Cultural heritage and transmission
Projects relating to cultural heritage and transmission are listed below.
Access to Knowledge/Creative Commons Movements
Researchers: Jane Anderson and Kathy Bowrey (UNSW)
This work invites critical reflection upon the cultural agendas produced through networks of power and imaginary politics within the commons movement. It asks what or where is the public interest in the production of an information commons and whether there is scope for recognising that the public is not all of one kind? The central concern for this research that the ‘common’ ground upon which the access to knowledge movement (A2K) seeks to tread, that is, the notion of humanity sharing a commons, is actually a fault line of significant proportions that involves colonial and post-colonial conflict, politics, power, economics and histories of human relationships.
Emerging Social Authorities Generated Through IP Law
Researcher: Jane Anderson
Intellectual Property and Indigenous Knowledge: Access and Control of Cultural Materials
Researcher: Jane Anderson
The outcomes from this project include a significant research report, Guidelines on the Legal Implications of Intellectual Property for Cultural Institutions, and a Framework for Protocols for IP and Indigenous Communities. These documents target the discrete practical needs of Indigenous communities and their engagement with cultural institutions across the country. The Guidelines seek to raise the standard of institutional responsibility in their relations with Indigenous people, communities and cultural materials. The Framework for Protocols will address practical community needs and expectations around intellectual property law, and control of knowledge between individuals, communities and external researchers.
The Australian Collaboration funded Success in Indigenous Communities project
Researchers: Julie Finlayson, Jo Lunzer (Research Assistant)
AIATSIS has been funded by the Australian Collaboration and other organisations to conduct research of factors that lead to success in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations. The results of the pilot study for this project are published in Success in Aboriginal Communities: A Pilot Study, Australian Collaboration/AIATSIS, Canberra, 2004 (2 Vols). Dr Julie Finlayson is the primary researcher and author of that study. Prof. Larissa Behrendt, AIATSIS Council; Emeritus Professor David Yencken, The Australian Collaboration; ATSIC representatives; and Dr Luke Taylor, AIATSIS comprised the Steering Committee for the Stage 1 project. AIATSIS is currently conducting the Stage 2 study with support from Aboriginal Affairs Victoria, the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, Reconciliation Australia and the Australian Collaboration. Mr Geoff Scott and Dr Peter Veth, AIATSIS have been added to the Steering Committee and Ms Jo Lunzer is assisting Dr Julie Finlayson with the research.
Aboriginal song cycles from the Simpson Desert and the Cooper: An integrated linguistic and musicological study
Researcher: Grace Koch
Grace Koch is working with Dr Luise Hercus on a three-year ARC grant to analyse and document song cycles of the Wangkangurru people of the Lake Eyre Basin.
In the 1960s and early 1970, Luise Hercus recorded considerable data on Aboriginal traditions in the north-eastern part of the Lake Eyre Basin from elders, now deceased. Some of the song texts match up with those written down by Police Trooper Samuel Gason in 1879 and by J.G. Reuther more than 6 decades earlier. Analysis of this data provides the basis for the project, the aim of which is to make a detailed analysis of the most important Wangkangurru song-cycles.
The work will provide detailed musicological and linguistic analysis for endangered language material, filling in a gap in knowledge of the geographical area inhabited by Wangkangurru people. We have arranged for digitisation of the tapes held by Hercus and are producing a volume incorporating a textual analysis of the songs, musical transcription, mapping and a study of the song styles. Also, we hope to produce a CD of the songs, in conjunction with the wishes of the community.
At present, two song series, Fish and Crane and Two Boys, have been notated and documented linguistically and historically.
The Future of Connection Material
Researcher: Grace Koch
Connection material generated by native title claims is of great value, not only to claimants, but to the wider community because it offers a valuable contribution to Australian history, anthropology, sociology, land management and other disciplines. With this in mind, a plan needs to be created for both present and future care of the material.
In April-May 2005 the Native Title Research and Access Officer, Grace Koch surveyed Native Title Representative Bodies (NTRBs) to find out about current storage practices and plans for the future of documents that have been either collected or generated by the native title process. The second part of the survey asked for ideas as to how AIATSIS could assist NTRBs with these matters. NTRBs are interested in developing a coordinated approach to the care, handling and future security storage of the documents they create. Access, copyright and other ownership issues will also need to be resolved as well.
This project is based in NTRU. See here for further details.
Smart kids Managing Schooling
Researcher: Anthea Jo Taylor
This research project involves conducting an ethnography, through a focus group of Indigenous children, and tracking their progress through kindergarten, pre-primary and year one to identify what spaces exist for cultural transmission and cultural reproduction in the mainstream school in urban settings. This project seeks to identify and understand important points of potential implicit and explicit tension for Indigenous children in this socio-cultural interface. Specifically the study will focus on three interrelated aspects of cultural transmission - language, interaction style(s) and power (and authority) - and aims to discern cultural understandings in the communicative language, literacy and interaction of Indigenous students, their parents and the Aboriginal and Islander education workers (AIEWs and ALOs) with whom they are associating, teachers and non-Indigenous children. A particular emphasis of this project is the development of ways to make findings and resultant understandings accessible and of practical use to education practitioners.
It is planned to undertake blocks of participant observation for extended periods (8-10 weeks) during first and fourth terms for two and a half to three years and to visit the sites for occasional days to ensure that children, their parents and caregivers remain familiar with the researcher over the period of the research.
"Evaluation of Kuninjku bark painting"
Researcher: Luke Taylor
Luke Taylor is currently conducting field research with Kuninjku artists to complete a detailed paper on Kuninjku aesthetic evaluation of paintings and on the use of colour for the “Re-materialising Colour” symposium to be held at the CRC, ANU in September 2006.
"John Mawurndjul - Image - World - Landscape an Intercultural Symposium on Aboriginal Art in an Interdisciplinary Perspective"
Researcher: Luke Taylor
The symposium was held in September 2005 to accompany the exhibition Rarrk, John Mawurndjul, Journey Through Time in Northern Australia at the Museum Tinguely, Basel and the Sprengel Museum, Hannover. The symposium was designed to consider theoretical issues concerning the research of world arts and the global art market. Luke Taylor has been writing about Kuninjku artists from an anthropological perspective since the early 1980s and the symposium provided an opportunity to reveal how Kuninjku artistic practice involves manipulations of form and meaning to address both Kuninjku and global audiences. Essays associated with the exhibition are now available in the published catalogue. The presentations at the symposium are currently being prepared for publication.
"Mumeka to Milmilngkan: Innovation in Kurulk Art, 1979-2006"
Researcher: Luke Taylor
This is an exhibition being developed by Professor Jon Altman, CAEPR, ANU and Ms Appoline Kohen, Maningrida Arts and Culture, at the behest of the Kuninjku artist John Mawurndjul. The exhibition will open at the ANU Drill Hall Gallery on 2nd November 2006. The exhibition will focus on the art work of three brothers of the Kurulk clan; Jimmy Njiminjuma, John Mawurndjul and James Iyuna who have had a long association with research by Prof. Altman. Luke Taylor has also worked with these artists and will be researching the development of personal innovations in their styles of painting. Luke presented a paper “Negotiating Form among Kuninjku Bark Painters” at the CCR, ANU, “Informing Art” series and will develop this for an essay in the exhibition catalogue.
Indigenous Landscapes on the Canning Stock Route
Researcher: Peter Veth
Peter has carried out research on Aboriginal use of the Canning Stock Route for over 20 years. Located in the Little, Great and Sandy Deserts most work has focussed on the archaeology, ethnoeconomics, contact history and totemic geography of this remote portion of the Western Desert. Work has been carried out with Martu people from communities such as Jigalong, Kunawariji, Parngurr, Wiluna and further north on the CSR. Collaborative projects in the past have involved dating occupational history, studying plant use and firing regimes, documenting rock art in its economic and totemic context and recording contact narratives from people who made contact with 'outsiders' as late as the mid-`1970s. Current research focuses on collaboration with Ngaanyatjarra Land Council, management stakeholders and rock art/anthropological colleagues in the development of a management and interpretive strategy for the Canning Stock Route. This will form the basis of an ARC Linkage bid in the October 2007 Round and is planned to run from 2008-2010.
Strangers on the Shore: first contacts between Indigenous Australians and outsiders
Researcher: Peter Veth
A Conference by this title was held at the National Australian Museum at end of march 2006. Its main aim was to examine and give voice to Indigenous experiences of first contacts with outside colonial and commercial regimes and to explore the diversity and dynamics of these encounters. The Conference had 16 invited papers (Plenaries by Professors Dodson, Langton and Mulvaney) and Discussants Drs Ian Keen, Nancy Munn and Mr Steve Kinnane. Case studies were presented from all over Australia - from the Dutch in 1606, the Macassans, through to the French in Tasmania and the English off the eastern seaboard. The proceedings will be published as a major volume by the national Museum of Australia and is scheduled to be edited by a team co-ordinated by Peter Veth.
Cultural Heritage Tourism
Researcher: Graeme K Ward
The growing field of cultural heritage tourism involving Indigenous Australian places is the subject of the current research; my particular focus concerns potential costs versus benefits to Indigenous communities. A major part of this is developing awareness and assessment of the impact of tourism on heritage places, especially sites with rock-markings, which are a strong tourist focus. There is increasing appreciation that such Indigenous places need to be properly managed and conserved in order to protect the interests of Indigenous custodians, and to be able to sustain continuing visitation. ‘Cultural heritage tourism management’ ranges between the minutiae of ‘condition reporting’ and related conservation measures through techniques of visitor management, to questions of ownership and control of use of intellectual property. Research in all these areas, and implementation of a series of applied projects, was supported by AIATSIS under its Rock Art Protection Program over the last two decades; results of this program can provide a substantial basis for protection and management advice and development of management plans where required.
In a series of fieldwork- and desk-based projects, I am exploring recent developments where cultural heritage tourism is underway or planned. The aim is to develop an understanding of the Indigenous group’s perception of the scope, likely benefits and costs, and their rights and responsibilities in engaging in cultural heritage tourism; of the likely effects of visitation upon cultural heritage places and the requirements for their management; and to monitor these and other aspects as planning and development takes place. I am also liaising with tour operators based in Darwin who are interacting or attempting to deal with groups in the Wadeye area.