The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) is the primary collecting, publishing and research institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural material, and is home to a significant amount of genealogical and cultural information. 

AIATSIS's family history unit assist Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Stolen Generations survivors and their families by providing family history research assistance and access to information about their families.

You can contact the family history unit on 1800 352 553 or you can submit a family history enquiry by completing the form below.

Mura is the AIATSIS Collection catalogue and is a word from the Ngunnawal language meaning ‘pathway’. Search Mura for manuscripts, books, serials, photographic, and audiovisual materials.

Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Biographical Index (ABI) is an index of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander names selected from generally available publications held at AIATSIS. These publications are books and articles created by, with, or about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

There are more than 45,000 individual names and more than 75,000 records in the ABI.Each name in the index has a summary about the person from words or photographs in the publication and includes the call number and title of the publication from where the information came.

Information may also include places where a person was from or where they lived, family relationships, people group, and occupation.

There may be a lot of information about a name in the ABI, sometimes just a mention, or sometimes there may be no information. Some information could be about a family. The names of non-Indigenous people may also be included. 

Some names may be indexed from items held at AIATSIS that are not generally available and have conditions of access.

AustLang is an AIATSIS dataset and is unique web-based resource on Australian Indigenous languages. It provides a single location where users can obtain information and resources from a range of sources, in and about Australian languages.

AustLang contains the following information about each Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander language:

• Alternative/variant names and spellings
• A comment about the language variety from referenced sources
• Geographical location from referenced sources
• Authority headings for languages and peoples
• Links to MURA the AIATSIS catalogue and OZBIB a curated bibliography (up to 2013).
• Links to Trove, Worldcat, Tindale, OLAC, SIL
• Programs and people involved in language maintenance and revival
• History of the number of speakers
• Documentation scores for known word lists; text collections; grammars; audio-visual resources (up to 2007)
• Classifications from various linguistic surveys 1966−2005.

You can find more information on Austlang via the link below

*All information on this page has been sourced from the AIATSIS website. For more information on the services and resources offered by AIATSIS, visit the AIATSIS website.