The experience of trading artefacts with Europeans helped shape Aboriginal identity as well as defined cultural change in Aboriginal society from the 1860s-1920s in south-eastern Australia.  Aborigines’ perceptions of change and their consciousness of negotiations over trade rose from their own understanding of the value and procedure of the exchange process. Trading was based on supply and demand.  Each party made an evaluation based on their anticipation of the exchange. Within that assessment there was a limit and a threshold when the apparent exchange would no longer be of interest. As part of a new social world, Aborigines defined limits as they sought to influence their place in a European dominated society.

This paper will examine artefact collections in the Australian Museum (AM), including from Port Stephens, Mogun Station near Orange, and Goolagong, as well as from the upper Darling River, NSW with reference to other historical sources, reflecting upon negotiations for land occupancy and changes following the NSW Lands Acts. When the Commissioner for the Western Lands Board was also chairperson, AM Ethnological Committee; Aboriginal people demonstrated their attitude to both appropriation and also knowledge exchange, which recognised their values of kinship, country, use and knowledge of artefacts.