Paper short abstract:

Gurrutu, the Yolngu kinship system, has been reconceptualised and transposed on computers to re-embed various digital objects in relationships. This model provides a valuable insight into the effects of digitisation on cultural practice, both for its authentication and its renewal.

Paper long abstract:

In the past twenty years, a myriad of digital archiving projects have emerged in Australian indigenous communities across the continent. Driven by local aspirations to reconnect with collections of objects and ethnographic records dispersed in distant institutions, the momentum towards the digital repatriation of Aboriginal cultural heritage was facilitated in Australia by nation-wide infrastructural developments and by the implementation of museum policies informed by new collaborative practices. Indeed, one could argue that Aboriginal Australians have been at the forefront of the increasingly global reflection on the digitisation of indigenous knowledge.

In the Yolngu communities of North-east Arnhem Land, where ancestral knowledge is owned by specific sets of kin and subject to complex restrictions, the digital return of materials such as bark paintings, ritual objects, sound or visual records has required close attention to be paid to issues of classification, ownership, control and access.

Drawing on a chronological series of examples, this paper will show how gurrutu, the Yolngu kinship system, has been reconceptualised and transposed on computers as the main organising principle for local archiving projects. From an initial wariness of "mixing everybody's knowledge on a computer", or of identifying "who will hold the key to the system", to the many creative ways in which these materials are being reinvested today in the ceremonial and artistic domains, Yolngu digital experiments over the past two decades provide a valuable insight into the effects of digitisation on cultural practice, both for its authentication and its renewal.