[Extract] Since British colonisation began at the end of the 18th century, the history of Australia has been a struggle between Indigenous peoples and the colonisers over place. This is often represented as a struggle over land - its control and use. Yet for Indigenous people, land was never simply an economic commodity to be exploited. It was 'place' in a deeper sense of the word, a fundamental part of Indigenous cosmology and a necessary foundation to a person's or group's ontology or being in the world. Place, then, can be conceptualised as both a physical and metaphysical domain. Indeed both domains are intertwined, perhaps inseparable
