In customary societies Aboriginal people were minimally clothed until contact with Europeans began to alter their habits. One exception was the skin cloaks widely worn by men and women throughout temperate zones of southeastern and western Australia. Cloaks were their main article of dress, important as rugs for warmth, but also for ceremonial use, trade, and as burial shrouds. Indigenous peoples made a variety of cloaks from different types of skin: possums, kangaroos, wallabies, and other fur-b

The Torres Strait is a narrow underwater shelf connecting the northernmost tip of mainland Australia to the Gulf of Papua New Guinea. Torres Strait Islanders are the indigenous people of the region, which forms part of the Australian state of Queensland. The term ailan kastom (island custom) is used to denote those products and practices that are unique to the Torres Strait Islands, including dress.

Although there had been occasional contact between Europeans and Aboriginal people in north Queensland since 1606, by the 1860s the increasing influx of Europeans and Chinese occupying Aboriginal lands made conflict inevitable. Until the 1870s tribal groups living in the rain forest region of Cape York Peninsula, north Queensland, escaped the upheavals of foreign contact and continued to lead the life of successful hunter-gatherers in this rich natural environment. Many items were unique to the r

Dress embodies a complex system of meanings in Aboriginal society. On the one hand, dress is seen to be pivotal to the formation of individual and group identity, articulating relationships between private and public. On the other hand, dress expands our understanding of the way in which Aboriginal people have engaged in cross-cultural relations with a colonial regime. Prior to European contact, the dressed body and its embellishment with artifacts encoded multiple meanings as a marker of individ