Awabakal and Nikkin: Reconnecting Histories of First Peoples, Coal and Colonists

The location of early coalminingcoalcoal mining in the British Australian colony of New South WalesNew South Wales has an Indigenous history of nikkin, the AwabakalAwabakal word for coal. In Awabakal history, nikkin is life-giving and tradeable in ways that serve as a counterpoint to the settler-colonial positioning of coal for mining, trading and burning at larger scales.