Conference home

Conference Papers

Session CH3.3: Reconnecting urban and remote communities via new technologies

1.  A. Scales, J. Mick, J. Burke, D. Mann: Ara Irititja

Full paper | Audio | Video | Slideshow

Abstract

The aim of Ara Irititja is to bring back home, manage and preserve materials of cultural and historical significance to Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people (Anangu). These include photographs, films, sound recordings, art works and documents from cultural institutions and individuals. Ara Irititja has designed a purpose-built computer archive that digitally stores repatriated historical materials and contemporary items. Ara Irititja digital archives are in 45 dedicated computer workstations in Anangu communities in South Australia, Northern Territory and Western Australia. Ara Irititja seeks to support Anangu in recording and maintaining their rich cultural heritage. Communities and families navigate the digital archive, add information, stories and reflections, and use passwords to restrict access to specific items for cultural reasons. In the past, Anangu were photographed and their knowledge recorded and published without any negotiation. Anangu are passionate about protecting their archival past, accessing it today and securing it for future generations.

Author bios:

A senior Pitjantjatjara woman, Josephine Mick was born in the bush near Pukatja, South Australia and currently lives at Pipalyatjara. While growing up at Fregon and the Ernabella Mission her family educated her in bush skills and cultural traditions. She speaks three Aboriginal languages, understands many others, and is fluent in English. She is highly sought after by educational institutions and organisations for her tremendous capacity to teach Pitjantjatjara culture. As a traditional healer—ngangkari—she heals mainly women and children. She was among the first clinical health workers on the Pitjantjatjara lands. She is an active member of the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council and was Chairperson for five years. She has represented Pitjantjatjara people at many conferences and meetings including trips to France and Germany. She is a dancer and singer, painter, batik artist, wood carver, and weaver of grass baskets and sculptures. She advises Ara Irititja on cultural protocols, in particular for the women’s restricted materials. Sally Anga Scales is one of her five children.

Sally Anga Scales is a 20-year-old Pitjantjatjara woman who grew up at Kalka and Pipalyatjara communities and in Alice Springs. Josephine Mick is her mother. She was educated at Pipalyatjara, Alice Springs and Adelaide. In Year Ten she spent five months in central India on international exchange at an Indian boarding school. Sally has worked for many regional Aboriginal organisations including Ara Irititja, Nganampa Health Council, Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council and Pipalyatjara Community Council. She has tutored Aboriginal students at an Alice Springs primary school. Since a young girl, Sally has provided feedback to Ara Irititja, in particular about young people’s use of contemporary technology. Sally has represented Ara Irititja at conferences in Cairns and Alice Springs. She is chosen frequently by Aboriginal organisations to act in a cultural liaison role to assist communications between Pitjantjatjara people, other Indigenous cultures, and mainstream Australia. Currently Sally is based in Alice Springs and visits family on the Pitjantjatjara lands as much as possible.

Julia Burke grew up in Sydney and has been living in Alice Springs since 1994. She is a history honours graduate and has a graduate diploma in development studies. For the past fifteen years Julia has worked for Central Australian Aboriginal organisations in research, project management, evaluation and social history. She was research officer at the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council for eight years when Josephine Mick was Chairperson and Sally Anga Scales toddled around behind her mother. Josephine Mick was Julia’s first Pitjantjatjara mentor and continues to give instruction on cultural issues. Julia stared working for Ara Irititja in 2002. Her role includes training on communities and getting feedback from people on how they use Ara Irititja, finding new collections, working with women on their restricted materials, monitoring the new software to make sure that it will be user-friendly for Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people, and assisting organisations who have bought the software to develop their own archive.

Douglas Mann resides in Adelaide where he operates a Software Development consultancy. He holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Computer Imaging and Multimedia) and a Graduate Diploma in Computer Science. Douglas has consulted with Ara Irititja, Koorie Heritage Trust, PYMedia and various non-Indigenous organisations. In 1999, Douglas joined the Ara Irititja Project to develop Ara Winki – Life on the Pitjantjatjara Lands, a multimedia educational resource which was incorporated into the South Australian Museum's Aboriginal Cultural Gallery in 2001. He has continued to consult with Ara Irititja in a technical and creative capacity on several projects. Currently, Douglas is developing Ara Irititja's new browser-based Archive and Traditional Knowledge Management System set to replace the ageing FileMaker version in 2010.

2. Cate Richmond, Teresa McCarthy, Jacqueline Bourke: Digital heritage collections in remote libraries in the Northern Territory

Full paper | Audio | Video | Slideshow pdf 932KB

Abstract

There are many challenges for remote Indigenous communities in gaining access to their heritage materials held in urban cultural institutions. These range from difficulties in locating resources to issues of ownership and appropriate access, and the safe, local storage of ‘repatriated’ materials. Northern Territory Library provides public library services in partnership with Shire Councils across the Territory. Library services to remote communities are delivered through the Libraries and Knowledge Centres (LKC) Program. The program was developed in response to requests from Indigenous communities, who wanted assistance to preserve their cultural heritage and provide appropriate access to it. The LKC program provides community libraries with a local Our Story database, a digital repository for cultural heritage materials. Launched in 2004 ‘Our Story’ databases reconnect remote communities with cultural heritage materials available through museums, archives etc in cities. This exchange is not one way, a number of projects have enabled communities to feed information about cultural heritage back to museums and other holding organisations.

In 2007 Northern Territory Library was awarded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Access to Learning Award for this innovative program. Funds from the award are supporting further development of the program, including the development of a new community software program in partnership with Pitjantjatjara Council, and advice and tools to assist communities in managing their digital collections. Northern Territory Library staff provide ongoing training and support to local library staff. This paper will present two perspectives to discuss how the LKC Program is supporting Indigenous communities in the NT to manage their heritage: Northern Territory Library, which funds and supports 22 remote Indigenous community libraries; and a personal perspective from an Indigenous Community Library Officer, who manages a local digital collection for her community.

Author bios:

Teresa McCarthy, Territory Families Project Officer, Northern Territory Library

Jacqueline Bourke, Community Library Officer, Pirlangimpi Library and Knowledge Centre, Tiwi Islands

Cate Richmond, Assistant Director, Northern Territory Library

3. J. Gumbula, A. Corn: Indigenous archival discovery as a catalyst for new recording initiatives in remote Australia

Full paper | Audio | Video | Slideshow

Abstract

There is an immense interest among Indigenous communities in remote Australia in discovering their recorded history. Within this decade, the introduction of new digital media to these isolated regions has enabled copies of rare records and materials held in cultural heritage collections worldwide to be returned home. Their rediscovery after many decades of radical social and economic change has stimulated a new awareness of history among Indigenous communities in Australia, and prompted many local elders to consider what kind of recorded legacy they themselves will leave for future generations.

This paper will trace the endeavours of Yolngu elders and scholars to locate the recorded legacy of his family and home communities in northeast Arnhem. These rare materials include sound, film and photographs of his parents and grandparents performing traditional ceremonies, and span the films of Cecil Holmes (1963, 1964), the sound recordings of Alice Moyle (1962–63), and photographs and artefacts held in the Donald Thomson Collection at Museum Victoria (1935–37). The earliest of these materials were collected by GH Wilkins, W Lloyd Warner and TT Webb in the 1920s, and are now spread across multiple collections in Australia, the UK, Switzerland and the USA.

The paper will also demonstrate how these investigations have been a catalyst for our concurrent efforts to comprehensively record, for the first time, those same hereditary performance traditions using new digital technologies in accord with the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia.

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.

4. L. Ormond-Parker, G Pappin, S. Ross, G. Earl, C. Fforde:  eMob: an online guide to Australian Indigenous cultural heritage housed overseas

Full paper | Audio | Video | Slideshow pdf 126KB

Abstract

This paper will outline the eMob pilot project undertaken by the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations (MLDRIN) in the development of an online guide to overseas collections. The communities involved in the pilot project wished to locate their material cultural housed in overseas institutions. At the same time there is a desire by overseas museums to establish direct contact with the communities whose heritage they curate. The pilot project developed a website and online guide to such collections. Research visits were carried out at four UK museums, a database design developed incorporating community and museum specifications. The pilot project ensured that information provided on the web is as accurate as possible and meets the cultural protocols defined by each participant nation. The process itself speaks to the second main aim of eMob: to facilitate communication between curators and communities. This pilot project has shown how the use of innovative technologies can be applied to accommodate urban and remote communities wishes to be reconnect to material culture housed overseas. The project was funded by AIATSIS, MLDRIN and the World Archaeological Congress.

Author bios:

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.

Gary J Pappin is a member of the Mutthi Mutthi nation and hails from Balranald in far Western NSW. Currently enroled as a student at the University of Canberra studying Cultural Heritage Management, he has worked for many years in World Heritage conservation, particularly on his Traditional country that forms part of the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area. He has extensive experience in representing cultural heritage issues at a local, state and international level.

Cressida Fforde is currently the Co-ordinator of Research Publications and Public Programs at AIATSIS. With a PhD from Southampton University (UK), Dr Fforde is an experienced research and project manager in heritage, museology and archaeology, with a focus on community heritage programmes, indigenous repatriation issues and process, museum collection histories, cataloguing, provenancing, and community consultation.