Distrust in the archive: reconciling records (original) (raw)

Australian Indigenous knowledge and the archives: embracing multiple ways of knowing and keeping

Archives and manuscripts, 2010

Sue is engaged in major research initiatives relating to the use of metadata in records and archival systems, information resource discovery, and Indigenous archiving. She directs the postgraduate teaching programs in records and archives at Monash University, has published extensively on recordkeeping in society, records continuum theory, recordkeeping metadata, and archival systems, and is a Laureate of the Australian Society of Archivists.

Indigenous knowledge and the archives: designing trusted archival systems for Koorie communities

Archives and …, 2006

Fiona Ross has worked in a range of recordkeeping and information management roles over the last fifteen years, including positions at the Public Record Office Victoria, Victoria Police, the University of Melbourne and Monash University. She was a Research Fellow on the Trust and Technology Project in 2004 and 2005, investigating the outcomes of the user needs study and their implications for archival systems and frameworks. Professor Sue McKemmish, PhD, is Chair of Archival Systems, Monash University, and Director of the Monash University Centre for Organisational and Social

Australian Indigenous knowledge and the archives

Archives & Manuscripts, 2010

2019. "For the children …": Aboriginal Australia, cultural access, and archival obligation

Croft, Brenda, Toussaint, Sandy, Meakins, Felicity, & McConvell, Patrick. (2019). In L. Barwick, J. Green, & P. Vaarzon-Morel (Eds.), Archival returns: Central Australia and beyond (pp. ). Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press., 2019

For whom are archival documents created and conserved? Who is obliged to care for them and provide access to their content, and for how long? e state, libraries, museums and galleries, researchers, interlocutors, genealogists, family heritage organisations? Or does material collected long ago and then archived belong personally, socially, emotionally, culturally, and intellectually to the people from whom the original material was collected and, eventually, to their descendants? In a colonised nation, additional ethical and epistemological questions arise: Are archives protected and accessed for the colonised or the colonisers, or both? How are di erences regarding archival creation, protection, and access distinguished, and in whose interest? Is it for future generations? What happens when archives are accessed and read by family members and/or researchers, and what happens when they are not? A focus on two interrelated stories – rstly an experiential account narrated by Brenda L Cro about constructive archival management and access, and secondly a contrasting example relating how the Berndt Field Note Archive continues to be restricted from entitled claimants – facilitates a return to three interrelated questions: for whom are archives created and conserved, who is obliged to care for, and authorise access to, them, and to whom do they belong?

Conundrums and consequences: Doing digital archival returns in Australia

Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication, 2019

The practices of archival return may provide some measure of social equity to Indigenous Australians. Yet priceless cultural collections, amassed over many decades, are in danger of languishing without ever finding reconnection to the individuals and communities of their origin. The extensive documentary heritage of Australian Indigenous peoples is dispersed, and in many cases participants in the creation of archival records, or their descendants, have little idea of where to find these records. These processes of casting memories of the past into the future bring various conundrums of a social, political, and technical nature. They raise questions about the nature and dynamics of ongoing cultural transmission, the role of institutional and community archives in both protecting records of languages, song, and social history and disseminating them, and the responsibilities of researchers, organisations, and end users in this complex intercultural space. These questions are perforce framed by ethical and legal questions about access, competing ideas of ownership, and shifting community protocols surrounding rights of access to and the dissemination of cultural information. This paper arises from a project designed to reintegrate such research collections of Central Australian cultural knowledge with the places and communities from which they originally emanated. While we show that the issues raised are seldom neutral and often complex, we also argue for the power that culturally appropriate mobilisation of archival materials has for those that inherit the knowledge they embody.

Indigenous archiving and wellbeing: surviving, thriving, reconciling

Community Archives, Community Spaces: Heritage, Memory and Identity, 2020

Too often, Australia’s mainstream discourse continues to be written and crafted to endorse and valorise the actions of an often-violent past, whilst disregarding the effects of the brutal systems of colonisation upon Indigenous Australian peoples. The authors acknowledge the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities across Australia and use the term ‘Indigenous Australian’in this chapter to refer to the First Peoples of Australia. Various forms of trauma continue to impact upon many Indigenous Australian people, families and communities, contributing to ongoing discrimination and disadvantage (Atkinson, 2002). Cultural trauma is where a collective group is affected by a horrendous event that irrevocably marks memory and changes identity forever (Alexander, 2004). It is impossible to be an Indigenous Australian today and not be connected in some way to individual and collective experiences of invasion and colonisation. As is so often the case, recordkeeping and archiving play a crucial role in the progression of colonial and oppressive regimes. Australia’s government and collecting archival institutions manage this legacy, evidencing colonisation, not just in their archival holdings, but also in how these holdings are appraised, described, managed and made accessible. As Indigenous Australians in the second half of the 20th century have sought access to records in institutional archives that document their lives, they have re-confronted not just the trauma in the records, but in the edifices and apparatuses around them. Moreover, when Indigenous peoples interact with archival materials that tell stories through a …

Exploring Power: Aboriginal Artefacts and Records in Australian Libraries and Archives

2015

Knowledge is power. By extension, the language utilised to control, disseminate and record knowledge can actively challenge, or sustain, existing power dynamics. In libraries and archives across Australia the power over Aboriginal artefacts and records is complicated by competing interests, various approaches to collection development and management as well as a constantly changing political context. This paper explores the idea of power, in the context of Indigenous collections, through three diverse points of view that serve to highlight some of the ethical and logistical issues that circulate around three key areas: reclaiming power (exploring how Aboriginal communities can connect with historical texts documenting culture, language and events to understand the past and inform the future); returning power (exploring the role of cultural institutions in the digital return of cultural patrimony and enabling connections with collections); and giving up claims to power and the ‘owner...

Distrust in the archive: reconciling records (original) (raw)

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