This paper seeks to identify and explore the differences of Indigenous approaches to historical practice. Why is history so important to Indigenous Australia? History is of crucial importance across the full spectrum of Indigenous understanding and knowledge. History belongs to all cultures and they have differing means of recording and recalling it. In essence, the paper explores the undercurrents of Australian history and the absence for so long of an Aboriginal place in that history, and the process over the past 40 years in correcting that imbalance. During the 1960s and 1970s the Aboriginal place in Australian history for so long erased, overlooked or ignored was suddenly a topic worthy of wider attention and importance. But despite all that has been published since, we have not realistically even touched the surface of what is buried within both the archives and oral memory. And quite clearly what has been recovered remains largely embedded within a white viewpoint of the past.