Australian Museum First Nations Collections
October 20, 2025 | In the PressFrom Australian Museum (https://australian.museum/learn/cultures/first-nations-collections/)
The Australian Museum (AM) has one of the world’s most-significant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander collections, with artworks, technologies and cultural material representing First Nations communities from across Australia. A selection of these objects are on display in Garrigarrang (Sea Country). However the majority of the collections are carefully stored in collection storage.
The First Nations Division at the AM works actively to build links with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to ensure the objects held in our collections are always available to Traditional Owners, to activate our collections through programs that provide connections with living cultural practice, and to deepen public understanding of Australia’s First Nations cultures.
We actively repatriate material from our collections to Indigenous cultural centres and keeping places and collaborate directly with communities to return significant cultural objects and ancestral remains to their places of origin. On the First Nations Restricted Collections and Repatriation Program’s page you can find more information on this.
If you have specific enquiries regarding the First Nations’ cultural and/or archaeological collection you can contact us at first.nations@australian.museum.
