The term says it all: human zoos.

Strange as it may seem, human beings — largely Indigenous people from across the globe — were recruited to perform in ethnographic displays, also called human zoos, from the mid-19th century to the 1930s, mostly in Europe and the United States.

It's estimated that 60,000 people were trafficked in this global trade — including three documented Aboriginal groups: three Badtjala people from K'gari in south-eastern Queensland in 1882, and eight Bwgcolman or Manbarra-speaking people from Palm and Hinchinbrook Islands in north Queensland in 1883, who were followed by nine of their compatriots in 1894.

There was an appetite to see Indigenous people in their "natural state" and, as popular demand surged, the staging of human zoos grew into more exaggerated displays.

Some featured reconstructions of housing, enclosures and other encampments with domesticated animals tended by familial groups of Indigenous people in "traditional" clothing.

At the peak of these degrading spectacles, entire "villages" were constructed in some of Europe's biggest zoological gardens — including the Tierpark in Hamburg owned by exotic animal trader Carl Hagenbeck, as well as zoos in Dresden, Berlin, and Basel in Switzerland.

The phenomenon is often attributed to Hagenbeck, who, according to the records kept by Dresden Zoo, was the impresario behind the first documented exhibition of Aboriginal people in Germany in 1882 — that of the three people from K'gari.

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