenous people related to or associated with Indigenous people; names of missions and institutions where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were placed; and places where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have lived or visited. The index does not contain information about the people named. To see this information you will need to view the original records (files, papers and photographs) or photocopies of them.

If the reason for seeking access is to obtain information for the purpose of re-establishing family and community links, under the Memoranda of Understanding between the Archives and Northern Territory, Victorian and South Australian Indigenous communities you may look at information normally restricted from public access. For further information see Fact Sheet 114 – Memorandum of Understanding with Northern Territory Aboriginal people, Fact Sheet 205 – Memorandum of Understanding with the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency or Fact Sheet 209 – Memorandum of Understanding with SA Indigenous people.

You can ask for the BTH name index to be searched by contacting the Archives’ National Reference Service at ( ph:1300 886 881; fax: 1300 886 882; email : ref@naa.gov.au ). To assist reference officers undertake a thorough search, it helps if you provide as many details as possible, including: name of the person you are researching – this includes any variations in the spelling of given names, nicknames, forgotten names, or Indigenous names; family connections – the names of any siblings, children or other relatives; language group, country or homeland – which were sometimes used to identify people; place – where the person was born, lived, worked, or was sent to; date of birth, age at events, or date of death of the person; date ranges – year or period the person was in a certain place or area, such as the period they worked on a particular cattle station; and significant events that may have occurred in the person’s life, such as being evacuated because of natural disaster or war.

You can find out more about the BTH index in the National Archives at Fact Sheet 175 – Bringing Them Home Name Index

The BTH name index is not the only information resource available to researchers of Indigenous family history. While most government records relating to Aboriginal affairs before 1970 were created and maintained by state governments, the National Archives holds large quantities of records relevant to Northern Territory and Victorian Indigenous people.

The National Archives holds many Northern Territory records because from 1911 until self-government in 1978, the Commonwealth administered the Territory. Northern Territory records are held in the Darwin and Canberra offices. National Archive holdings on Victoria are large because the Victorian government handed the responsibility for Aboriginal affairs and associated records to the Commonwealth in 1975. Victorian records dating from 1860 are held in the Melbourne office. Finally, the National Archives holds more recent records for all states because in 1967 the Constitution was amended to allow the Australian Government to legislate for all Aboriginal people.

There are a number of other online National Archive fact sheets concerning records on Indigenous people, including : Fact Sheet 113 – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; Fact sheet 150 – The 1967 Referendum; Fact sheet 108 – The pastoral industry in the Northern Territory; and Fact sheet 112 – Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. Go to Fact sheets on Indigenous Australia.

Created by the Division of Law at Macquarie University, this site currently contains a searchable database of decisions from the Supreme court of NSW handed down between 1824 and 1841 as well as cases concerning aborigines from later years.

Connecting Kin is a 383-page NSW Department of Community Services guide to NSW records from 1900 onwards aimed at helping people separated from their birth families (through adoption, fostering etc) to locate records about their separation and their families. The Guide was published in September 1998.

Since 1924, over 100,000 children, both Aboriginal and non - Aboriginal, have been made wards of the State of NSW. Thousands more have been placed with other families under adoption or other arrangements.

The guide includes : a brief history of child welfare in NSW; a chronology of key events in NSW child welfare; listing of records at NSW Government welfare agencies, non government agencies, public hospitals and NSW Government non-welfare agencies; Appendix 1 : Services and other sources of information; Appendix 2 : chronological summary of child welfare agencies in NSW; Appendix 3 : brief history of missions in NSW; Appendix 4 : brief history of Aboriginal reserves in NSW; Appendix 5 : definitions and abbreviations used in this Guide; and index.

The index is a key element of the guide as it indexes all the records in the guide by place name (eg: town or suburb name), name of agency (ie Department of Community Services) and name of home or program (ie Parramatta Training School for Girls) with extensive cross referencing. It also indexes the appendices which appear in the Guide.

Records referred to in the guide's 4 main sections ( NSW Government welfare agencies, non government agencies, public hospitals and NSW Government non-welfare agencies ) are grouped under the name, institution or program they relate to, and then are listed in 'series'. A series is a collection of records which usually have the same format ( eg:files, photographs, registers) and which were created for a particular function.

Before starting a search for your birth family, it would be useful to know your date and place of birth, where you were brought up (ie; the name of the children's home and/or the school you attended) and the name/s of your foster or adoptive parents. It is also important to know that for confidentiality reasons, there are a variety of conditions and procedures governing access to records.

A number of agencies which hold records offer support and counselling services. These include:

(1) Family Support Services, NSW Department of Community Services, (02) 9865 5961 or toll free 1800 049 956; (2) Anglican Adoption Agency (Careforce) (02) 9890 6855; (3) Barnardo's Adoption Agency (02) 9281 5510; (4) Centacare Adoption Service (02) 9744 7055; (5) Mercy Family Centre (02) 9487 3022; and (6) Salvation Army (02) 9266 9829.

In addition, there are a number of groups which offer advice, information, mediation and counselling. These include : (1) Adoption Triangle NSW Inc which has a number of country and interstate groups. Phone (02) 4965 5888 for the number of the nearest group to you; (2) Origins Inc (02) 9560 8808; (3) the Post Adoption Resource Centre (02) 9365 3444 or toll free 1800 024 256; and (4) Link-Up (NSW) Aboriginal Corporation (02) 4759 1911.

The online 'Connecting Kin' guide may be slow in downloading because it is a large pdf file. You could also go to related links on the righthand column of the NSW Department of Community Services webpage Are you a former ward?

Information on how to access the records of the Aborigines Protection Board, later renamed the Aborigines Welfare Board. The time period covered is 1833-1969. The Board's records include details of children removed as well as detailed information on all aspects of life on stations and reserves, such as financial statements, salary and employment details, tenancy agreements and applications to leave the reserve. The site also includes contact details for help with Indigenous family research.

This site provides information on how to gain access to the Aborigines Welfare Board, Aboriginal Lands Trust and Department of Community Services and Aboriginal Services branch records. The guide also lists holdings of records of the Aborigines Welfare Board 1883–1969 and state archives from other government agencies relating to Aboriginal peoples.