Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the re-mediation of archival images for cultural repatriation in collaboration with the Ntaria Aboriginal community. Archival images can be a space where embodied knowledge and cultural history cross as well as offering a new knowledge resource for remote Indigenous communities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses how the re-mediation of archival images can be a basis for cultural repatriation. It reflects an interest in how archival images can be a space where embodied knowledge and community interest in cultural history cross. The ascendency of the visual in anthropology has been marked by a tension surrounding the use of images that have been collected and sequestered in archives. Two tendencies have converged recently: the use digital technology in the re-mediating of image collections and the repatriation of material culture by communities of interest from collecting agencies. Our project has embraced these two tendencies in exploring the idea of digital repatriation as a means of addressing the knowledge interests of a specific community. We have focused on narrative strategies as a means of mobilizing the archive with specific attention to digital storytelling in collaboration with the Ntaria School. Our project's interests can be summarized in three interrelated questions: How will the digitization of these archives enable us to find the knowledge flows within and across the Strehlow Collection? How can an engagement with contemporary Aboriginal communities inform the conceptual work of the project? How can Aboriginal people discover and create their own relationships to the content of the collection? This research is developed as part of an Australian Research Council project titled, Digital Archives and Discoverability: Conceptualizing the Strehlow collection as a new knowledge resource for remote Indigenous communities.