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Information Technologies and Indigenous Communities
Presenters' bios:
Karen Adams is a Senior Research Fellow at Victoria University and has over 15 years experience working in Indigenous health as a researcher, health manager and practitioner. She led the establishment of accredited Aboriginal Health Worker training in Victoria and has worked in mainstream and Aboriginal community controlled health sectors. Karen has been awarded research grants in the areas of food security, chronic disease and family health. Her research draws on strengths based approaches, action research and engagement of creative mediums to assist and provide solutions to complex problems.
Michael Aird has worked full time in the area of Aboriginal cultural heritage since 1985, graduating in 1990 with a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from the University of Queensland. His main interest is urban Aboriginal photographic history, curating several exhibitions as well as being author of several books and articles. In 1996 he established Keeaira Press an independent publishing house. For five years Michael was the Curator of Aboriginal Studies at the Queensland Museum and is currently working with the Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies at Monash University as a researcher with the Aboriginal Visual Histories Project.
Carol Rose Baird was born and grew up in Broome, Western Australia. She attended St Mary’s School and found her first employment at the Nulungu College, now known as St Mary’s College. Mother of five, Carol commenced the Bachelor of Education degree with Edith Cowan University in 1995 but was unable to complete her studies at that time. Carol returned to the workforce as a CDEP employee in various Aboriginal organizations where she gained experience in finance, administration, field work and housing. A position as STEP Manager was terminated after a year due to lack of funding. She eventually joined TAFE in Derby on a casual basis to lecture in business studies and leadership course.
Dennis Barber is a descendant of the Traditional people and custodians from Mudgee of the Wiradjuri Language Group. He is the Aboriginal Co-Management Officer for the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Unit (WHU) within the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) of the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water NSW. He began his career with the NPWS as a Cadet Ranger in 2002 and completed a Bachelor of Science (Parks Recreation and Heritage) degree with Charles Sturt University in 2005. I became a full time Ranger working in South West Sydney in 2006 and in 2007 accepted a temporary position in the WHU as acting Aboriginal Co-Management Officer. He then applied for and accepted this position when it became permanent in 2008. His role involves liaison with and Co-Management negotiations between Aboriginal communities associated with the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area (GBMWHA) and NPWS Management.
Jeanie Bell is a Jagera and Dulingbara woman from southeast Queensland, who has worked with Aboriginal languages for over 25 years. Jeanie worked in central Australia for a number of years at Yipirinya School and the Institute for Aboriginal Development, as well as in north Queensland where she taught Indigenous Australian language studies at the North Queensland Institute of TAFE in Cairns. She was a member of the Research Advisory Committee at AIATSIS in Canberra for 7 years, and has a Masters degree in Linguistics from the University of Melbourne where she wrote her thesis on a Sketch Grammar of the Badjala language of Gari (Fraser Island). Jeanie also worked as the linguist/researcher for the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for languages in 2004/2005 and is now employed as the Senior lecturer in the Centre for Australian Languages and Linguistics at the Batchelor Institute for Indigenous Tertiary Education in the Northern Territory.
Bruce Birch is an anthropological linguist who has been based in the Cobourg region of North-western Arnhem Land for the past six years, and is currently a Departmental Visitor in Linguistics at RSPAS, ANU. Bruce originally moved to the community of Minjilang on Croker Island to take up a position as principal field linguist for the DoBeS funded Iwaidja Documentation Project in 2003. As a result of this project, which has recently received funding for a second phase, Iwaidja now has the largest online archive of annotated video and audio texts of any Australian Indigenous language. Bruce has initiated and consulted on a number of projects in the area of Indigenous ecological knowledge, particularly marine knowledge, and is also consulting linguist for the Minjilang based Iwaidja Inyman, a project committed to the publication and maintenance of the Iwaidja language and associated cultural knowledge, initiated and co ordinated by partner Sabine Hoeng.
Heather Bowe was recently a Monash University linguist of some 20 years. She began working on the Yorta Yorta language at the invitation of Yorta Yorta woman Lois Peeler in 1993. Heather Bowe was instrumental in the conceptualisation of the VCE Study Indigenous Languages of Victoria – Revival and Reclamation and is active in the support of initiatives for the revival and reclamation of Indigenous languages in Victoria, and was the linguist behind the Aboriginal Languages of Victoria Web Resource Portal project. Dr Bowe has been involved in Native Title Claims, Aboriginal projects and has authored numerous books on Aboriginal language.
Fiona Brady has lived in Bloomfield River Valley in Cape York Peninsula for over two decades. She has a Master of Learning Management from Central Queensland University and has many years experience in education and training. She has worked extensively with Indigenous communities in Cape York Peninsula and the Torres Strait Islands where she has taken part in projects focusing on cultural revitalization and archiving using IT, the adoption of Internet banking and mobile phone adoption. Fiona is currently involved in community development.
Neavin Broughton, Ngā Ruahinerangi, Ngā Rauru, Ngāti Ruanui. Neavin has a strong background in Māori education, health and business. He started his working career in Kāhanga Reo, moved into the public health sector and then progressed into Māori business. Most recently, he has been engaged in research and training for Te Reo o Taranaki within Archives New Zealand. Neavin has a passion for Māori Education and has worked from the Kāhanga Reo (preschool total immersion education) level through to the Whare Wānanga (tertiary total immersion education) level. He is a second language learner who is fluent in Te Reo Māori (Māori language) and comfortable communicating in total immersion environments. Neavin has been involved in the public health sector since 2001 and has held roles that have ranged from regional community worker, to national project manager to international Indigenous relations manager. Neavin has provided cultural advice within a Māori business setting for the past seven years. He has worked with Local and Central Government and has some innovative approaches to aligning the Principles of The Treaty of Waitangi with existing policy and procedures.
Debbie Campbell Using her information technology background, Debbie Campbell has project managed several of the National Library’s national online collaborative discovery services including Picture Australia, digitised Australian Newspapers 1803-1954 and Australian Research Online. They all form part of Debbie’s current portfolio which also supports account management for Libraries Australia – the nation’s bibliographic network. On a daily basis, Debbie aims to connect colleagues to each other within libraries and beyond, and the general public to library services which can help to transform their lives. She has done this for 30 years as public servant, including 24 years spent at the National Library and a short stint in the UK Higher Education sector.
Genevieve Campbell has worked for 20 years as a freelance French Horn player around Australia and overseas. In 2006 she instigated Ngarukuruwala – we sing songs, a collaborative improvised music project between a group of Tiwi strong women and some jazz musicians from Sydney. Her professional interest in Tiwi music in the context of contemporary performance and the desire to be part of the rediscovery and preservation of old Tiwi songs led to her current PhD candidature at CDU.
Stephen Cassidy has been Director, Indigenous Languages and Culture with the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts since 2005. He is responsible for the National Indigenous Languages Policy and Action Plan, the Maintenance of Indigenous Language and Records Program and the Indigenous Culture Support Program and deals with intangible cultural heritage issues related to Indigenous languages, culture, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions. Before this he was responsible for developing the Indigenous Contemporary Music Action Plan and for managing consideration by the Australian Government of ratification of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. He worked on a range of projects to support Australian creative industries – the Digital Content Industry Action Agenda, the Creative Industries Cluster Study and the Enquiry into the Role of Creativity in the Innovation Economy for the Prime Ministers Science, Engineering and Innovation Council, as well as the redevelopment of Australian Museums and Galleries Online. He organised the inaugural OzeCulture Conference on cultural organisations and the Internet. He has worked in the publishing industry, as Membership Manager for the Powerhouse Museum, Development Manager for Community Radio 2SER-FM, Arts Officer for the ACTU and the Trades and Labour Council of South Australia and as a Community Arts Officer with local government.
Rita Cattoni is the manager of ICTV, and has operated in this position for the last two and a half years. Prior to ICTV, Rita managed PAW Media & Communications (formerly Warlpiri Media) a remote Indigenous media organisation based in Yuendumu, 300 kms north west of Alice Springs. She held this position for seven years.
Michael Cawthorn is currently the Deputy Director of the Museum of Central Australia and the Strehlow Research Centre. Previously Michael was the anthropologist with the Strehlow Research Centre. He has spent two years working as a field anthropologist with Ngaanyatjarra Council site mapping and recording stories across the Ngaanyatjarra Lands in Western Australia. Michael completed his Honours in Anthropology at the Australian National University in 2006. His thesis focused on the repatriation of central Australian Aboriginal secret sacred objects. Michael is particularly interested in the repatriation of digital archival material to Aboriginal communities and is exploring the development of a digital media centre at the Strehlow Research Centre to house Strehlow collection archival material and facilitate Indigenous access to the collection.
Hart Cohen is the Associate Head of School, Research, at School of Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney. Dr. Cohen is a member of the Centre for Cultural Research has published widely in the field of visual anthropology, communications and film studies. He directed two Australian Research Council projects related to the Strehlow Collection held at the Strehlow Research Centre in Alice Springs. The current project is an online database documentary related to TGH Strehlow’s memoir, “Journey to Horseshoe Bend”. Two films have been made in relation to these projects: “Mr. Strehlow’s Films” (SBSI 2001) and Cantata Journey (ABC TV 2006). He is co-author of Screen Media Arts: An Introduction to Concepts and Practices for Oxford University Press (2009).
Aaron Corn, PhD Melb, holds long-term collaborations with Indigenous communities in Arnhem Land on research into the application of their traditions to new intercultural contexts, and is a founding Investigator on the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia. His recent book, Reflections and Voices, explores the cultural and political legacy of the celebrated Australian band, Yothu Yindi, and its influential lead singer, Mandawuy Yunupiŋu. Dr Corn contributes to numerous Indigenous cultural survival initiatives with Yolŋu performers from Arnhem Land, records Indigenous oral histories for the National Library of Australia, and lectures extensively on Yolŋu music, law and culture in consultation with Yolŋu elders such as Neparrŋa Gumbula. He has recently been awarded a prestigious Future Fellowship, the first in any field of the Creative Arts, by the Australian Research Council (ARC).
Nelson Conboy began his academic career in the science faculty at Central Queensland University in Rockhampton on Queensland’s central coast. He worked as a research assistant with Dr Karl Neundfeldt from the communication faculty on a Torres Strait contemporary music project recording and collecting material in analogue and digital format. The outcome of the research was the production of Seaman Dan’s debut album “Follow The Sun” produced by Karl, Nelson and recording engineer Nigel Pegrum. Karl was the catalyst of Nelson’s transition from the science faculty to the media faculty at Macquarie University in Sydney. After a semester at Macquarie Nelson transferred to Griffith University in the Bachelor of Communication degree. Nelson’s postgraduate studies were in digital publishing and community development at the University of the Sunshine Coast. Nelson relocated to the Aboriginal community of Hopevale in Cape York where he began work with Cape York Digital Network and Hopevale’s Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Service. During this time Nelson completed his Masters in Journalism and Mass Communication at Griffith University under the supervision of Assoc Prof Michael Meadows. Currently Nelson is the Internet Communication Technology director of AICA (Australia Indigenous Communication Association), Chair of IRCA (Indigenous Remote Communication Association), Director on ICTV (Indigenous Community Television Ltd), Treasurer of QRAMAC (Queensland Remote Aboriginal Media Aboriginal Corporation) and the Indigenous representative on the Indigenous Grants Advisory Committee and the Training Grants Advisory Committee.
Shierese Cunningham was born and grew up and continues to live on her great-grandfather’s country at Araru on Cobourg Peninsula in Northwestern Arnhem Land, studying via Katherine School of the Air to which she connects via satellite broadband. Shierese used the Akarlda Cultural Mapping Project as a way of learning more about the country she lives on, as well as gaining skills in the use of digital tools such as Google Earth. She is in the vanguard of a new generation whose understanding of and connection to country is based both on old and new ways of acquiring and managing knowledge.
Dora Dallwitz is an artist, artistic director, and archivist who has been working with Ara Irititja since 1998. Dora completed her Master of Visual Arts in 1993 and is an avid sculptor. She has extensive practical experience, participating in an arts collective and in managing artistic production and exhibition spaces – including studios, gallery, and website. Dora has travelled extensively throughout the Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, and in her twelve years at Ara Irititja has overseen the archival management of hundreds of thousands of fragile document pages, historic films, photographs, and sound recordings, and has participated actively in the development of culturally-relevant archival procedures. Dora is committed to notions of Australian identity, feminist and postmodern theory, and the preservation of narrative as a necessary process in the shaping of culture. She sees the Ara Irititja Project as a repository for Indigenous communities to safeguard, not only their documents, films, and artworks, but also their narratives, thereby ensuring the preservation and reshaping of their culture. Dora manages the women’s-only materials in the Adelaide headquarters of Ara Irititja, oversees digitization of collections, and implements strategies for best practice archival storage. She has been an active contributor in the development of the Ara Irititja Strategic Plan and Protocols and Best Practices documents.
John Dallwitz has been an artist, photographer, educator, heritage consultant and cultural adviser, based in South Australia, since the 1960s. From 1986 to 1992, John was consultant to the South Australian Government’s Aboriginal Heritage Branch in the research and development of the Aboriginal Heritage Photographic Project. For this project he located, researched, copied and catalogued into a computer database more than 10,000 photographic images and many documents of significance to Aboriginal history in South Australia. As part of that project, he carried out the research, photography, design and construction of an outdoor, transportable exhibition to mark the 10 Years Celebration of the Pitjantjatjara Land Rights Act. This experience introduced him to Anangu tjuta (Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people) and was one of the factors to inspire the archive project Ara Irititja (“stories from a long time ago”). Driven by a small team of archivists, anthropologists, and IT professionals, and a great deal of Anangu support, the Ara Irititja project has developed over 16 years into an innovative, culturally sensitive database project; it now provides Anangu access at a community level to more than 100,000 digitised historical documents, photos, artworks, movies and sounds. As the Manager of the Ara Irititja Project and the Pitjantjatjara Council’s Social History Unit, John oversees and administers all of the Project’s work.
Yukihiro (Jungarrayi) Doi was born in Hokkaido, Japan. He is a PhD Candidate at the School of Music, Australian National University. He was a Research student of Oyasato Institute for the Study of Religion, at Tenri University in 2007, and Tenrikyo Graduate Seminary (Postgraduate Qualification) in 2004. Tenri University (BA), 2000. He was a member of the Gagaku concert tours of Tenri University (Japan, Korea, Russia, Spain, Australia, Malaysia and China) from 1996 to 2008. Part-time lecturer of the Gagaku Ensemble of Cologne University, Germany, 2004.
Jeff Doring’s work includes: Art student at National Art School and Papua-New Guinea; Artist exhibiting at Gallery A Sydney. Documentary Film Director / Producer “Tidikawa and friends” 1972; 15th American Film Festival Gold Award Best Documentary 1973; AFI awards Best Documentary,Sound,Colour Photography etc; “Spirit World of Tidikawa” BBC 1973; “ Morris Louis - Radiant Zones “ NYC 1980; Documentary Sound Recordist “Patrol into the Unknown” NBCTV 1969; “Four Films on Narritjin Maymuru” Film Australia ; “Africa “ 4 hour TIME-LIFE special etc. He has worked on the Pathway Project continuous documentary collaboration with Ngarinyin Aboriginal Corporation, which commenced in 1992.
Mark Dras is a senior lecturer in the Department of Computing, Macquarie University. His research interests include areas of language technology such as machine translation and natural language generation.
Laurel Evelyn Dyson is a senior lecturer in Information Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney. She has a PhD from the University of Sydney and a Master of Information Technology from UTS. Her research focuses on the use of IT by Indigenous people and mobile learning. She has been involved in UTS’ Indigenous Participation in IT Program, the Indigenous Pre-IT Program and UNESCO’s ICT4ID Project. Her publications include the book Information Technology and Indigenous People.
Daniel Featherstone worked as Coordinator of remote Indigenous media organisation Ngaanyatjarra Media from 2001- 2010. He helped build the organisation from a single staff posting to having over 25 employees (20 Indigenous) with a broad range of programs- radio, video, IT, language and culture, music development, archiving, technical services. Highlights include the building of a $2.5m media and communications centre, establishment of the $4m broadband network, establishment of regional radio network, contributing to development of Indigenous Community TV, establishing the Technical Services Unit, annual music & culture festival and a music development program. He is currently undertaking a Research Masters project with Murdoch University, entitled ‘An Evaluation of Media and Communications as Tools for Community Development in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands’. Prior to working in remote media, Daniel worked as a cinematographer in Sydney, shooting Australian and international documentaries, commercials, corporate videos, and short films, winning numerous awards for his work, both nationally and internationally. He completed a BA in Cinematography at the Australian Film Television and Radio School. He also has a Bachelor of Applied Science (Multidisciplinary) and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Communications at Curtin University of Technology.
Lysbeth Ford has spent the last 22 years documenting endangered languages of the Darwin and Daly regions in Australia’s NT. She works with the last fluent speakers of all coastal languages from Darwin to the WA border to transcribe and translate hundreds of song and stories from these languages, and has co-authored a legal glossary in Murrinhpatha. She has written grammars for Batjamalh, Emmi-Mendhe, Marritjavin–Marri Ammu, and Marri Ngarr– Magati Ge, published a dictionary of Batjamalh, and several articles on the language of wangga and lirrga songs. She is presently writing the book, Wangga Songs of Northwest Australia, with ethnomusicologists Allan Marett and Linda Barwick.
Brian Djangirrawuy Garawirrtja is a Yolŋu elder who holds chief responsibility for maintaining the endangered manikay ‘song’ repertoire of his hereditary group, the Birrkili. He plays drums for the Yolŋu popular band, Soft Sands, has worked as a Literacy Worker and Tutor for Shepherdson College at Galiwin’ku, and serves as a Homeland Coordinator for the Laynhapuy Homelands Association based at Yirrkala. Since 2005, he has directed numerous sessions to record manikay for the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia, and has led the Gupapuyŋu Dancers in major performances of this tradition at the Darwin Festival and the National Museum of Australia.
Reece George is an urban blackfella. He is a descendant of the Madu people who live at Jigalong, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Reece has a Bachelor of Computing from James Cook University and is currently a PhD candidate in Information Technology, investigating how to develop websites for Aboriginal communities. Reece first started working on the Internet back in 1995. Since then he has run numerous successful (and unsuccessful) online businesses. He has over 12 years experience as a website developer and currently works in the area of search engine optimization.
Tommy George Senior is the last fluent speaker of the Awu Laya language. Tommy was bought up on his traditional country, and had the opportunity to learn from the old people who were still living on the land. For many years the Elders have been working on their homelands getting people to work together and draw from the right way of managing country through traditional knowledge. Over time they have been teaching language and culture at the local school in Laura where many of their grandchildren attend. Through these efforts, the Elders started to record their own knowledge with video technology which became the first Traditional Knowledge Revival Pathways project in the year 2000. Along with his brother and Victor Steffensen Tommy George co-created the methodology applied by the TKRP. He was awarded an honorary Doctorate in 2005 by James Cook University in recognition of the contribution of his custodial knowledge and skills to the research and wider community throughout his lifetime and as part of demonstrating appropriate research methodologies through his co-generative fire research PhD. Tommy’s knowledge and skills are vast but he holds a special set of ecological and faunal knowledge relationships. He is the Senior Elder of the Kuku Thaypan people.
John Giacon was born in Italy and grew up in Wollongong. He worked in schools in NSW and the ACT as a teacher and administrator. In 1994 he moved to Walgett and shortly after began working in Yuwaalaraay language, and later Gamilaraay. John has been closely involved in the language program at St Joseph’s Walgett and has worked with other projects. He has been involved in publishing a number of language resources, including the Gamilaraay Yuwaalaraay Yuwaalayaay Dictionary, the multimedia program Gayarragi, Winangali, and has been involved in developing the website www.yuwaalaraay.org. He is currently doing a PhD in Gamilaraay Yuwaalaraay grammar at ANU, teaches Gamilaraay at University of Sydney and Gamilaraay and Yuwaalaraay elsewhere, and is working on more GY resources.
Barbara Glowczewski (PhD) is Director of research at the Laboratory of Social Anthropology (CNRS/EHESS/College de France) where she coordinates the team “Anthropology of perception”. She teaches at EHESS (School of Social Sciences, Paris) since1998 and co-directed ten thesis, including 5 joint degrees with Australian Universities (JCU, Melbourne, UQ). Since 1979, has cumulated 12 years of fieldwork in Australia (Warlpiri people in Lajamanu, Yawuru and Jabirr Jabirr people in Broome, Pam Island), published ten books and many scientific articles. Co-directed (with Australian film maker Wayne Barker) the film Spirit of Anchor, 2002 (Bawaka, Arnhem Land, NT). Received awards for her multimedia work which has been displayed in many exhibitions (Moebius 1998, Festival du film de chercheur CNRS 2000 et 2002). Her research investigates Aboriginal reticular thinking (in myth, ritual, dream creativity and art) and social and cultural transformations with a focus on Indigenous agency. She also published on urban anthropology, teenage rituals and gender issues. Since 2004, Adjunct Professor at JCU, she questions issues of social justice and the place of creation in surviving to disaster and violences. Currently member of the CNU (French National Council of Universities), the Administration Council of the EHESS (Paris) and the International Advisory Board, Cairns Institute, Australia.
Phil Gordon is employed at the Australian Museum in Sydney. His role there is to advise Aboriginal communities on issues such as the museums Aboriginal Museum outreach program and repatriation of Aboriginal human remains and other significant cultural property as well as providing advice for various government agencies on cultural heritage issues and policy development. He plays an important role in working with cultural centres and Keeping places in setting up and planning, as well as advising on ongoing training needs. Phil has a diverse range of experience with a range of funding agencies including Visions of Australia, as Chair of the NSW Museums Committee and as a member of the Heritage Collections Council.
Sean Gordon is a Barkindji/Wangamara from Brewarrina, Western NSW. He has a diverse range of experience and is a licensed builder as well as a qualified teacher in adult education. Sean has been heavily involved in Aboriginal education and training for 10 years prior to his appointment as CEO of Darkinjung DLAC in 1998.
Samia Goudie is an Indigenous Australian. Bundjalung and Mununjali on her mother side and of European descent on her fathers. She is a lecturer in Indigenous health and has worked in community for over 20 years. In recent years she has used new media and film to explore the meaning of “wellness “ and to tell positive stories about Indigenous resilience through projects both in the USA and Australia. Samia is a Fulbright Alumni. Samia’s research is supported by the CRCAH – Co-operative research centre of Aboriginal health, Social and emotional wellbeing project, Southern Cross University and the University of Queensland Australia.
Alana Grech has a degree in Environmental Science with Honours from the University of Adelaide and a PhD from the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at James Cook University. Alana’s research interests include spatial predictions of species distributions, geographical information systems (GIS) and spatial risk assessments for applied issues in ecology and conservation biology. Alana has extensive experience in teaching GPS and GIS technologies to ranger groups and communities in remote Indigenous communities of northern Australia. Her current position is a postdoctoral research fellowship at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies where she is working with the Torres Strait Regional Authority and Indigenous communities on developing innovative tools for systematic conservation planning in the Sea Country of Torres Strait.
Richard Green is a Dharug speaker, descendant of the Darug people of western Sydney. He has been teaching language for many years, and has done much to revitalise the Sydney language. His language and song is being developed into a public web site for school and community learners.
Joe Neparrŋa Gumbula comes from a long line of prominent Yolŋu leaders whose contributions to understanding between Indigenous and other Australians date from the 1920s. He performs with the Yolŋu popular band, Soft Sands, is an experienced singer of the Yolŋu manikay ‘song’ tradition, and has led the Gupapuyŋu Dancers in major performances of this tradition at the Garma Festival and Womadelaide. He is a foremost authority on collections of material culture from Arnhem Land, and sits on the Steering Committee of the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia. In 2007, Gumbula became the first Yolŋu investigator to lead a project funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), and he was also awarded an honorary Doctor of Music by the University of Sydney. He now works here as an inaugural ARC Australian Research Fellow—Indigenous.
Yiŋiya Guyula is a Liya-Dhalinymirr elder of the Djambarrpuyŋu people of northeast Arnhemland. He is currently senior lecturer in Yolŋu Studies at Charles Darwin University. His work involves research into the uses of digital technologies for Yolŋu knowledge work.
Dhunumbu Guyula is a young man of the Liya-Dhalinymirr Djambarrpuyŋu people of northeast Arnhemland who is an emerging leader and researcher. He has been involved in the AIATSIS project “Using Digital Technologies and Indigenous Research Protocols to Educate about Culture, Ancestry and History”.
Dhäŋgal Gurruwiwi is a Galpu elder from Gikal homeland community in Northeast Arnhem Land. She is a trained interpreter, bicultural consultant, researcher and part time university lecturer.
Rachel Hendery is the Research Assistant on the AustKin project. Since completing her PhD in linguistics at the Australian National University in 2008, she has continued to work at the ANU as a lecturer and as an assistant on various projects, including Luise Hercus’s project on the Emu History from Wangkangurru-Arabana country. Her research interests include language change, typology, and language contact, both in Australia and the wider Pacific region.
Michael Hennessy (BSc, MA) – Oral Historian, Director, Producer, Writer. A professional oral historian based in Auckland, NZ, Mike has 17 years experience working as a researcher, writer, director and producer of broadcast television, corporate and institutional video, multimedia and internet projects. Recent projects have included directing a six part television series, production of a taonga puoro album and feature length documentary, the multimedia production for a travelling exhibition and in 2010 the launch of two significant web 2.0 cultural internet projects.
Darlene Hoskins-McKenzie is an Aboriginal woman of Ganangar/Bidgigal (Eora), Yuin, Anawan (Kamilaroi) and Biripi/ Worimi descent. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), and her thesis is about Aboriginal ways of using information technology in community to create educational pathways. Darlene grew up on the La Perouse Aboriginal Reserve, Sydney, and later on the South Coast of New South Wales. Darlene is a member of the NSW Aboriginal Reconciliation Council, Tranby Aboriginal College, Glebe, the Inner West Aboriginal Community Corporation and also a member of the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council. Her family have been extensively involved in the struggle for the rights of Aboriginal people in NSW for many years.
Ernest Hunter is an Australian medical graduate trained in adult, child and cross-cultural psychiatry and public health in the USA. He has worked for the last two decades in remote Indigenous populations across northern Australia, andis founder of the national Health Interactive Technology Network (HITnet). He is a Regional Psychiatrist with Queensland Health and Adjunct Professor in both the School of Medicine, University of Queensland and James Cook University in Cairns. He is an AIATSIS Member and Foundation Fellow of the Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health – Queensland.
Micha Jackson grew up near Toronto, Canada. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Science and Government at Lawrence University, Wisconsin, USA. During her studies she completed field work in the Caribbean, Europe and China. She then received a prestigious Watson Fellowship to live and work Oman, Australia and Palau exploring Indigenous and community-based management in coastal regions. Micha joined the North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance (NAILSMA) in March 2009 as the Project Officer for the I-Tracker project. “I-Tracker”, short for Indigenous Tracker, is a project that is helping Indigenous Land and Sea Managers to collect and manage information about country across remote north Australia utilising the renowned CyberTracker software. She provides on-ground and workshop training and technical support to Indigenous rangers and ranger coordinators throughout northern Australia.
Colleen Hattersley. After a lifetime in teaching and public administration, Colleen studied Linguistics at the Australian National University from 1995 to 1999 where she furthered her interest in Australian and Austronesian languages. Splitting her time between oral history collection and community language work, she soon realised that dependence on external consultants and the perception that it takes lots of money to do language work were major impediments to language speakers doing their own documentation. Colleen has long held the opinion that there are sufficient free computer programs available for literate language speakers to be able to drive their own documentation processes – if they are given the skills to do so. Since 2005Colleen has conducted introductory language workshops in Queensland (Beenleigh, Cunnamulla, Mitchell) and Western Australia (Fitzroy Crossing, Derby, Broome) using the SIL program Lexique Pro. She is currently working with the Nyikina community of the West Kimberley to complete an interactive dictionary of Lower Nyikina which incorporates the corpus collected by Dr Bronwyn Stokes in the 1970s and extends to current usage. Two literate speakers of the language are involved in the project. An additional project to publish Nyikina Beginning stories as accessible language learning resources has seen the release of two out of three bilingual books with audio versions on an accompanying CD and vocabulary puzzles for each story. In 2009/10 she was instrumental in establishing the Nyikina Language and Culture Hub in Broome, WA for local Indigenous organisation Madjulla Inc. In partnership with Kimberley College of TAFE, Colleen is now developing a self-paced online course to teach the workings of Lexique Pro. The course will be nationally accredited and available on CD for those who do not have reliable internet connection.
Merata Kawharu is the Director of Research of the James Henare Maori Research Centre at the University of Auckland. She has published on Maori socio-environmental and development studies, Maori interests in museum governance, the Treaty of Waitangi and World Heritage. She is a member of the Maori Heritage Council and the New Zealand Historic Places Trust Board. Merata is a Principal Investigator for a project, which involves a team of 12, that is building a web 2.0 resource containing information on tribal heritage, traditional knowledge and regional language, for use by school children, tribal and wider communities.
Harold Koch is a Visiting Fellow in Linguistics in the School of Language Studies, Australian National University, where he has recently retired from his teaching position. Harold has been involved in Aboriginal linguistics since the 1970s. His research has focused on Kaytetye and the other Arandic languages of Central Australia and issues in the historicalcomparative linguistics of the Australian languages in general. With Claire Bowern, he edited a book on the classification of Australian languages (Australian languages: classification and the comparative method, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2004). During the last few years he has been investigating the historical documentation on the Indigenous languages and placenames of southeastern NSW, and is supervising the research of two PhD students working with historical materials on NSW languages to aid revitalisation projects. He edited, with Luise Hercus, a 2009 book, Aboriginal placenames: naming and renaming the Australian landscape (Aboriginal History Monograph series) Canberra: ANU E Press.
Inge Kral is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Postdoctoral Fellow at Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (ANU) on the ARC Linkage Project Lifespan Learning and Literacy for Young Adults in Remote Indigenous Communities. Inge has worked in Aboriginal education for some 20 years as a teacher, teacher linguist, curriculum developer and trainer in bilingual schools and adult education, and as a consultant on education policy. She has an MA in applied linguistics (University of Melbourne) for her study of the development of literacy in Arrernte, and a PhD in anthropology through CAEPR (ANU) for her ethnographic study of social literacy practices in the Western Desert. Inge’s research interests include community-based out of school learning and literacy; youth learning and adolescent language socialisation, digital media and multimodal literacies; family literacy; and Indigenous languages and literacy.
Cat Kutay is a researcher in Computer Science and Engineering working at the University of New South Wales on IT projects to support Indigenous inclusion in IT. She is doing consultation work on localisation and sound support for OLPC.
Jason Lee is a linguist. He graduated from the University of Western Australia in 1997 with a First Class Honours in Linguistics and an additional major in anthropology. He has been a PhD candidate in Linguistics at the Australian National University. He has conducted linguistic fieldwork in the Philippines (Agusan Man obo), Indonesia (Mandar) and the Northern Territory (Kriol). He has also worked as a community linguist with the Katherine Regional Aboriginal Language Centre working with speakers of Kriol, Mangarrayi, Mayali, Dalabon, Rembarrnga in the communities of Katherine, Jilkminggan, Bulman and Wugularr, among others.
Anna Liebzeit is a Research Fellow at Victoria University leading development of an ICT resource for Indigenous Australians who live with diabetes and photo-voice projects. Anna has worked in Indigenous education for 12 years working in prisons, TAFE’s and Universities teaching art and graphic design. She is also a practicing artist who works across forms including visual art, sound design and performance. Anna managed the first national Indigenous photographers’ forum in 2009 and has been principle artist in community art projects.
Honiana Te Puni Love, Te Ātiawa, Taranaki, Ngāti Ruanui. Honiana has extensive experience working in the areas of archives, libraries and historical research. She completed a Tohu Māoritanga, Bachelor of Arts in History and a Masters in Library and Information Studies from Victoria University. Honiana has recently completed Te Pākairewa Reo Rumaki: Advanced Certificate in Māori Immersion through Te Ataarangi. She has worked in Aotearoa’s National Library, Wellington City Library, Archives New Zealand and The New Zealand Film Archives in a variety of roles and is passionate about the care, preservation and protection of taonga. Over the last three years she has been working on a digital archiving project for Te Reo o Taranaki, and now leads the archive development and information management work steam. Living with her children in Wellington enables the whanau to be active members of local Taranaki Whānui community and they are often at hui and events in and around the region, as well as travelling regularly back to Taranaki.
Kathy Lynch is a cross-disciplinary academic – information technology and education, and has taught in the university (Vic), TAFE (Vic) and Secondary School sectors (NT, QLD and NSW). During the past few years she has brought the power of IT into many areas including language revival, HIV education, students’ university experiences, and marine conservation. She is an honorary research associate in the Faculty of IT at the University of Technology Sydney, the Faculty of Computing and IT at Makerere University (Uganda), and the School of IS at University of Cape Town. Dr Lynch is/has been the Editorin- chief and an editor of international journals, a reviewer for numerous IT and education journals and conferences, and the author of two information technology text books.
Nicole Ma is based in Melbourne and coordinates the Canning Stock Route’s multimedia output as well as mentoring the Aboriginal multimedia practitioners. Nicole is an award winning independent film maker and she was the executive producer of multimedia for the inaugural exhibitions at the National Museum of Australia.
Patrick McConvell is currently Research Fellow in the College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University, working on the AustKin project, and a project on the dynamics of language change among hunter-gatherers, PI Claire Bowern. He has carried out linguistic and anthropological fieldwork in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, and has worked in Indigenous language programs in schools, helping to establish the Kimberley Language Resource Centre and training Indigenous people in language work. He taught anthropology at the Northern Territory and Griffith Universities and from 2000 to 2008 he worked at AIATSIS as Research Fellow, Language and Society, working on projects including the Aboriginal Child Language Acquisition Project (ACLA), the Online Language Community Access Program (OLCAP), and the National Indigenous Language Survey (NILS).
Glen MacLaren develops data management tools and processes relating to cultural and natural resource management. Glen has a degree in Forest Science from the University of Melbourne and has worked at Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Chief Roi Mata’s Domain in Vanuatu and the Shoalhaven Defence Estate in New South Wales to develop Cultural Heritage Information Management Systems customised to conform existing cultural protocols and management objectives. Currently Glen is working with tribal groups from the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area in North Queensland, Kakadu National Park and the Jawoyn Association in the Northern Territory to develop similar systems.
Michelle McLaughlin (nee Abdullah) is a descendant from the Wongai tribe, her Father Aboriginal and Indian born in WA and Mother Dutch, born in Amsterdam Holland, migrating to Australia at a young age. Michelle graduated from Broome Senior High School in 1994 after completing year 12. She completed an Aboriginal Orientation course in 1995 at UWA in Perth, to further her studies in many courses. As she worked and volunteered her time to the community, she completed courses Certificate III in Tourism and Hospitality, Certificate III in Business and Certificate IV in Training and Assessment at Kimberley TAFE. Her role today is a lecturer at Kimberley TAFE in the Business and IT department, after completing a 2 year Indigenous Lecturing Cadetship. She is responsible for the training of Cert II and III Business & Retail trainees, both local and within the state, where she uses online delivery for these students, Year 11 and 12 high school students doing Business at TAFE and those wanting to learn basic bookkeeping and MYOB skills.
Troy Mallie is Director of Cultural Systems Solutions (CSS) – an Indigenous Townsville based business that utilises database technology, the Internet and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to build cultural and natural resource information management systems. Troy works with communities in developing Heritage Information Management Systems (www. keepingplaces.com) to assist in the storage and protection of heritage information. These systems have been designed to conform with cultural protocols such gender sensitive information and sorry business. Some of the places that are using this technology include Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park – NT, Chief Roi Mata’s Domain – Vanuatu and Jawoyn Association – NT.
David Winungudj Manmurulu is from the Mawng-speaking Yalama clan, which is part of the Ngurtikin clan aggregate who own mainland coastal estates opposite South Goulburn Island. He is the senior songman and custodian of the Inyjalarrku ‘mermaid’ song-set, which he inherited from his father George Winungudj. He is in high demand as a performer across Arnhem Land, is a consultant for the Western Arnhem Land song project and is on the steering committee of the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia.
Jenny Manmurulu is from the Kunwinjku-speaking Mayirrwulidj clan. She is married to Inyjalarrku songman David Manmurulu and is the lead female dancer for Inyjalarrku songs. In her role as an assistant teacher at Warruwi School she has helped to develop an Indigenous cultural program for the students. As part of this program she teaches the Inyjalarrku dances to female students.
Douglas Mann, Managing Director of Rightside Response Pty Ltd, is the Ara Irititja Software Designer and Developer. Douglas completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 1998, focusing on computer imaging and multimedia. Since then, he has completed a certificate in Small Business Management (2005), and a Graduate Diploma in Computer Science (2007). He has worked with Ara Irititja for over ten years, beginning with the production of Ara Wiki, a DVD telling the story of Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara people living in the far northwest corner of South Australia, now used in displays at the South Australian Museum, Alice Springs Library, and Port Augusta Prison. He contributed multimedia and graphic design to a 2003 touring exhibition about Ara Irititja. Since 2007, he has been instrumental in the development of the new Ara Irititja software, a browser/server based multimedia archive and traditional knowledge database designed to address Indigenous cultural protocols and requirements. Beginning in late 2010, Douglas will be delivering the new software to Ara Irititja, responding to community feedback and input, and then developing additional components, including genealogy and geospatial mapping features.
Matthew Dembal Martin is a Ngarinyin/Wunambal man from the Bororrungarri dambun (clan) in the northern Kimberley. He is an important garnungga (singer) and jodnangga (dancer) for junba and wolungarri ceremony for Ngarinyin, Worrorra and Wunambal peoples. Matthew was grown up by the pre-eminent Ngarinyin/Wunambal composer and singer Scotty Nyalgodi Martin, who’s songs he is now taking on responsibility for leading. He represents Gibb River Road communities on the board of the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre and is the key consultant and advisor on the AIATSIS funded research project ‘Sustaining junba: recording and documenting endangered songs and dances in the northern Kimberley’.
Chris Matthews is from the Quandamooka people of Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), Queensland. He is Coordinator of Griffith University’s Indigenous Research Network. His practice and research are concerned with mathematics education and Indigenising curriculum in the Higher Education Sector as well as within the schooling system.
Gadj and Jodie Maymuru, are the developers of Sharing Culture. We’re not academics; we are parents and community people. Gadj had a traditional upbringing in northeast Arnhem Land and contributes his Yolngu language, stories, knowledge and protocols to our programs. Jodie has Maori heritage, was born in NZ and raised in PNG. Jodie has a Diploma in Multimedia and last year completed a Diploma in E-learning. The knowledge Jodie has gained through these courses have given her exposure to some great IT tools which have been especially useful for the development of Sharing Culture programs.
Julia Colleen Miller is a PhD Candidate at the University of Washington, currently on a research exchange at the Australian National University. Her dissertation topic focuses on the acoustic properties of lexical tone in the endangered First Nations language Dane-zaa (Athabaskan), spoken in NE British Columbia and NW Alberta, Canada. Other academic interests include: digital archiving of endangered languages, designing multiple access points to accommodate different types of users; creating practical language materials for community use from collected research recordings, including subtitled movies; pitch normalization methodologies; geographic information systems and dialect mapping.
Kaye Mundine is retired from her work at the City of Sydney. She spent many years in government and in the community developing policy on training and recognition of community needs. She is at present developing an online space for sharing Bundjalung resources.
Glenda Nalder’s ancestral connections are to the Ngugi people of the Quandamooka. She is a member of Griffith University’s Indigenous Research Network. Her practice and research are concerned with the construction of actual and virtual places for social and cultural exchange and learning.
Crighton Nichols is the Education and Research Manager at One Laptop per Child Australia, and a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney. At the intersection of his work and research is the desire to contribute to the capability of Indigenous peoples to design technological innovations they deem valuable.
Isabel O’Keeffe (nee Bickerdike) is a doctoral student at the University of Melbourne (Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics), a postgraduate researcher for the Western Arnhem Land song project and a casual ethnomusicology lecturer for Charles Darwin University (Darwin). In 2006 she spent 9 months based at Warruwi community, South Goulburn Island, recording and documenting Kun-barlang language and western Arnhem Land song traditions. More recently (May 2010) she took a group of Charles Darwin University students to Warruwi for fieldwork experience, working collaboratively with David and Jenny Manmurulu and their family.
Lyndon Ormond-Parker is a PhD candidate with the Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation and the Centre for Health and Society at the University of Melbourne, and a visiting research fellow with AIATSIS. Lyndon’s current academic research is on the application of ITC as a tool for the preservation of materials and local histories.
Gino Orticio was a research coordinator and information officer for the Philippine Partners’ Task Force for Indigenous Peoples’ Rights (www.eedtfip.org) from 2003 to 2008. Now permanently residing in Brisbane, Orticio is currently doing sessional academic work while pursuing his PhD in Sociology at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). His doctoral research focuses on the impact of the internet among the Kankanaey people in the Philippines.
Chris Rauchle is a PhD student with Macquarie University. Currently a Manager, Project Management Office with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia, he has been an Operations Director for television station Fox Sports, state IT manager for several legal firms and worked in Manufacturing and Education. He is interested in using social networking technologies and extending them to provide a mechanism for Indigenous communities to be able to use these technologies in a way that encodes and enforces special access control requirements related to Indigenous media.
Sandy O’Sullivan (ARC Research Fellow) is a proud member of the Wiradjuri Nation, Sandy works in the Research Division of Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education. Her work focuses on technology museum in museums, and the digital museum space. Her work focuses on ways that we might use new media and digital forms to create research outcomes that are both rigorous, culturally appropriate and meaningful for our cultural communities and our communities of practice. Sandy is an ALTC Teaching Fellow and current ARC Indigenous Research Fellow.
Steven Wanta Jampijinpa Patrick. At present, Steven is responsible for cultural advice between Lajamanu School and community. Additionally, he is involved in the cultural professional development of all staff within the School. His professional history includes: an award for most innovative curriculum in 2007; guest speaker at the WIPCE conference in Melbourne; international speaker at the ‘Indigenous Music and Dance as Cultural Property: Global Perspectives’ conference held in 2008 at Toronto, Canada; and also guest speaker at this year’s ‘Indigenous voices’ conference at Lyon, France. As founder of the Milpirri celebration 2005, which he developed in symposium with the tribal Elders and Tracks Dance Company, Steven is also involved deeply in the 2009 celebration. Having completed all his traditional ceremonies, he is well on his way to becoming a next generation elder of the Warlpiri people.
Barbara Paulson is a Mununtjali / Gungari woman. Currently a curator in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander program (ATSIP) at the National Museum of Australia. Barbara has worked and lived in many Aboriginal communities around Australia in differing positions such as artists, arts-worker, project worker, educator and cross- cultural liaison. Knowledge gained and developed while within those communities and positions is the reference point she uses in any role where she is actively representing First Australians culture, knowledge and stories.
Thomas Petzold is a doctoral candidate at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. He holds a BA Hons (Media Studies and Economics) from The Open University, Milton Keynes and an MA (Media Studies and Linguistics) from the European University Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder. He has a professional background in the creative industries working as an academic, journalist and media expert since the late 1990s. He has been awarded Commonwealth of Australia and European Union/German Government Scholarships to undertake research in the fields of culture, language and Internet, looking in particular at the uses of multilingualism in digital culture.
Peter Radoll is Director of the Jabal Indigenous Higher Education Centre at the Australian National University, and PhD candidate with the College of Business and Economics at ANU, examining the Adoption and Effective use of Information Communication Technologies in Australian Indigenous Communities. Prior to commencing at the Jabal Indigenous Higher Education Centre, Peter taught Information Systems in the College of Business and Economics. Peter is a member of the National Centre for Information Systems Research and his research interests include: Information Systems and Information Technology adoption, and Information Technology development projects in Australian Indigenous Communities.
Julie Reid began working on Victorian Aboriginal languages with Professor Barry Blake in the early 1990s. During the last few years Julie has been a research fellow at Monash University working on developing materials for the Aboriginal Languages of Victoria Web Resource Portal Project, alongside Heather Bowe and Kathy Lynch. Julie has also taught the Victorian Certificate of Education study design Indigenous Languages of Victoria: Revival and Reclamation at the Victorian School of Languages, and is a member of the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority’s Implementation Committee for this study design.
Muriel Swijghuisen Reigersberg obtained her PhD in applied ethnomusicology in 2009 from Roehampton University, London UK. Her research, funded by a Roehampton University scholarship, focused on the relationship between Indigenous Australian choral singing and constructs of identity. During her year’s fieldwork in Hopevale, Northern Queensland, Muriel facilitated the Hopevale Community Choir for whom she organized a four-day tour through Northern Queensland. This choir tour received Queensland Arts Council funding and media coverage through ABC radio. Muriel is currently publishing her research outcomes and investigating further research opportunities.
Neco Sarmento was educated in primary school in Siobada in Timor-Leste and secondary school at College Nuno Alveres, Soibada. He studied at the Catholic University Jakarta, seminary Nossa Fatima in Dare Timor-Leste. He left Timor- Leste in 1978 to study at High School in Central Java, and arrived Australia through Red Cross family reunion program in 1987. He continued studies in Sydney, graduating in nursing in 1999 and Master of Arts in Peace and Conflict Studies from Sydney University in 2002. In Australia from 1999-2001 he worked extensively with East Timorese refugees working with both INTERFET forces and the UN under the UNDP repatriation of refugees program in East Hills. Neco Sarmento is the nephew of the late Paulo Quintao da Costa.
Teague Schneiter is a media archivist and researcher who has worked extensively in film and video curating, programming and preservation in Australia, the US and Holland. She recently completed the Professional MA in Preservation & Presentation of the Moving Image at the University of Amsterdam, with a minor thesis focused on the ethics and politics of the presentation of Indigenous moving image archives online. Since completing her degree, she has worked for the international human rights video advocacy organization WITNESS, and is currently the DIAMA (Digitising the Inuit & Aboriginal Media Archive) Project Coordinator for the Montreal/Igloolik-based Indigenous media organization IsumaTV.
Robyn Sloggett is Director and Grimwade Chief Conservator of the Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation at the University of Melbourne. The Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation delivers Victoria’s largest commercial conservation program which includes programs in art, archive and artefact conservation services, and conservation management and art authentication programs. Robyn has qualifications in Art History, Philosophy and Applied Science (Cultural Materials Conservation). She is Chair of Arts Victoria’s Indemnification Committee, a member of the Collections Committee of the Library Board of the State Library of Victoria, an Expert Assessor under the Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act, and a member of the Australian Commercial Galleries Association Forgery Focus Group. At the University of Melbourne she is a member of the Cultural Collections Advisory Group, Associate Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Free Radical Chemistry & Biotechnology, and a member of the Centre for Accounting & Industry Partnerships Advisory Board. In 2003 she was awarded the AICCM’s Conservator of the Year Award for ‘Services to the Conservation Profession.
Peta Standley was born and grew up in North Queensland experiencing its rich cultural dialogue. This included spending a great deal of time in the natural environment. She completed a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Education through Griffith University and tutored for a short time at the Gumurri Centre in an Indigenous arts course before returning to the North in 1998. For six and a half years she worked for Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (QPWS) in Community Nature Conservation and Natural Resource Management in the Wet Tropics and Northern Gulf. During this time she did environmental education based volunteer work for conservation organisations and completed a Masters of Environmental Management through Griffith University. This activity led to her present PhD research study through James Cook University with the TKRP Kuku Thaypan Fire Management Research Project. Peta has over fifteen years experience working with grassroots Indigenous and non-Indigenous organisations in the fields of cultural and environmental resource management and education. She is affiliated with James Cook University School of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the School of Arts and Social Sciences and is supported also by CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems Division. She is the TKRP KTFMRP co-generative researcher and co-author of the related thesis ‘The Importance of Campfires to Effective Conservation Communication.’
Victor Steffensen is the co-founder and Director of the Traditional Knowledge Revival Pathways program in North Queensland, Australia. Being a part of people and country through his Mothers roots to country, he has always dedicated himself to strengthening Indigenous Knowledge for healthy country and people. Over many years of experience with land and cultural management, Victor has developed trustful relationships with many Indigenous communities from all over Australia. All Indigenous communities share the concern to the loss of traditional knowledge through our Elders passing on before they can hand down the knowledge to benefit the next generations. This great concern lead Victor to work in the idea of re-enforcing traditional knowledge using digital technology, while supporting the traditional transfer with the practical application for the preservation of environment and cultural well-being.
Steve Sydenham is an IT professional with extensive experience developing software solution for asset management applications. He has worked for large multi-nationals and innovative Australian based software houses and is now Director of Resource Governance Solutions, an Australian software development company that focuses on specialised asset management applications.
Suraya Bin Talib is a descendant of the Bardi and Nyul Nyul tribe from the Dampier Peninsular in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Suraya has a degree in Social Science (Indigenous Community Management and Development) from Curtin University in Perth after completing in 2008 and has extensive working experience working in Government and non-Government organisations within the area of Education, Training and Employment in various locations around the Kimberly (such as Fitzroy Crossing and Halls Creek), Darwin, Ballarat, Melbourne and Broome. In 2007, Suraya commenced with Kimberley TAFE as a Indigenous Projects Lecturer delivering Indigenous Housing Management System (IHMS) training to housing officers and managers across the Kimberley. She later took on the permanent role of Governance Lecturer within the Business faculty and is responsible for delivering Certificate I, II and III in Business units, Certificate IV in Business (Governance), Certificate I in Leadership to VET in Schools students in Year 10 and does customer service training in Hospitality. Suraya’s delivery methods encompass using Information Technology through black board which she sees as a critical development in her Lecturing as due to the geographical isolation of the Kimberley, it is critical to ensure that all Indigenous people have quality and timely access to vocational education and training which is not limited to the traditional means such as the classroom setting.
Maxwell Japanangka Tasman is a Warlpiri man from Lajamanu. He did his schooling at Lajamanu and Kormilda College in Darwin. He finished Year 11 at Lajamanu School in 2006. In 2006 he started learning Warlpiri literacy and became interested in media work. Since then he has done informal media training through PAW Media and Communications and is doing media training through Batchelor Institute. Maxwell has worked on a number of film projects including the Milpirri Festival and the Warlpiri Education and Training Trust DVD (2009) for Central Land Council. Maxwell does regular broadcasts on PAW Radio and is employed by the Central Desert Shire to work on media and digital archiving projects for the Lajamanu Library and Knowledge Centre. He has been a research collaborator on the ARC Linkage Project Lifespan Learning and Literacy for Young Adults in Remote Indigenous Communities since 2007.
Hirini Tane is a post-graduate student at the University of Auckland specialising in archaeology, heritage and Maori entrepreneurship. He has lectured on Maori subjects to workshops over the last two years and mentors undergraduate students. Most recently he has been a researcher for a government-funded University project on developing a web 2.0 cultural internet resource for schools. He is also involved in the preparation of a tribal treaty claim concerning the lands of his people Ngati Rahiri and Ngati Kawa in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand.
Nick Thieberger is a linguist who has worked with speakers of Warnman, from Western Australia and South Efate, a language from central Vanuatu, for which he developed a method for citing archival recordings created during fieldwork, presenting a DVD of playable example sentences and texts in the language together with the published grammar. He is the project officer with the multi-institutional Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC.org. au) an archiving project that holds 2,4540 hours of digitised audio files. He is interested in developments in e-humanities methods and their potential to improve research practice and his main focus now is on developing methods for reation of reusable data sets from fieldwork on previously unrecorded languages. He is an Australian Research Council QEII Fellow at the University of Melbourne and an Assistant Professor in the linguistics department at the University of Hawai’i.
Sabra Thorner is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Anthropology and Program in Culture and Media at New York University (NYU). Her dissertation research focuses on Indigenous photography and new media. She began work at Ara Irititja in August 2009 as part of her doctoral fieldwork, and has become an integral member of the team, conducting research and writing, compiling a history of the organization, developing long-term strategies for its self-sufficiency, and contributing her documentary and cross-cultural communications skills to a recent fieldtrip through Ara Irititja’s remote communities. She first travelled to Australia in 1999 as an undergraduate exchange student; as a Fulbright scholar, she completed a Master of Arts in Australian Studies at the University of Melbourne in 2003. Her graduate work at NYU has included four years of advanced coursework, universitylevel teaching and mentoring, grant-writing, and intensive film-making training. As a Research Officer at the Ara Irititja Project, Sabra works on documenting and recording the project’s activities, grant-writing and external development, and assistance in the delivery of new archives and associated training.
Kirsten Thorpe is employed as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Data Archive (ATSIDA) Project Officer at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). The ATSIDA Project Officer is responsible for developing ways to locate and incorporate research data on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people into the ATSIDA data archive.Previously Kirsten was employed by State Records NSW (SRNSW) as the Archivist-Aboriginal Liaison (1999–2009). Kirsten’s work involved assisting Indigenous people to gain access to historical records held as State Archives and is a point of contact for Aboriginal people making enquiries about accessing the State’s archives. Since the establishment of the NSW Aboriginal Trust Fund Scheme (ATFRS), Kirsten had been responsible for coordinating the research at State Records NSW to assist the verification of claims submitted via the ATFRS Unit based in the Department of Premier and Cabinet. She is a descendant of the Worimi people of Port Stephens NSW and is descended from the Manton, Feeneys and Newlins. Kirsten is a professional member of the Australian Society of Archivists and an Executive Member of the Indigenous Issues Special Interest Group (IISIG). Kirsten is a recipient of the Monash Indigenous Archives Scholarship studying a Masters of Information Management and Systems (MIMS) through the Faculty of Information Technology.
Terry Tobias has been helping indigenous groups in Canada with their use-and-occupancy research (mapping, quantitative harvest surveys, traditional ecological knowledge studies, etc) for close to 30 years. In recent years he has focussed much of his energies on producing not-for-profit instructional materials, the latest of which is a 468-page text, “Living Proof, the Essential Data-Collection Guide for Indigenous Use-and-Occupancy Map Surveys.” Over the past four years Terry has assisted the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations in their successful efforts to trial Canadian use-and-occupancy mapping methodology in the Murray-Darling Basin.
Helen Travers has worked in Indigenous Population Health interventions for the last thirteen years, mainly in disadvantaged, remote communities in Cape York, managing projects across Aboriginal community-controlled, government and academic sectors to address priority health issues including sexual, maternal and child, and mental health. She has had ten years experience overseeing the expansion of HITnet, the Health Interactive Technology Network (www. hitnet.com.au), an innovative new-media network across remote Indigenous Australia, with 68 community-based touchscreen sites delivering interactive TV-like health information – interactive films, music, documentaries, games and animations – to people in need.
Sally Treloyn is a John McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow in Ethnomusicology in the School of Music at The University of Melbourne and Coordinator of the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia. She received a PhD from The University of Sydney in 2007 for work on junba song and dance from the northern Kimberley and is currently working with Ngarinyin elders on the AIATSIS funded research project ‘Sustaining Junba: recording and documenting endangered songs and dances in the northern Kimberley’.
Helen Rrikawuku Yunupiŋu is an experienced Yolŋu linguist and a Literacy Worker at Shepherdson College, Galiwin’ku. Over the past two decades, she has extensively researched and recorded the endangered Yolŋu tradition of women’s milkarri ‘crying’ songs, and has worked closely with the ethnomusicologists Fiona Magowan and Aaron Corn.
Robyn van Dyk is the Senior Curator of Published and Digitised Records at the Australian War Memorial. Her work at the Memorial involves the development, management and preservation of the Memorial’s digital collections and the provision of access to these collections including developing control and context. In the course of her work she has communicated broadly on issues of digital collection management including copyright, digital born collections, Digital asset management systems, Australian military history and published several articles on Australian Military History and copyright.
Michael Walsh. Since 1972, Michael has carried out fieldwork in the Top End of the Northern Territory, mainly in the Darwin- Daly region. This has been a mixture of academic endeavours as well as consultancies since 1979 mainly relating to Aboriginal land issues. From 1999 he has been involved in the revitalization of Aboriginal languages in NSW. From 1982 up till the end of 2005 he was part of the teaching staff of the Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney. Since then, as an Honorary Associate, he has continued his research interests especially through a large ARC grant involving a team of linguists and musicologists running from 2004 to 2009 [http://azoulay.arts.usyd.edu.au/mpsong/]. This project aims to document the song traditions of the Murriny Patha people and was triggered by community concern to preserve these traditions for future generations.
Neil Ward, Director, Indigenous Engagement Section, Murray-Darling Basin Authority, has over twenty years’ experience working in land management agencies in south eastern Australia and the Northern Territory, primarily focussing on integrated approaches to conservation and natural resource management. He has held State-wide policy level positions as well as regionally-based operational roles which have ensured he has maintained a practical understanding of land and water management issues. With the realisation many years ago that meaningful Indigenous involvement was integral to good land management, since 1990 he has been working to increase the level of Indigenous engagement and empowerment in natural resource management. A major focus of his current role with the Murray-Darling Basin Authority is to introduce use-and-occupancy mapping as a tool to assist Indigenous people articulate their contemporary relationship with land and water and to help improve the dialogue between professional land managers and Indigenous people.
Benjamin Wilfred leads the Australian Art Orchestra’s Young Wagilak Group. His father’s father was the eminent Yolŋu elder and artist, Sambo Barabara, from whom he inherited learning and authority for the Wagilak manikay ‘song’ repertoire, which forms a basis for his collaborative work with the Australian Art Orchestra (AAO), Crossing Roper Bar. He was raised at Ngukurr in southeast Arnhem Land and now works locally as a Yugul-Mangi Ranger.
Desmond Wilfred is lead singer for the Australian Art Orchestra’s Young Wagilak Group. He is highly-trained in the performance of the Wagilak manikay ‘song’ repertoire, which forms a basis for his collaborative work with the Australian Art Orchestra (AAO), and he specialises in the study and realisation of the older styles of singing heard among very old men.
Tikka Wilson is the Manager of Multimedia and Web at the National Museum of Australia. Before coming to the Museum four years ago she was the Managing Editor of the National Archives of Australia website and worked in a publications unit at the Australian National University.
Wukun Wanambi, Cultural Director, is a middle-aged man of increasing importance as a leader of his Marrakulu clan. Wukun’s status as a ceremonial man of his people qualifies him to liaise with other leaders in the Miwatj region and to handle sensitive materials that form Mulka’s archive. This point was discussed and considered very carefully with Wukun and other leaders. He now leads a group of young Mulka project officers archiving ceremony of the region.
Shane Jupurrurla White is a Warlpiri man from Lajamanu. He went to school at Lajamanu and Yuendumu and completed Year 10 at Kormilda College in Darwin. He taught himself to read and write in Warlpiri as a young man. He starting picking up media skills by watching and learning and doing some informal training with PAW Media and Communications and is doing media training through Batchelor Institute. He and Maxwell have developed their skills by working on media projects and having access to the equipment in the BRACS room at Lajamanu. He has filmed and edited a number of music videos with local musicians and cultural documentaries with elders. He has worked on a number of film projects including filming the Milpirri Festival and the Warlpiri Education and Training Trust DVD (2009) for Central Land Council. He is employed by the Central Desert Shire to work on media and digital archiving projects for the Lajamanu Library and Knowledge Centre. He has been a research collaborator on the ARC Linkage Project Lifespan Learning and Literacy for Young Adults in Remote Indigenous Communities since 2007.