Map of places mentioned in the text: Guy Holt
The British Empire and its ‘races’ in 1937: John A Hammerton, For King and Empire: Pictorial Souvenir of the Coronation (Amalgamated Press, 1937), pp. 34–5.
Bruce Yunkaporta spearing a stingray, Wooentoent, Kirke River, Cape York Peninsula, 1976: photo by Peter Sutton.
Three gypsum mourning caps: Harry Allen, ‘Aborigines of the western plains of New South Wales’, in Christine Haigh & Wendy Goldstein (eds), The Aborigines of New South Wales (NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service, 1980), p. 35; photo by Sharon Sullivan.
Brewarrina fish traps: Allen, p. 39; photo by Thomas Dick.
Duck net, Murrumbidgee River, 1880s: Augustus Baker Peirce, Knocking About: Being some Adventures of Augustus Baker Peirce in Australia (Yale University Press, 1924), sketch by Augustus Baker Peirce, p. 156.
Remnant stakes used to divert fish to nets, Lake Eyre region: George Horne & George Aiston, Savage Life in Central Australia (Macmillan, 1924), Figure 48.
Diversion fence with wicker fish trap, Arnhem Land, 1952: Roslyn Poignant & Axel Poignant, Encounter at Nagalarramba (National Library of Australia, 1996), p. 105; photo by Axel Poignant.
Noel Peemuggina and his student Peter Sutton, Ti Tree Outstation, Cape York Peninsula, 1977: photo by David Martin.
Long yam carving for house-opening ceremony, near Aurukun, 1976. Francis Yunkaporta (holding yam), Peter Peemuggina and James Kalkeeyorta: photo by Peter Sutton.
Totemic centres, Wik region: Ursula H McConnel, Myths of the Muŋkan (Melbourne University Press, 1957), p. xviii.
Barramundi maintenance site Moenchenh-nhiin, Wik region, 1977: photo by Peter Sutton.
Magpie goose egg maintenance site, Yaad, Wik region, 1976: photo by Peter Sutton.
Johnny Lak Lak Ampeybegan cuts a blaze in a tree at a goose egg maintenance site, Wik region, 1976: photo by Peter Sutton.
Gypsum emu eggs sung to start emus nesting, Simpson Desert, South Australia: Tom McCourt, Aboriginal Artefacts (Rigby, 1975), p. 125.
‘Increase ceremony’ for yarrinyarri (nutgrass), north-west Australia: Ralph Piddington, ‘Totemic system of the Karadjeri tribe’, Oceania 4, 1932, pp. 376–93, Plate II.
Wik people firing the country, middle Kirke River, Cape York Peninsula, 1977: photo by Peter Sutton.
Field worker Ursula McConnel writing for the Sydney Morning Herald: Ursula H McConnel, ‘Science—but not from an armchair: Adventures in anthropology’, Sydney Morning Herald Women’s Supplement, 8 March 1934, p. 17.
Catholic missionaries: Sisters of the Order of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart of Darwin: Francis Xavier Gsell, ‘“The Bishop with 150 Wives”: Fifty Years as a Missionary (Angus & Robertson, 1955), facing p. 48.
Tindale’s ‘Grassland areas exploited by aborigines [sic] as important sources of grain food with some of the names of tribes’: Norman B Tindale, Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names (University of California Press, 1974), p. 99.
Pascoe’s ‘Aboriginal grain belt’: Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? (Magabala Books, 2014), p. 29.
Davidson and McCarthy’s seed-grinding area: DS Davidson & FD McCarthy, ‘The distribution of stone implements in Western Australia’, Anthropos 52, 1957, p. 440.
The distribution of large millstones (Smith): Mike Smith, The Archaeology of Australia’s Deserts (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 190, Figure 6.9c.
Radcliffe-Brown’s ‘Estimated number and distribution of Aboriginals in 1788’: Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia: Second Edition, General Editors Bill Arthur & Frances Morphy, © Macquarie Dictionary Publishers, Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd 2019, Map 6.3 compiled by the Archaeological Computing Laboratory (ACL), University of Sydney.
The seven case studies of Ian Keen: Ian Keen, Aboriginal Economy and Society: Australia at the Threshold of Colonisation (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Distribution of iga (native orange) in the Flinders Ranges region: Bob Ellis, ‘Iga: The tree that walked’, South Australian Geographical Journal 112, 2013, p. 8.
Rex Walmbeng with shell midden at Punth-Kuunteng, near Love River, Cape York Peninsula, 1985: photo by Peter Sutton.
Cecil Walmbeng at Waathem, Wik country, Cape York Peninsula, 1985: photo by Peter Sutton.
Men of south-west Western Australia, 1870s–1880s period: Daisy M Bates, Aboriginal Perth and Bibbulmun Biographies and Legends (Hesperian Press, 1992), p. 27.
Mitchell’s ‘Female and child of Australia Felix’: Thomas L Mitchell, Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia; with Descriptions of the Recently Explored Region of Australia Felix, and of the Present Colony of New South Wales (T & W Boone, 1839), vol. 2, Plate 39.
Tiwi women and girls wearing traditional paperbark aprons, Bathurst Island, 1913: Nicolas Peterson, ‘The use of Spencer’s photographic imagery’, in P Batty, L Allen & J Morton (eds), The Photographs of Baldwin Spencer (Melbourne University Press at The Miegunyah Press, 2005), p. 174.
Man with two wives and children, Tomkinson Ranges, 1903: Herbert Basedow (comp. & ed. David M Welch), Notes on Some Native Tribes of Central Australia (David M Welch, 2008), p. 42; photo by Herbert Basedow, from Mitchell Library PiccAcc 5669, Box 5, p. 13, Sp8-1.
Wik girl on plains south of Aurukun, western Cape York Peninsula, 1927: photo by Ursula McConnel, South Australian Museum Archives AA191/22/1/9/2.
Wik women performing mourning dance, western Cape York Peninsula, 1927: photo by Ursula McConnel, South Australian Museum Archives AA191/22/4/28L.
Wik men in ceremony, western Cape York Peninsula, 1927: photo by Ursula McConnel, South Australian Museum Archives AA191/22/4/21D.
Aboriginal watercraft distribution at conquest: Australian National Maritime Museum.
Woodcut of shelters at Careening Bay, Kimberley, in 1820: Phillip Parker King, Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia Performed between the Years 1818 and 1822, vol. 1 (John Murray, 1827), p. 431.
Dry-season shelter, western Cape York Peninsula: photo by Ursula McConnel, South Australian Museum Archives, AA191/24/49.
Firewood collector, Wik region, Cape York Peninsula, 1927: photo by Ursula McConnel, South Australian Museum Archives AA191/22/1/24/1.
Punga-style hut, Lake Eyre region: photo by George Aiston, image supplied by South Australian Museum AA3-2-3-8.
Cape York Peninsula dwelling types, illustrated by Donald Thomson: Donald F Thomson, ‘The fishermen and dugong hunters of Princess Charlotte Bay’, Walkabout 22(11), 1956, p. 93.
Front cover of Sanitarium cereal company booklet, 1950: Frederick D McCarthy, Aboriginal Tribes and Customs (Sanitarium Health Food Co., 1950).
Bill Onus selecting boomerang wood from St Kilda Road trees, Melbourne: from ‘Boomerangs are booming’, Australasian Post, 16 July 1964, pp. 16–17.
Sharp’s sketch of wet-season camp at Man Molur, 1933–34: R Lauriston Sharp, The Social Anthropology of a Totemic System in North Queensland, Australia, PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1937, p. 319.
Sharp’s sketch of wet-season camp at Olwinan, 1933–34: Sharp, p. 321.
The Western Desert region: Illustration from Amee Dorothy Glass, Cohesion in Ngaanyatjarra Discourse (Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1997), p. 1.
Distribution of game nets at conquest: Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia: Second Edition, General Editors Bill Arthur & Frances Morphy, © Macquarie Dictionary Publishers, Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd 2019, Map 5.13 compiled by the Archaeological Computing Laboratory, University of Sydney.
Grooved (Bogan style) picks: photo by Malcolm Davidson.
Long-bladed knife and paperbark sheath: photo by Greg Carver.
Adze flake set in resin and hafted to wooden handle: photo by Greg Carver.
Midden left by seabirds breaking open shells for food: photo by Keryn Walshe.
Map of Lake Condah region, western Victoria: Guy Holt
Detail of part of Lake Condah fish and eel trap: original map by Alexander Ingram, 1883, South Australian Museum Archives AA298/18/1_p95_Ingram.
Rocks held in root mass of fallen tree: photo by Keryn Walshe.
Mature ‘shelter type’ tree, Canberra: photo by Keryn Walshe.
Sutton’s mentor Isobel Wolmby, Aurukun Mission, Cape York Peninsula, holding Thomas Sutton, 1976: photo by Anne Sutton.
Harry Gertz, teacher of Gugu-Badhun language, at Yangkarrdji, Valley of Lagoons Station, Queensland, 1970: photo by Peter Sutton.
Mary Walmbeng and Dorothy Pootchemunka performing moulting ducks maintenance rite, upper Knox River, Cape York Peninsula, 1986: photo by David Martin.
Country being fired by Reggie and Cassidy Uluru, Lake Amadeus, 1999: photo by Peter Sutton.
Cloaks and footwear: Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia: Second Edition, General Editors Bill Arthur & Frances Morphy, © Macquarie Dictionary Publishers, Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd 2019, Map 5.33 compiled by the Archaeological Computing Laboratory (ACL), University of Sydney.
Watercraft in use at the time of European arrival: Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia: Second Edition, General Editors Bill Arthur & Frances Morphy, © Macquarie Dictionary Publishers, Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd 2019, Map 5.19 compiled by the Archaeological Computing Laboratory, University of Sydney.
Reconstruction of traditional dwelling, Lake Condah, 2020: photo by Peter Sutton.
Tree interior alight without external burn, 2020: photographer’s name withheld.