This Doctoral project deals with the treatment of Aboriginal people in Queensland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century with a particular emphasis on the impact of The Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, 1897 within Badtjala ‘country’. Drawing evidence from Aboriginal knowledge and European archives the research brings a Badtjala perspective to this first experiment to ‘solve the problem’ of opium addicted Australian Aborigines that took place on Fraser Island in the period from 1897 to 1904. An exhibition, Horror Has A Face, supported by an exegesis, Biting the Clouds, seeks to address this historiography and its inherent silences, errors and injustices using an Indigenist research framework in which art can play a significant role.