ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how hair from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples came to be seen as a racial marker by non-Indigenous people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It shows how the hair of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples was described and understood by non-Indigenous explorers and colonial powers, and how samples of hair were collected and used by anthropologists and scientists studying race and human origins. It also considers the impacts of these practices, and how they both informed and were informed by significant scientific and political views of this period. Although largely drawing upon historical documents and collections, this chapter shows how the effects of these analyses and understandings continue to reverberate today.
