Gemmia Burden
Faculty Post-Thesis Fellow, Honorary Research Fellow in History, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland.
The violent collectors who gathered Indigenous artifacts for the Queensland Museum
Europeans collected a huge number of Aboriginal artifacts during the colonization of Australia. Many institutions that hold these items are repatriating them to Aboriginal people. While repatriation is important, what often goes unrecognized is the crucial part that collectors played in the violent dispossession of First Nations people.