IT WILL PROBABLY be considered controversial of me to contend that within this nation’s Aboriginal history, home has been wielded by successive Australian governments as a weapon of cultural destruction. I am an Aboriginal historian, and as I sat down to write about the idea of ‘home’ from the perspective of Aboriginal people in history, I felt anger rising in me as I bitterly muttered, ‘What bloody home?’

This response comes from the hindsight I’ve gained over years of intense research into the lives of my ancestors and other Aboriginal people in Australian history. Time and time again, the government has weaponised home as a means of maintaining power over Aboriginal people. In fact, I would argue that there was malicious intent underlying these government policies and dealings. Along with other weapons in their arsenal, such as dispossession, land theft, displacement, segregation, stolen children and assimilation, governments used home as an inconspicuous yet pervasive weapon in their attempts to annihilate Aboriginal culture.