Somebody’s Land: Welcome To Our Country

An accessible picture book for young children that introduces First Nations history and the term ‘terra nullius’ to a general audience, from Australian of the Year, community leader and anti-racism advocate Adam Goodes and political adviser and former journalist Ellie Laing, with artwork by Barkindji illustrator David Hardy.

For thousands and thousands of years,
Aboriginal people lived in the land we call Australia.

The land was where people
built their homes,
played in the sun,
and sat together to tell stories.

When the white people came,
they called the land
Terra Nullius.
They said it was nobody’s land.
But it was somebody’s land.

Somebody’s Land is an invitation to connect with First Nations culture, to acknowledge the hurt of the past, and to join together as one community with a precious shared history as old as time.

Adam Goodes and Ellie Laing’s powerful words and David Hardy’s pictures, full of life, invite children and their families to imagine themselves into Australia’s past – to feel the richness of our First Nations’ history, to acknowledge that our country was never terra nullius, and to understand what ‘welcome to our country’ really means.