The Aiatsis Map of Indigenous Australia

Book excerpt: The highly popular AIATSIS map of Indigenous Australia is now available in a compact, portable A3 size. Available flat or folded (packaged in a handy cellophane bag ) it s the perfect take-home product for tourists and anyone interested in the diversity of our first nations peoples. The handy desk size also makes it an ideal resource for individual student use. For tens of thousands of years, the First Australians have occupied this continent as many different nations with diverse cultural relationships linking them to their own particular lands. The ancestral creative beings left languages on country, along with the first peoples and their cultures. More than 200 distinct languages, and countless dialects of them, were in use when European colonization began. While people in some communities continue to speak their own languages, many others are seeking to record and revive threatened ones. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples retain their connection to their traditional lands regardless of where they live. Using published resources available from 1988-1994, the map represents the remarkable diversity of language or nation groups of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia. The map was produced before native title legislation and is not suitable for use in native title or other land claims."