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Session CH3.2: Reconnecting urban and remote communities via new technologies

1. Paul Tapsell. Maori maps: digitally bridging our communities

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Abstract

Maori Maps has evolved as a Maori response to a very real, emerging Maori crisis: Maori cross-generational alienation. Today’s challenge is to find an effective way to meaningfully reconnect our urban-raised ‘potiki generation’ to their home communities and elders. The marae has been the continuous focus of tribal values, spanning 3000 plus years of oceanic voyaging, settlement, innovation and most recently a retreat from colonisation. But even our marae are now under threat. Post World War II urbanisation has not only ruptured customary knowledge transfer – elder to grandchild – but geographically separated them, rendering each invisible to the other: preventing marae rejuvenation and transfer of positive identity to Maori youth. Utilizing digital technology Maori Maps – under the governance of Te Potiki National Trust is seeking to reconnect this core kin-relationship and ensure Aotearoa’s unique marae remain central to New Zealand’s future well-being and national identity.

Bio:

Paul Tapsell read for a doctorate in Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford: Taonga – A Tribal Response to Museums (1998).  He then accepted a post-doctoral fellowship at the Australian National University in Canberra (1999 – 2000) before assisting the University of Auckland in the development of a new Museums and Cultural Heritage Programme (2000). In the same year  he joined the Auckland Museum as Director Maori – Tumuaki Māori  and became an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Auckland.  In 2005 Paul was conferred a Philip D. Reed Fellowship (international field of minority advancement) and in 2009 appointed to University of Otago’s Chair in Maori Studies. 

2. M. Christie, Y. Guyula,  K. Guthadjaka, D Gurruwiwi,  J. Greatorex, H. Verran: Teaching on Country, teaching from Country

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Abstract

A group of researchers associated with Charles Darwin University have for several years now been working on a research program which links digital technology to remote community sustainability (www.cdu.edu.au/inc), the intergenerational transmission of traditional knowledge (www.cdu.edu.au/ik), and the authentic engagement of remote traditional knowledge authorities in university teaching (www.cdu.edu.au/tfc) and research (www.cdu.edu.au/yaci). This work has been conducted in collaboration with Yolŋu (northeast Arnhemland Aboriginal) co-researchers.

These projects have all, in their own ways, connected remote with urban communities, and some have sought to make use of curated cultural heritage. This presentation will give an overview of the successes, challenges, and new perspectives emerging from this work. These will include an account of some Yolŋu theories of knowledge, of Yolŋu intellectual property law (and its interaction with Australian laws), and Yolŋu engagement with and production of the archive.

Author bios

Michael Christie is Professor of Education at Charles Darwin University and National Fellow with the Australian Learning and Teaching Council.

Yingiya Guyula is a Liya-dhalinymirr man. After finishing his schooling Yingiya worked on planes as a mechanic before becoming a pilot. He has more recently become a multimedia enthusiast. He is currently the senior lecturer in the Yolŋu Studies program at Charles Darwin University.

Kathy Guthadjaka, Gäwa Homeland Centre

Djäŋgal Gurruwiwi, Gikal homeland Centre. Dhäŋgal Gurruwiwi is a Gälpu woman who lives at Birritjimi, near Nhulunbuy with her family. She is a trained teacher and has more recently been working as an interpreter/translator, teaching ‘from country’ and working with her family’s didgeridoo business.

John Greatorex is coordinator of Yolŋu Studies at Charles Darwin University.

Helen Verran, University of Melbourne

3. S. Spunner, L. Ormond-Parker: Rover Thomas digital oeuvre: positioning the urban artist

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Abstract

The paper will cover the positioning of the Urban Indigenous artist via an examination of the selection of Rover Thomas and Trevor Nickolls to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale in 1990 under the rubric of, Not dots or bark / urban urbanity. At the time the art world was still uncertain how it rated urban art by Indigenous artists and was not even sure how to categorise Rover Thomas as he came from a town in the East Kimberley and painted roads and bridges on canvas in ground up ochre.

During the decade since his death Rover Thomas has become the fastest appreciating Aboriginal artist in the secondary or auction market and achieved record prices. On the Australian art market he is the third most appreciating artist over the decade after McCubbin and Gascoigne, and of ahead of Preston, Drysdale and Streeton all of whose valuations are buttressed by Catalogue Raisonnes. There is no Catalogue Raisonne for Thomas, and it is believed that half the works circulating in the market attributed to him are problematic.

There is therefore an urgent need to undertake the preliminary work for a Catalogue Raisonne, compiling a data base of securely provenanced works in public collections against which problematic works can be checked by analysing date of production, subject matter and stylistic markers. Ultimately intended for publication online, this will be the first digital oeuvre of an Aboriginal artist and important in the history of art in Australia.

The paper outlines the development of a digital oeuvre, of an Aboriginal artist, Rover Thomas (1928-1998). Suzanne Spunners area of research is to secure the oeuvre of Rover Thomas, Lyndon- Ormond Parker is researching digitising of Indigenous records and they are collaborating to create a digital database of the Rover Thomas oeuvre.

Author bios

Suzanne Spunner is a Phd student at the University of Melbourne in the Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation within the Department of Historical Studies. She is researching the work of Kimberley artist, Rover Thomas to secure his oeuvre and produce a digital data base of his work.
She is a playwright – Not Still Lives , Running Up A Dress, The Ingkata’s Wife, Dragged Screamng to Paradise  and writer on the performing and visual arts for Meanjin, Art Monthly, Real Time,  Artlink, Eyeline . She has  had a long engagement with Aboriginal art including a decade living in the Northern Territory, where she was on the board of the NT Centre for Contemporary art , 24HR ART and since leaving Darwin she has returned every year during the NATSIAA to assist at RAFT artspace.

Lyndon Ormond-Parker, PhD candidate with the Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation and the Centre for Health and Society at the University of Melbourne: Lyndon has worked nationally and internationally on Indigenous cultural heritage and human rights issues for Aboriginal communities and organisations. He has undertaken research, published and lectured on issues in relation to curation, storage and return of indigenous human remains and cultural materials. His current academic interest is in the application of multimedia as a tool for preservation of social and cultural histories.

4. A. Corn & J. Gumbula: The role of local digital archives within the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia

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Abstract

In 2002, the Garma Symposium on Indigenous Performance brought Indigenous performers from across northern Australia together with researchers and curators based in universities and major institutions to explore future directions in the research and archiving of Australian Indigenous music and dance. A statement emanating from this symposium called for the establishment of a national project to record and document the endangered and important traditions of Indigenous performance in Australia and for a network of digital archives that would make this material in local Indigenous communities.
Now in 2009 following numerous consultative meetings and pilot projects, the National Recording Project has been responding to this call for several years. Working in collaboration with the Local Knowledge Centre program of the Northern Territory Library, as well as with a number of individual research projects dedicated to the recording and documentation of endangered traditions, the National Recording Project has helped to make available both newly recorded and archival material in a number of communities across the Top End.

This paper will evaluate the various models that have evolved in communities such as Wadeye, Belyuen and Kabulwanamyo as well as plans for further archives. It will outline plans to train local indigenous people to record, document and archive their own traditions, and on the role of national and territory institutions in providing safe backup for the more vulnerable community-based archives.

Author bios:

Dr Aaron Corn is a Research Fellow in Ethnomusicology with the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) at the University of Sydney, and serves as Deputy Director of the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia. He is a long-term collaborator with Indigenous Australian communities in Arnhem Land on research into the application of their performance and intellectual traditions to new intercultural contexts, and his latest book, Reflections and Voices, explores the cultural and political legacy of Yothu Yindi and the band’s founder, Dr Mandawuy Yunupiŋu.

Dr Joseph Neparrŋa Gumbula is descended from a long line of prominent Yolŋu leaders whose contributions to dialogue and understanding between Indigenous and other Australians date from the 1920s, and is a foremost authority on international collections of material culture from Arnhem Land. In 2007, he became the first Yolŋu leader of a research project funded by the Australian Research Council, and he currently works as a Research Fellow in Curatorial Studies at the University of Sydney. He was awarded the Doctor of Music honoris causa by the University of Sydney for his contributions to scholarship and intercultural exchange in 2007.