Welcome to A Chronology of Aboriginal and Islander History.

Site information

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About the chronology

What is a Chronology?
The Collins Dictionary defines a chronology as 'the arrangement of dates and events in order of occurrence'.

Audience
This site is, of course, for anyone who is interested, but it was designed for primary and secondary age students in educational settings.

Purpose
To provide an ever-growing and ultimately comprehensive chronology of Aboriginal and Islander history enabling visitors, particularly students, to explore and unpack the 'hidden history' of the First Australians.

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Aims
To provide a resource that is:

• up-to-date

• comprehensive

• accessible

• search-able, enabling content to be gathered and reconstructed by users

• link-able to other resources

• centrally distributed

• contributed to by users.

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Content
The foundation of this chronology is a database of over a 1000 events containing dates, keywords and event descriptions. These events have been sourced from a range of credible resources, a list of which can be found on our Acknowledgments page. A database gives great flexibility in how events are displayed. We have developed a number of 'lenses', through which the events may be viewed:

• Date

• Year

• Topic

• Keyword search.

You can find out more about these lenses in the section titled Using the Chronology.

If you have an idea for a new 'lens' or topic, please let us know.

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Advantages and limitations
Chronologies may make history appear more accessible and provide a 'reader digest' version of it. However, like a highly abridged novel, chronologies cannot easily convey the nuance, detail and importantly, the context and colour of events. Nor can they easily illustrate the connection between events or the linkage between cause and effect. Beyond this of course is the knowledge that history is much more than a series of events. Historical events are like the gauges of a car - they indicate what the car is doing but from them it is very difficult to picture the interplay and complexity of the machinery they represent.

In due course we hope to overcome some of these limitations with extensive hyperlinking to other Internet resources and thereby provide the supporting detail for those wishing to explore further.

Errors and bias
While every reasonable effort has been made for them not to be present, errors and inaccuracies, both in terms of content and of a technical nature, may be present. If you come across any, please let us know.

It should be understood that some of the events described here, some massacres are an example, are disputed. If researching, it is important to use a variety of genres from a number of authors who take a range of positions.

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Working with the Chronology

Printing
There should be no difficulties printing from this site. The following should be noted:

• Despite the coloured backgrounds text will be printed black on white.

• If your printer controls allow, be sure set the print out to 'black only', as some pages (such as this one) contain coloured text that will cause printers to use the colour cartridge/s to print the whole page.

• As this site uses frames, be sure to click in the area you want before selecting to print.

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Copying to a word processor or text editor
The text of the chronology may be copied if you wish to use it in your own work. Microsoft Word and Explorer are an excellent combination for this task, designed as they have been, with this functionality in mind.

For those unfamiliar with how to copy text from a browser to a word processor:

1. With your browser working open a word processor (like MS Word) or text editor (like Notepad).

2. Click where you wish to copy from and with the mouse button held down, move the cursor to the end of the text you wish to copy. The text will be highlighted.

3. Hold down the 'Ctrl' key (Control) while pressing the 'C' key (Copy). This will copy the selected text to the computer's clipboard (in memory).

4. Hold down the 'Alt' key and tap the 'Tab' key. This allows you to switch between applications if necessary.

5. Click in the text entry area of your word processor or text editor.

6. To paste the text from your clipboard into the word processor hold down the 'Ctrl' key and tap 'V' (the shortcut key to paste). Alternatively select 'Paste' from the Edit menu.

If you are using a recent copy of Word, all formatting including any hyperlinks will be reproduced. If you are using Notepad, the paragraphing with be retained but all other formatting will be lost.

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What is planned

Keeping the Chronology current
While there is much history that needs to be added, we also intend to add to the Chronology from the daily news.

Linking to NATSIEW
We intend to hyperlink the text of the Chronology to the NATSIEW keywords database, thus providing enormous opportunities to explore the events, individuals, groups and organisations found in the Chronology in more depth.

New topics
The current topics in the topic lens are likely to change reasonably often as material comes to light suggesting a new theme to be followed.

New lenses
We shall constantly examine new and revealing ways to group the events. As some may prefer a graphical method of interacting with the Chronology, we shall be exploring lens options that use charts, pictures and maps.

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Site information

This site is sister to the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Website (NATSIEW) and as such is owned by the National Coordinators for Indigenous Education. Operational management for this site and NATSIEW passes biannually between the Aboriginal Education groups of all states and territories.

This site has been optimised for Explorer 5 and was last updated on October 15, 2004.

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© National Coordinators for Indigenous Education, 2001-2004