Queensland Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Family History Guide

Births, Deaths and Marriage (BDM) records you can form a chain linking one generation of your family to the next and one branch of your family to another. You can use the BDM information you find to follow these links back through your family tree.

Certificates can provide a wealth of information beyond dates and places of birth, death and marriage. They often include addresses, names of witnesses who might be family members or friends, maiden names or former married names of women, ages, occupations and religions. However, the information found on certificates varies. Earlier records are likely to have less information. Some states collected more information than others.

The following advice has been sourced from the AIATSIS website.

• Information is only as reliable as the source. The informant on a death certificate may, for example, have hardly known the deceased person.
• Be mindful of spelling variations as people often recorded information as it sounded and in earlier times many people could not read and write.
• Try to double-check information on certificates with other records such as cemetery records, headstone inscriptions or other records.
• A marriage certificate may give details of the parents of each spouse, and is the most reliable certificate for information as both parties were present at the event and could give their own information.
• Birth, death and marriage certificates will sometimes include statements as to Aboriginality, especially in earlier records.
• Births, deaths and marriages of Aboriginal people were often not registered. This was sometimes related to legal restrictions such as the Queensland Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of Sale of Opium Acts 1901, which prohibited the marriage of Aboriginal women to non-Aboriginal men without the express permission of the government. However it also occurred for many other reasons such as the remoteness of a birth place.
• Births of Indigenous children were often not registered in order to protect them from removal policies. Large numbers of Indigenous people worked on pastoral stations where events were recorded in station papers, diaries and resources rather than in the standard birth death and marriage registrations. Sadly many of these records have not survived because most stations were privately owned and preservation of documents relied on the individual owners.
• Sometimes you will see the word ‘native’ on a birth, death or marriage certificate. Be aware that this notation, especially on early records, does not refer to Aboriginality but refers to a person born in Australia rather than immigrating from England or elsewhere.

Most Australian States and Territories publish indexes to 'historic' births, deaths and marriages registered in their respective jurisdictions. Use these indexes to locate official registrations of life events and obtain registration numbers.  Other information such as date and place of the event, parents’ names and age at time of death may also be supplied in these indexes.  The date range of publication depends on legislation enacted in each State or Territory, so the coverage of indexes varies between each jurisdiction.

Click a state or territory below for more information: