Exploring Power: Aboriginal Artefacts and Records in Australian Libraries and Archives (original) (raw)
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Papers of the 2nd European Conference on Literature and Librarianship: 51-65. ISSN: 2186-2281, 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 ‘ownership’ of knowledge (exploring how every citizen can contribute to the restoration of power to facilitate the ‘return’ of knowledge to traditional owners). This paper aims to, through these three brief narratives, highlight some of the historical issues that construct common views around Indigenous collections. In addition, this paper seeks to demonstrate the many opportunities that arise from exploring tensions that may be evident in library and archive collections. It will also explore how staff from diverse backgrounds can be professionally engaged to promote and explore, in strategic and thoughtful ways, Aboriginal materials in libraries and archives.
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?
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.
Navigating Copyright for Libraries
Concerns for the appropriate protection and management of Indigenous people's heritage materials held in Australian cultural institutions is increasing. Across the galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) sector, many institutions are beginning to examine ways to redress and reconcile tensions that have resulted from the long histories of imperial and colonial expansion across the world. Libraries are reflecting on their roles in the dislocation and dispersal of cultural heritage materials from Indigenous peoples and communities. Indigenous peoples worldwide face an inability to control their cultural heritage materials held in collecting institutions, and the existing legal frameworks do not support Indigenous people's aspirations and self-determination. The inadequacy of existing legal frameworks relates to ownership, moral rights and copyright. This chapter discusses the protection of Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) rights in relation to libraries, focusing on Australia's current approaches to ICIP in the library sector. It outlines key literature concerning the protection of Indigenous people's rights to culture and heritage and provides a broad context to the challenges of working with cultural heritage materials and past collecting practices which lacked an ethical basis and informed consent. The gaps concerning the application of ICIP in the library sector are identified along with the need for further research. The chapter presents examples of good practice in building support for the use of appropriate ICIP rights in Australia and provides instances of how information professionals have navigated the protection of ICIP rights across the wide range of collecting institutions in Australia, including public, academic and special libraries, and galleries, archives and museums. Principles for navigating respectful practice in ICIP rights in Australian libraries are provided for use by information professionals. Four case studies on projects in the galleries, libraries, archives and museums sector are provided to demonstrate what can be achieved.
Navigating Copyright for Libraries, 2022
Concerns for the appropriate protection and management of Indigenous people's heritage materials held in Australian cultural institutions is increasing. Across the galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) sector, many institutions are beginning to examine ways to redress and reconcile tensions that have resulted from the long histories of imperial and colonial expansion across the world. Libraries are reflecting on their roles in the dislocation and dispersal of cultural heritage materials from Indigenous peoples and communities. Indigenous peoples worldwide face an inability to control their cultural heritage materials held in collecting institutions, and the existing legal frameworks do not support Indigenous people's aspirations and self-determination. The inadequacy of existing legal frameworks relates to ownership, moral rights and copyright. This chapter discusses the protection of Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) rights in relation to libraries, focusing on Australia's current approaches to ICIP in the library sector. It outlines key literature concerning the protection of Indigenous people's rights to culture and heritage and provides a broad context to the challenges of working with cultural heritage materials and past collecting practices which lacked an ethical basis and informed consent. The gaps concerning the application of ICIP in the library sector are identified along with the need for further research. The chapter presents examples of good practice in building support for the use of appropriate ICIP rights in Australia and provides instances of how information professionals have navigated the protection of ICIP rights across the wide range of collecting institutions in Australia, including public, academic and special libraries, and galleries, archives and museums. Principles for navigating respectful practice in ICIP rights in Australian libraries are provided for use by information professionals. Four case studies on projects in the galleries, libraries, archives and museums sector are provided to demonstrate what can be achieved.
Recently, archivists and librarians have been advocating for and re-affirming their role in the documentation and preservation of indigenous knowledge (IK). Whilst literature on this position abounds, we argue in this article that archivists and librarians are running the risk of imposing themselves on a system that “naturally” preserves itself. In face of the challenges that these collecting professionals encounter in trying to document IK, coupled with the nature of IK itself, we argue that IK should be left to “preserve” itself as it has always done. We argue that IK is a complex subject matter that can be equated to an ecosystem and has natural means of preserving and multiplying itself. We further argue that IK is naturally resilient to forces of extinction and efforts by librarians and archivists, which employ scientific methods of documentation and preservation, are actually detrimental to IK. Although such efforts may appear to be the talk of the day, they are actually incompatible with IK and archivists and librarians may be wasting efforts by preserving something that otherwise “naturally” documents and preserves itself in a variety of means, including language, traditional ceremonies, books (novels) and other “natural” means. We therefore conclude that IK is an ethnographical issue that should otherwise be left to take care of itself in local indigenous knowledge systems (IKS).
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.