Archival Returns: Central Australia and Beyond

(Paperback)

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Place-based cultural knowledge of ceremonies, songs, stories, language, kinship and ecology binds Australian Indigenous societies together. Over the last 100 years or so, records of this knowledge in many different formats audiocassettes, photographs, films, written texts, maps, and digital recordings have been accumulating at an ever-increasing rate. Yet this extensive documentary heritage is dispersed. In many cases, the Indigenous people who participated in the creation of the records, or their descendants, have little idea of where to find the records or how to access them. Some records are held precariously in ad hoc collections, and their caretakers may be perplexed as to how to ensure that they are looked after.

Archival Returns: Central Australia and Beyond explores the strategies and practices by which cultural heritage materials can be returned to their communities of origin, and the issues this process raises for communities, as well as for museums, galleries, and other cultural institutions.

Reviews

reveals layers of complexity in the deceptively simple process of repatriation or archival return ... important for folklorists, ethnomusicologists, archivists, and anthropologists working with Aboriginal communities and cultural-heritage materials, but it warrants attention from a broader audience ... highlights tangible and inspiring efforts to decolonize the work of cultural-heritage institutions.

Author Bio

Linda Barwick is a musicologist and professor at the University of Sydneys Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

Jennifer Green is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Melbourne. She has worked for over four decades with Indigenous people in Central Australia documenting languages, cultural history, art, social organisation and connections to country.

Petronella Vaarzon-Morel is an anthropologist with long-term experience working with Warlpiri and other Indigenous peoples in Central Australia. She is an honorary research associate at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the University of Sydney.