Paper short abstract:

Reconnecting and recontextualising museum collections with communities is a vital process in ensuring a future for museums and collections. This paper focuses on the 1912-1922 Oenpelli paintings at Museums Victoria – and addresses the impact of artist identification for community members.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation communicates new research relating to the Oenpelli (Gunbalanya) collection of bark paintings acquired by Baldwin Spencer and Paddy Cahill between 1912 and 1922. As was common at the time, and for decades following, the name of artists was not recorded for the Oenpelli bark paintings and little cultural information was documented. Working in collaboration with local community members, we aim to bring Aboriginal identity, cultural knowledge, and individual artists to the forefront of the collection. Using interdisciplinary research methods, we are looking for evidence beyond the standard archive to recontextualise the collection.

Paper short abstract:

Rob and Shannon will share Gunai Kurnai cultural resurgence when bringing Ancestor remains into the Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place collection, and, on the other hand, the frustrations of of colonial archive elisions. Both examples relate to people who lived at Ramahyuck mission in the 1880s.

Paper long abstract:

Rev. Hagenauer established the Ramahyuck mission on Gunai Kurnai Country in 1863 (until 1908). In 1884. Ferdinand von Mueller took cuttings of the hair of residents, which were sent to create collections in Germany until their return to the Keeping Place in 2020. Rob will share the story of how he and other community members understood how the hair of the Old People needed to be brought home, and the vital role of the Keeping Place in this ongoing process.

While this specific return of the hair of people who had been forced to live at Ramahyuck nourished Community, the Community was simultaneously pained by being unable to find any Moravian records detailing the exact grave sites of ancestors in Ramahyuck’s cemetery. Moravian missionaries organised grave sites by social position and gender of the individuals rather than family group, and Ramahyuck gravesites have no headstones. This situation is a tangible example of the painful difference between Gunai Kurnai ways of knowing family and culture and a colonial way of organising and archiving people that thwarts contemporary Community knowledge. Ramahyuck, as with other missions, remains a site of ambivalence in multiple ways, having been both prison and refuge when it operated, and becoming a site that white settlers have desecrated since its closure. The Moravian burial organisation compounds Gunai Kurnai difficulties of relating to the site. Shannon will speak about the ongoing struggle to identify Ancestors’ gravesites and ways around and alongside colonial foreclosures.

Paper short abstract:

Cross-cultural relationships are inevitable and necessary part of maintaining and caring for collections in source communities. This presentation discusses the history of a community collection to illuminate some core tensions in the cultural heritage management process.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on fieldwork in the east Kimberley community of Warrmarn, Western Australia, this presentation discusses the intricacies of the 'life' of the Warmun Community Collection; specifically, how it engages in various trajectories and articulates with different value systems, at the same time as being enriched and unsettled by a range of local Gija perspectives. In the presentation, I show how the Collection has been a vehicle for Gija value creation processes which are ongoing, and highlight the complexities that have arisen between people, such as negotiating differences, priorities, needs and cultural protocols. The research has found that time and space are needed for the owners and the community to determine the future of their Collection, as objects are (re)valued, as new ones are added and, as importance is placed on the process of making and using as much as for holding and conserving. The presentation aims to contribute to the broader field of research and discussion about managing relationships between museums and art institutions with source communities.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores affordances and strains in approaching knowledge as sentient and relational via a project seeking to resocialise a large body of (archival and museum) research materials created by Japanese researchers about Torres Strait Islander community life fifty years ago.

Paper long abstract:

Our paper explores the stresses and strains, excitement and joy of translating, analysing and returning half-century-old Japanese research materials created about Torres Strait Islander everyday life. During the 1970s and 80s large teams of Japanese researchers surveyed Torres Strait Islanders’ marine economy, society and infrastructure producing a large 700 page book, thousands of photographs, hand-drawn maps and musical notations. Published mainly in Japanese the research remains largely inaccessible to Torres Strait Islander and academic audiences and materials are dispersed, held in library, museum and individual researcher collections. In this paper we explore the challenges and affordances in becoming acquainted with this research knowledge through translation and reconnection with Torres Strait communities and Elders and the original Japanese research team, those surviving and bereaved families. We outline our approach as being more than just a work of translation and repatriation, supporting a conceptual engagement with knowledge as relational and sentient, guided by Torres Strait Islander Elders accounts and relationships with the Japanese research team; adding their voices, knowledge and own analysis to this significant work. The opportunity to contextualise the impact of this Torres Strait-based research on the lives and careers of the Japanese researchers themselves and disciplinary trajectories in their country further extends the dialogue and possibilities to resocialise the knowledge. What are the implications of these new affordances for Torres Strait research relations and futures?

Paper short abstract:

This methods paper reflects on ways in which museum-based anthropology & community-based research intersect, especially via co-research relationships in which the co-identification of barriers of online databases are shared & strategies for accessing information in databases are co-created.

Paper long abstract:

This methods paper reflects on cooperative anthropological research done between myself, a white Ph.D. researcher, and members of three Q'eqchi' weaving cooperatives in the Alta Verapaz of Guatemala. The research was focused on the presence of Q’eqchi’ textiles, specifically picb’il textiles, in US, UK, and German museums & led to the collaborative development of community-specific digital repatriation processes; allowing the community access to lost heritage contained as museum-held objects that are too fragile to physically repatriate. Small group community education courses on accessing and using online museum databases, overcoming some of the specific barriers highlighted during the co-creation process, and allowing my co-creators and researchers to carry out their own ongoing research into what materials from their communities are held in museums outside of Guatemala.

The process of carrying out this research collaboratively with the local community uncovered industry-specific barriers to access and worked towards resolving the skills and knowledge gap preventing access to heritage objects held by museums in colonizing countries. The development of individual relationships within that community were shown to be key to the co-research and digital repatriation process.

The co-creation process highlighted specific barriers (language, internet access, specificity of search terms) that limited community knowledge of and access to objects held by museums in colonizing countries. It highlighted the importance of specific and individual relationships in the co-research and digital repatriation process and the ongoing impact of resource inequity on communities seeking to find and reclaim their heritage objects