The National Museum of Australia works with Indigenous Australians to collect, preserve and exhibit Indigenous material culture. The Museum takes a leadership role in using this material to interpret Indigenous Australian histories and engages with local and international visitors through a dynamic program of permanent and temporary exhibitions, publications, forums, workshops, online exhibitions, and collection visits.
The Museum also works closely with Indigenous communities to return human remains and secret/sacred objects to their ancestral custodians. In these webpages you can find out more about past and ongoing Museum projects.
The Gallery of First Australians is the largest in the National Museum. It houses some 10,000 objects, including 2000 objects displayed in the Open Collections area.
The upper level of the gallery features a rich array of exhibitions about specific communities. The lower level of the gallery focuses on aspects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history since 1788.
Many of the stories within the Gallery of First Australians are told from the point of view of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. They take the visitor on a journey and speak of diversity and connectedness, antiquity and continuity of identity, and the central nature of spirituality in Australian Indigenous people's lives.
The stories within the gallery were developed through extensive community consultation, including with the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, custodians of the Canberra region.
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