Koorie Victoria and State Library of Victoria collections

Libraries and archives can be repositories of significant and precious personal information for Aboriginal people and their communities.  Discussion relating to this, the potential tension between material and access and the inclusion of Aboriginal perspectives in the historical record is covered in some of the sites below. Organisations such as AIATSIS have developed online exhibitions and undertaken digitising projects to make significant government resources widely available.

• ATSILIRN conferences - held by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Library and Information Resources Network. The site includes links to previous conferences and papers, when available.
• Indigenous languages and arts programs - administered by the Commonwealth Department of Communication and the Arts, along with the Indigenous Repatriation Program.
• Trust and technology: building an archival system for Indigenous oral memory - the final report for this project, it sets out recommendations for developing changed frameworks for the ways in which archival collections are held and used, while acknowledging the power many of these collections hold in the lives of Indigenous people. In addition, the report recommends a reorientation for the research community - seeing the Indigenous community as partners rather than subjects in their research.
• Monash Indigenous Studies Centre - research includes anthropology, social sciences, language and indigenous rights and history.
• Information Technologies and Indigenous Communities - published in 2013, after a conference held in July 2010 focusing on the opportunities presented by new digital technologies for recording and sharing community resources.
• Archives and Indigenous Human Rights - Interdisciplinary Workshop - presentations and sound files from this workshop held in October 2010. Speakers addressed the issues of archival records and human, intellectual and cultural property rights.
• ATSIDA: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Data Archive - a national, trusted repository for research data relating to Indigenous communities.

• National Library, Canberra
  Mura Gadi - National Library Manuscripts Collection - this listing has been archived, and while searchable is no longer added to. To search for material added after June 2012, use Trove - national catalogue of manuscripts - diaries, letters and archives
• eResources - Aboriginal Australia and subject guides
• State Library of New South Wales
  Indigenous Engagement Branch
  Stories - Indigenous Australians
• State Library of Queensland
  Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and stories- the exhibition Transforming Tindale - "a thought-provoking journey into the Tindale Genealogical Collection, what it means to Aboriginal people and its place in Queensland’s history."
• State Library of South Australia
  Indigenous collections and services
  Library guides on Aboriginal Australia
• State Library of Tasmania 
  Companion to Tasmanian history
• State Library of Western Australia
  Aboriginal collections
• Northern Territory Library
  Territory stories - searchable, or choose Aboriginal peoples (Australian) from list of subject headings

• Koorie Records Unit - Public Record Office Victoria - A comprehensive listing of records with guides to using the records, the Koori Records Unit Newsletter and other publications including Finding Your Story: A Resource Manual to the Records of the Stolen Generations in Victoria.
• Walata tyamateetj: a guide to Government archival records about Aboriginal people in Victoria.This new publication covers the collections of the Public Record Office Victoria and National Archives.
• Records about First Australians - National Archives - This guide to records held by National Archives, includes Victorian records as Victoria handed over responsibility for Aboriginal Affairs (and related documents) in 1975. There are also guides on topics such as the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Bringing them home name index, Charles Perkins and material for the Northern Territory.
• Foley Collection: Victoria University - a selection of digital works from the archive of Aboriginal activist/academic Gary Foley.
• The Koori History Website - curated by Gary Foley, a wide range of archived material, special features and image/audio/film files.

In 2017, NSLA libraries in Australia will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the historic 1967 Referendum with an online exhibition, Right Wrongs. 

A 90.77% yes vote removed the reference to special laws for Aboriginal people in s.51 (xxvi) - "The people of any race, other than the aboriginal people in any State, for whom it is necessary to make special laws"; and deleted s.127: "In reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives should not be counted."
The referendum proposed to change the constitution to enable Aboriginal people to be counted in the census, and that they be subject to Commonwealth laws, rather than the previous legislative framework of individual states.

The 1967 referendum - Fact Sheet 150 - National Archives

Badge supporting Indigenous rights.
Badge, date of creation unknown.
From the State Library of Victoria's Riley and Ephemera Collection.

• Koorie Heritage Trust - collections, programs and services dedicated to Koorie art and culture.
• The  ATSILIRN protocols- developed by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Library and Information Resources Network they set out social, language and cultural protocols when dealing with Indigenous communities.
• Culturally safe libraries - developed by the body representing the national, state and territory libraries of Australia and the National Library of New Zealand.
• IFLA Statement on Indigenous Traditional Knowledge - developed by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions.

Indigenous notions of ownership and libraries, archives and museums.

Bibliographies - resources for researching Aboriginal Australians. Covering a range of subject areas, the Library doesn't hold all items referred to. Library staff can help you to locate them in other libraries or archives.

AIATSIS Collection - includes MURA - books, manuscript and image collections and family history resources; AUSTLANG - for languages resources and Art and Object - including drawings, paintings, textiles and woodcarvings.