Group of Aboriginal Australian men, women and children at Deebing Creek Aborigines Reserve, Queensland, c. 1896-1897. Source: State Library of Queensland.

The First Nations Biography Australia (FNBA) project was formed with the purpose of building on the foundational work of the now completed Indigenous Australian Dictionary of Biography (IADB) project. In 2017, an application to the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Discovery Indigenous scheme by Dr Shino Konishi, Dr Malcolm Allbrook, and Emeritus Professor Tom Griffiths was successful and the IADB project was established. The IADB project’s primary goals were to address the underrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander subjects in the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) and to consider Indigenous biography more generally. Formally ended in December 2024, the IADB project has produced a collection, Reframing Indigenous Lives (Routledge, 2024), and a special stand-alone volume of over one-hundred new Indigenous entries which will be published in 2026. 

The current FNBA project (2024-2029) is a five-year project that aims to contribute 300 new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander biographies to the ADB. Similar to the structure of the IADB project, the FNBA project places the First Nations Biography Working Party (FNBWP), a team of volunteer Indigenous research scholars as the key advisory body. This team is supported by ADB state-based working party volunteers. The FNBA project is contributing to the national call for truth-telling in three main ways. 

Firstly, it is consolidating the work of the IADB project—that is, it continues to add new First Nations biographies, written primarily by First Nations people or in collaboration with First Nations communities/families, to the ADB. Secondly, it is identifying existing ADB entries about Indigenous Australians that need to be revised, both in response to new sources of information and/or sensitivities surrounding Indigenous representation. Thirdly, it is initiating a pilot mapping project to investigate the feasibility of presenting biographical experiences in a multi-layered, interactive map that shows the connections between sites of historical significance to First Nations people, such as missions, reserves, camps, and places of conflict, thereby enabling wide engagement across all age groups and abilities.

By virtue of the generous financial support of the J.T. Reid Charitable Trusts, the FNBA project is able to continue the essential work of increasing the number of published Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander biographies in the ADB. Our articles are written by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors, many of them descendants, and we wholeheartedly invite nominations of likely Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander subjects to be included in the ADB, and recommendations of potential authors for these important entries. Led by Associate Professor Steve Kinnane as Chair, the FNBA's Administrator Dr Shauna Bostock and the FNBA project’s dedicated team are very confident it will achieve the goal of contributing 300 new biographies to the ADB by 2029.