Indigenous people across Australia have many different histories depending on their particular colonial experiences. Until recently an Indigenous voice was excluded from colonial histories. Australian history was written from the viewpoint of the colonisers.

Since the 1970s Aboriginal histories have been published that, to use the words of one famous historian, Henry Reynolds, tell the story from The Other Side of the Frontier (1981).

These 'hidden histories' provide an Indigenous perspective on colonial history and they are testimony to the cultural survival of Aboriginal people.

Contemporary developments

Morphy argues that Aboriginal art in northern Australia is concerned with "rights to designs" and the continuity of traditional forms. Aborigines living in the cities and towns of 'settled' Australia are by contrast, more concerned with personal histories and these artists produce work based on "individually constructed iconographies" (Morphy, p. 380). In this respect art from more 'urbanised' Aborigines fits the global category of contemporary art but there are shared themes and patterns of connection.

Hidden histories bring an Aboriginal perspective to address key events of colonial history, such as:

• Captain Cook;
• massacres;
• local resistance;
• the stolen generations of children removed from their families;
• the struggle for land rights and sovereignty.

These issues are crucial to cultural revival and the politics of Aboriginal identity in a settler society. We may not like the stories told by Aboriginal histories but acknowledging what happened in the past challenges the way we think of ourselves as Australians and is the way forward to the future.

Hoorn: Positioning the postcolonial subject...

Gordon Bennett is one of Australia's leading Aboriginal artists. Using imagery from western art history his work interrogates colonial histories and representations of Aboriginality. In this reading, art historian Jeannette Hoorn describes Bennett's work as postcolonial.

Post colonialism does not mean that colonialism has come to an end. Australia continues to be shaped by its colonial past. Postcolonialism creates a space for interrogating that past.

Gellatly: Is there an Aboriginal photography?

Curator Kelly Gellatly describes the way Indigenous photographers were able to regain control over representations of Aboriginality. Her essay discusses various photographic forms:

• as documentary photography: Mervyn Bishop, Ricky Maynard, Kevin Gilbert, Alana Harris, Ellen José;
• as a critique of "race, sexuality and gender": Tracey Moffatt, Fiona Foley, Rea, Destiny Deacon and Brook Andrew; and,
• as an interrogation of Aboriginal history: Michael Riley, Brenda Croft and Leah King Smith.

Hidden histories and art

Examine the work of one contemporary Indigenous artist whose work addresses hidden histories.

How has the artist used subject matter, style, text and stories to address hidden histories?