Pieces of a thousand stories : repatriation of the history of Aboriginal Sydney

The on-line project A History of Aboriginal Sydney, based at the University of Sydney, takes existing educational and Australian Indigenous digital initiatives in a new direction. By dividing Sydney into six geographical areas, we are creating a knowledge base of post-invasion Aboriginal history, incorporating different forms of tagging, timeline and digital mapping to provide multiple paths to information in text, videos, still images and, in the future, three dimensional reconstructions of former living areas. After eighteen months research we are maintaining a balance between unearthing new and forgotten material, incorporating it into our developing database, and exploring the potential of digital mapping, animation and 3D historical reconstruction for educational and research purposes. With close Indigenous consultation, especially the Aboriginal Educational Consultative Groups, we hope to digitally construct the Aboriginal history of Sydney and return it to the people who have been deprived of so much of their history for so long.