First Australians is a historical documentary series Australian produced over six years and was released in October 2008. The documentary is part of a larger project that consists of more than a hardback book, a program of outreach and a major site with over 200 mini-documentaries.
The series tells the story of contemporary Australia from the perspective of its people first, or the aborigines. The series is essentially a synthesis of well-documented historical information. It relies heavily on archival documents and the interpretations of historians and members of indigenous and European leaders. The story begins in 1788 in Sydney, with the arrival of the First Fleet in 1993 and ends with Koiki Mabo’s legal challenge of the founding of Australia.
The series consists of seven episodes, which explores what took place in the oldest living culture in the world was confronted by the British Empire.
It explores the lives of individuals in particular and uses their stories as a vehicle to explain the larger situation of the time. Explains the violent aspects of European colonization of Australia, as the murders, battles, wars and acts of friendship and good manners among the first European settlers and Aboriginal Australians.
The history of indigenous Australia has until recently been clouded by the “silence of Australia”, which may be ignorance of the true history of Australia seen as a form of non-indigenous to hide the shame of their own history.
In this sense, has been controversial in that many of these stories have not been described in Australian television and before Australia’s indigenous perspective of the European colonization of confrontation for many.
