Engaging Objects: Indigenous communities and museum collections

The British Museum’s collection is one of the most important holdings of Australian Indigenous material in the world. It has been assembled over two hundred and forty years, beginning with material collected at Botany Bay in 1770, during James Cook’s first Pacific voyage. In addition to rare and precious objects, it includes photographs and artworks as well as correspondence detailing interactions between collectors and Australian Indigenous people throughout Australia and over a long period of time.  The collection's contribution to understandings of the diversity and history of Indigenous material culture, histories of Australian Aboriginal people and their relationships with early settlers, as well as the significance to contemporary Indigenous communities, is largely unrealised.