Archival Returns: Central Australia and Beyond

Description

Place-based cultural knowledge - of ceremonies, songs, stories, language, kinship and ecology - binds Australian Indigenous societies together. Over the last 100 years or so, records of this knowledge in many different formats - audiocassettes, photographs, films, written texts, maps, and digital recordings - have been accumulating at an ever-increasing rate. Yet this extensive documentary heritage is dispersed. In many cases, the Indigenous people who participated in the creation of the records, or their descendants, have little idea of where to find the records or how to access them. Some records are held precariously in ad hoc collections, and their caretakers may be perplexed as to how to ensure that they are looked after. Archival Returns: Central Australia and Beyond explores the strategies and practices by which cultural heritage materials can be returned to their communities of origin, and the issues this process raises for communities, as well as for museums, galleries, and other cultural institutions.

Linda Barwick is a musicologist and professor at the University of Sydney's Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Jennifer Green is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Melbourne. She has worked for over four decades with Indigenous people in Central Australia documenting languages, cultural history, art, social organisation and connections to country. Petronella Vaarzon-Morel is an anthropologist with long-term experience working with Warlpiri and other Indigenous peoples in Central Australia. She is an honorary research associate at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the University of Sydney.

"The book is a successful attempt to move beyond arguments for the rights of indigenous communities into the more logistical arenas of how these rights, principles and cultural practices can be upheld in record-keeping and archival contexts." -- Kirsty Fife * Archives and Records * 'Archival Returns holds great potential for inspiring First Nations communities, researchers and cultural institution practitioners in their own community-centred initiatives and research ... This volume helpfully offers, through case studies, a number of tools that older and younger generations in Aboriginal communities can employ to protect, manage and maintain place-based cultural learning in archival materials.' -- Mariko Smith * Aboriginal History Journal * 'I realized that what I had gained from this book was so much more than specialist or technical knowledge. The authors explore many different layers of meaning, providing the opportunity to reflect on why the process of returning knowledge back to Country and the decolonization of archives, libraries, and museums are vital steps for sovereignty and self-determination of Aboriginal peoples and communities ... recommended reading for archivists, anthropologists, curators, and any other professionals working to promote sovereignty and self-determination of Aboriginal peoples within the information sector.' -- Monica Galassi * Information & Culture *