About the project
Limitations
The commercial use of the information gained will be prohibited (e.g. commercial ancestry testing) and indemnified from legal use, which means the genetic information gained will not be of suitable legal value in land right issues or ancestry claims.
Support and partner organisations
The project is funded by the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant scheme. It gained financial support from partner organisations: Australian Genome Research Facility (AGRF) and the National Geographic Society. It has additional valuable research support from Bioplatforms SA, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the Harvard Medical School.
Ethics
The project has been approved by the University of Adelaide Human Research Ethics Committee (Application ID: H-2014-252). The project is guided and overseen by an Aboriginal Advisory Board with members from different states (on a rolling basis), as well as the South Australian Museum Aboriginal Advisory Committee. Both advisory groups provide advice, guidance, and monitoring of the project.
Our team
The key researchers who will carry out this project are:
| South Australia | National | International |
|---|---|---|
|
Dr Ray Tobler (Population Geneticist), |
Professor Peter Sutton (Anthropologist, linguist), SA Museum | Dr Wolfgang Haak (Molecular anthropologist), Max Plank Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany |
| Mr Shane Agius (Community Outreach Officer), SA Museum | A/Prof Emma Kowal (Anthropologist, consultant), Deakin University, Melbourne | Dr Miguel Vilar (National Geographic Society), USA |
| Mr Ali Abdullah-Highfold (Aboriginal Family History Officer), SA Museum | Mrs Lesley Williams (Cultural Advisor), Department of Communities, Child Safety and Disability Services, Queensland | Dr Chris Tyler-Smith (Geneticist), Sanger Institute, UK |
| Ms Francesca Zilio (Manager, Information Services), SA Museum | Dr R John Mitchell (Geneticist), Latrobe University, Melbourne | Prof David Reich (Geneticist, Harvard Medical School), USA |
| Dr Keryn Walshe (Anthropologist), SA Museum | ||
| Miss Isabel O’Loughlin (Community liaison officer), SA Museum | ||
| Miss Amy O'Donoghue (Community liaison officer), SA Museum |
Contact
Our FAQs are here to answer any questions you might have about the Aboriginal Heritage Project. If you have any enquiries that are not addressed then please email us.
For general personal DNA testing not related to this research, we recommend you visit the following website, which has quite a bit of information regarding ancestry DNA testing.