Customary trading and Contemporary Indigenous Markets

• Bartering - swapping one item for another (through trade routes that linked Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities)
• Goods, stories and ideas were taken by trades to other communities and exchanged (+ rituals, chants and ceremonies).
• Production depended on location - e.g local coastal groups produced fish and shells.
• Items to trade:

  • stones and shells - to make buttons, ornaments and jewellery
  • ochres (paint & body decoration)
  • tools
  • ceremonial items
  • food - e.g fish and crab
  • Snake skins
  • mats
  • spears
  • wood carvings
• Many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders people have found a livelihood through the commercialisation of arts and crafts and other cultural practices - additionally cultural tourism, land management, finance and mining.