Thalia Anthony wrote this paper in the transitional period between completing her PhD thesis in history and recommencing her law degree, both at The Australian National University. She is currently a lecturer in the Faculty of Law, University of Sydney. Thalia is passionate about interdisciplinary Indigenous studies and embraces this volume’s expression of critical Indigenous histories.

Jillian Barnes has a business background in arts marketing and industrial management consulting. She has recently worked on a documentary film in Central Australia with members of the Arrernte community choir at Hermannsburg. This article was written during her doctoral research in History at the University of Sydney. Her thesis, ‘Tourism’s possession of the Centre’: Seeing and performing kinship and belonging at Uluru, 1929-1958’, will be submitted in 2007. She has edited Historia, and tutored in a new History subject at the University of Sydney titled ‘Race relations and Australian frontiers’. She was awarded the Australasian Pioneers Club Prize for her Honours thesis in Australian history in 2000.

Devin Bowles’ paper is based on his work for a Master of Arts in anthropology at The Australian National University, 2003. He is now studying for an Honours degree in psychology at The Australian National University.

Angelique Edmonds completed her PhD at the Centre for Cross Cultural Research, The Australian National University in 2007. She trained as an architect at the University of NSW and Kingston University in London and completed a Master of Philosphy at Cambridge University. Her PhD research focused upon Aboriginal relationships to place and expressions of Aboriginal agency in determining the structure of their living environments. At the time of research and writing of this paper, Angelique was living in the Roper River Region of South East Arnhem Land, contracted by the Northern Territory government to facilitate a community planning project for future housing in Ngukurr.

Dennis Foley is a Fulbright Scholar, a Visiting Fellow at The Australian National University and a lecturer at the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship, University of Swinburne, forging a new field in Indigenous entrepreneurship. He has completed postdoctoral studies at The Australian National University in the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, the National Centre for Indigenous Studies, and the College of Business and Economics. His publications cross several disciplines, from Indigenous literature and history, to business management-entrepreneurship and education. Dennis’s principle areas of research are Indigenous entrepreneurship and Indigenous epistemology. His PhD recently won the 2006 Best Doctoral Thesis Award, Gold Medal, World Business Institute. Although an academic in the western definition, Dennis was born in his matrilineal place and is of salt-water law. His blood connection to this land is with the Gammeray, the Gatlay and the Gaimai. This also includes the sub-groups of the Cannaigal and the Boregal. His father is a descendant of the Capertee/Turon River people of the Wiradjuri, north of Bathurst. Dennis identifies as a descendent of the Gai-mariagal people.

Mark Hannah studied history and archaeology at the University of New England. He completed his PhD at The Australian National University in 2005. His research concentrated on the Queensland settler state’s attempt to regulate Indigenous marriage practices in the policy epoch commonly referred to as the era of ‘protection’ (the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries), when customary marriage practices were largely displaced by a new settler orientated marriage regime. He is presently preparing to undertake further research in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics.

Shino Konishi is a lecturer in Indigenous Australian studies and history at the Koori Centre, University of Sydney. Her research interests concern histories of race, the body, and gender with a particular focus on the eighteenth century exploration of Australia and cross-cultural encounters between Aboriginal peoples and Europeans. Shino identifies with the Yawaru people of Broome, Western Australia.

Kathy Lothian is a PhD student in the School of Historical Studies at Monash University, writing a biography of philosopher Professor Peter Singer. She has interests in indigenous histories, immigration, ethnicity and life writing. At the time of writing the paper in this volume, she had recently completed a Master of Arts thesis on Black Power in Australia.

Ingereth Macfarlane has been the Managing Editor of Aboriginal History journal since 2001. She is currently completing research for a PhD in the Australian Center for Indigenous History, The Australian National University, looking at the long-term history of the interactions of people and places in the western Simpson Desert, northern South Australia.

Jessie Mitchell completed her history doctorate at The Australian National University in 2005, examining life on the first Indigenous missions and protectorate stations in south-eastern Australia, for which she was awarded the Australian Historical Association Serle Prize in 2006. This paper was written during the second year of her thesis. Jessie currently heads ACT Shelter, a low-income housing advocacy body.

Jane Mulcock completed a PhD in anthropology at the University of Western Australia in 2002. Her research focussed on experiences of belonging, spirituality and indigeneity amongst Anglo-Celtic settler-descendants in Australia. These themes have carried through into her recent postdoctoral research at the University of Western Australia on beliefs, values and practices associated with native and introduced plant and animal species. Her current research interests focus on human-animal interactions and management of urban wildlife. She has published a number of journal papers been involved as an editor and co-author of The salinity crisis (2001, UWA Press) and Anthropologists in the field (2005, University of Colombia Press).

Naomi Parry completed her PhD in 2007 in History at the University of New South Wales, called ‘“Such a longing”: black and white children in welfare in New South Wales and Tasmania, 1880-1940’. Her work on Musquito began when, as a Tasmanian with an interest in Indigenous issues, she was asked to write an entry for the Australian Dictionary of Biography (published in the 2006 Supplement), and discovered that there was much more to the story, and the historiography, of this man. Her second Australian Dictionary of Biography ‘missing person’ was Maria Lock, foremother of the contemporary Darug community, who lived a very different colonial Indigenous life.

Jinki Trevillian is an historian and writer who completed her PhD at The Australian National University in 2003. The research for her doctoral thesis, ‘Talking with the Old People: histories of Cape York Peninsula, 1930s-1950s’, took Jinki from the government archives of southern cities to far North Queensland. Her aim was to learn about history as told by the people who lived it. Jinki is committed to historical research and writing that builds bridges of understanding between individuals, institutions and the broader community.