'History is written by the winners’ wrote Alex Haley (Roots, 1976). Since the arrival of white settlers in 1788, the history of Australia has largely been told from a white perspective.

First Australians is a landmark series for redressing the balance. The series begins with first contact in 1788 (after a brief pre-history prologue) and concludes in 1993 with Eddie Mabo’s fight for land rights. Episode 5 brings the series right up-to-date with a postscript covering Kevin Rudd’s 2008 apology to the Stolen Generations.

First broadcast on SBS in 2008, First Australians was produced by Rachel Perkins and Darren Dale. In an interview with ASO, coming soon to the site, Rachel says:

I think probably it will be the most important thing that I’ll ever work on … because it really was an opportunity to try and tell the Indigenous story in a comprehensive manner from an Indigenous perspective over a span of 200 years. It had never been done before. We had very big ambitions for that project – nothing less than actually changing the way a new generation of Australians see their country.

Sophia Sambono, a curator of the Indigenous Collections at the National Film and Sound Archive, has written about the series for ASO.

See all Indigenous Film and Television.