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Return: The Photographic Archive and Technologies of Indigenous Memory Author: Jane Lydon [ show biography ] DOI: 10.1080/17540763.2010.499610 Published in: Photographies, Volume 3, Issue 2 September 2010 , pages 173 - 187 Publication Frequency: 2 issues per year Download PDF (~475 KB)
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Articles To cite this Article: Lydon, Jane 'Return: The Photographic Archive and Technologies of Indigenous Memory', Photographies, 3:2, 173 - 187
Abstract This paper considers the intersection of Aboriginal traditions surrounding photography and the use of new technologies as both a research tool and a community resource. Over recent decades Australian cultural institutions have radically altered their management of photographic archives in response to changing political and intellectual circumstances - especially Indigenous advocacy. A sense of moral obligation has become the arbiter of new cultural protocols that have moved far beyond legal provisions for protecting intellectual property. Experiments with new digital tools attempt to understand and balance the role of photographs of Aboriginal people within Indigenous and Western knowledge systems. However, cultural protocols rely significantly upon representations of “remote” Aboriginal communities in northern Australia that emphasize difference and reify practices that may in fact be fluid, and overlap with Western values. In the aftermath of colonialism, photographs are important to Aboriginal communities, especially in southern Australia, not merely as an extension of tradition, but also in the context of colonial dispossession and loss. As a form of Indigenous memory the photographic archive may address the exclusions and dislocations of the recent past, recovering missing relatives and stories, and revealing a history of photographic engagement between colonial photographers and Indigenous subjects.
Introduction In 1992 Roslyn Poignant “repatriated” photographs produced by her husband Axel Poignant four decades earlier, to Indigenous descendants (Burarra, Nakk ra and Kunib dji peoples) at Maningrida in Arnhem Land, northern Australia. She noted that the dominant theme of “almost every photo viewing session: [was] the sense in which
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the photographs established continuities of self and families and made biographies and genealogies visible” (74. See also Poignant and Poignant). Poignant explored how relatives incorporated photographs into traditional kinship structures such as avoidance relationships - where men may not have any contact with their mothersin-law, for example. Prohibitions upon naming the deceased for a lengthy mourning period were traditionally observed - and such restrictions were extended to viewing their photographic image. Poignant's nuanced analysis is one of many studies that have explored the incorporation of photographs into Aboriginal social practices as an extension of Indigenous tradition (see also, for example, Mulvaney, Morphy, and Petch 157). Such accounts have become very influential in shaping popular and “expert” views of Indigenous visual cultures. Here, however, I wish to draw attention to the ways in which colonial images have assumed new meanings in the context of colonial dispossession and loss. Photographs help to constitute technologies of Indigenous memory through a range of practices that construct the past in the present, including by revealing unknown ancestors lost during the displacements of colonialism, and substantiating Indigenous stories and experiences formerly hidden from view. However, current legal and ethical frameworks that govern the management of photographic archives in Australian cultural institutions have been shaped by Indigenous demands for control over more traditional forms of cultural heritage. These forms are most obviously defined by exoticism - aspects of Indigenous culture that are most clearly defined in terms of difference from mainstream values and practices. The development of policies regarding photographs mirrors the higher profile movement to repatriate human remains and secret-sacred objects, as well as being shaped by the campaign for recognition of Indigenous cultural and intellectual property. In this domain, mainstream ideas about photography rely significantly upon ethnographic studies from “remote” Aboriginal communities that emphasize the incorporation of the medium into traditional social organization. Such assumptions foreground difference and reify practices which may in fact be more fluid and overlap with Western values; in some cases they overlook important differences between Indigenous communities in northern and southern Australia, and collude with essentializing notions of Indigenes as either traditionally “authentic” or altered and “inauthentic”. In what follows I try to identify and emphasize the current role of the photographic archive as a form of Indigenous memory that is recuperative, intersubjective and intercultural: that is, how such archives are potentially of use in helping to recover family and stories lost through the dislocations of colonialism, so revealing a process of image making, and a history, that is interactive and cross-cultural. As Indigenous intellectual Marcia Langton argued fifteen years ago, “the problem” with analysis of the visual representation of “Aborigines lies in the positioning of us as object, and the person behind the camera as subject” (39). In contradistinction to a substantial literature that defines colonial photography simply as the white photographer's view, I argue for the importance of acknowledging how the camera served historically as a medium of interaction between white settlers and Indigenous peoples, shaping the social processes of identity formation and cultural exchange. Subsequently, colonial photographs have now become a crucial technology of Indigenous memory - an important means of producing and processing the past in the present. As I explore further, these photos help create memories that are shaped by the material and technological means available to reproduce, archive, and retrieve them: as Pierre Nora famously argued, “modern memory is above all, archival. It relies entirely upon the materiality of the trace, the immediacy of the recording, the visibility of the image” (13).
Legal and moral frameworks: the "white door-bitches"
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Western law is grounded in a long-standing intellectual tradition that emphasizes the importance of individual property and the rights of the creative individual, and so often clashes with Indigenous views about collective ownership and responsibility (e.g. Alpana). In Australia, copyright law protects the rights of the photographer. Generally, copyright in photographs lasts for the life of the creator plus 70 years, while photographers also have moral rights in relation to their work (Australian Copyright Council). Control over one's image is not protected by copyright, although in some cases use of an individual's image may be covered under laws such as the Trade Practices Act 1974, which may prevent uses such as displaying the image of a well-known person. In broad terms, the law bestows few rights upon the photographic subject and assumes that the image itself is merely a representation, a sign that stands in for and takes the place of something else (Mitchell). However, the cultural protocols adopted by most Australian institutions have moved far beyond legal provisions for protecting intellectual property, prompted by a widespread sense of moral obligation and recognition of culturally specific views of photographic imagery (for an engrossing account of changing “image ethics” in northern Australia see Peterson). These institutional processes, which are pan-Aboriginal in intent, stem from a mainstream awareness of the complexity and richness of traditional Aboriginal culture, best known through ethnographic research among the societies of Central Australia. Certain features of these societies have become symbolic of Aboriginality more generally, and have been reified within legal and institutional discourse, in a process of intercultural dialogue. Western observers have always considered these “remote” communities to be more authentic than those of the south-east, who suffered invasion and dispossession first and most profoundly. Such stereotypes have long been criticized for their restrictive effects upon Indigenous people, who are therefore expected to comply with expectations of authenticity (e.g. Beckett; Povinelli). The process of institutional recognition has been spurred on by new digital technologies and the implications of instant global access. However, in key respects it mirrors the process of repatriating human remains and secret-sacred cultural artefacts considered to be Indigenous cultural patrimony (ancestral property), whose historical removal was facilitated by a colonial regime, to Aboriginal source communities. The genesis of the repatriation movement in Australia may be understood in the context of the worldwide Indigenous political activism of the 1970s, as well as local requests from particular communities at this time. During the early 1980s Australian museums became the target of vocal protests from Indigenous people demanding community access to collections, the appropriate display of cultural objects, and training and employment within the museum sector (Green and Gordon). Perhaps most famously, in 1983 Tasmanian Aboriginal woman Ros Langford argued that The Issue is control. You seek to say that as scientists you have a right to obtain and study information of our culture. You seek to say that because you are Australians you have a right to study and explore our heritage because it is a heritage to be shared by all Australians, white and black. From our point of view we say you have come as invaders, you have tried to destroy our culture, you have built your fortunes upon the lands and bodies of our people and now, having said sorry, want a share in picking out the bones of what you regard as a dead past. We say that it is our past, our culture and heritage, and forms part of our present life. As such it is ours to control and it is ours to share on our terms. That is the Central Issue in this debate.
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(2) Repatriation is now vigorously pursued by Australian territory, state and federal governments and cultural institutions as matter of public policy, and all major Australian museums are required to maintain collaborative relationships with relevant Aboriginal groups regarding the management of Aboriginal cultural heritage, and to return ancestral remains and secret-sacred objects on request. Another important domain that has shaped the management of photograph collections is the campaign to develop legal protection for the reproduction and use of Indigenous cultural and intellectual property (ICIP). Cultural property is recognized to include a wide range of cultural expressions as well as sites, artefacts, designs and knowledge. Indigenous claims for control are grounded in the often exploitative circumstances of their production, within a colonial context over which the Aboriginal subjects had little control, as well as in their important role in constituting Indigenous identity in the present. For many years Aboriginal people have expressed concerns about representations of their culture, history and individuals without their permission: they do not like the way such records were created and used in the past (for example, to argue that they were a dying race) and object to current uses for commercial gain without consultation. With regard to photographs, transmission of images showing individuals without consent is considered an infringement of privacy. Other conflicts include the emphasis placed by copyright law upon protection of the rights of the individual artist, when by contrast many Indigenous clans have laws that are based on communal responsibility for cultural heritage. To address such issues, guides to Indigenous protocols advise seeking approval from the subject's family, acknowledging who the person was and where the image came from; Indigenous people themselves are warned not to use “images of people that are not from their own particular mob or language group, or people who have passed away” unless consent from family members can be obtained, or they can use images from their own communities (Janke 30-32; Australia Council for the Arts 16-17). In acknowledgement of Indigenous demands for control over their heritage and representation, Australian Indigenous protocols emphasize the need for consultation by researchers using photographs (e.g. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Library and Information Resources Network, Protocols for Libraries, Archives and Information Services), while Australian cultural institutions have developed codes of ethics that endorse the “repatriation” of photographs and Indigenous control of access for research and especially publication. For example, the Audiovisual Collection of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) provides an online Code of Ethics that states that [T]he AIATSIS Act recognises the right of Indigenous communities to decide how their knowledge is used. Such provisions are generally not provided for by the Copyright Act 1968 [which] does not protect ideas, concepts, styles, techniques or information which is not recorded in a material form. Nor does it protect people or their images. (http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/ava/ethics.html) Across Australia, many institutions have developed varying responses to these challenges: for example, the Museum Victoria policy for repatriating cultural property (“images” are covered by this term) states that “Indigenous property that is embodied in films, images, manuscripts and sound recordings will normally be repatriated in the form of copies but this is subject to negotiation” (Museum Victoria 2). A related process is what the Koorie Heritage Trust terms “Cultural clearance”, which requires that “in
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addition to copyright law and individual agreements with copyright owners, the Trust will only supply material for publication following consultation with the relevant Koorie individual/s” (Koorie Heritage Trust 13). By requiring consultation with Indigenous communities, such institutions aim to ensure that the images are made known to and shared with appropriate relatives and/or communities, as well as giving them ultimate control over use. In a sense, these Australian practices may be seen in the context of a global movement of “repatriation” or “visual repatriation”, terms used to denote the provision of photographs to descendants of the subjects (e.g. Herle; Morton; David A. Smith; Brown and Peers). However, the accuracy of the designation “repatriation” with respect to photographs is often questioned by curators who point out that such materials have different relations of ownership and origination with their subjects' Indigenous descendants. Specifically, photographs were produced by the white photographer, rather than by Indigenous people themselves, and, as I have noted, Western law has subordinated rights to control over a person's image to those of the photographer. These differences have implications for management policies: unlike the singular form of artefacts and bodies, for example, the photographic image is infinitely reproducible, making “possession” an ambiguous and dubious concept. Some suggest that the rationale for such requests for return be “differently couched, not in terms of righting a wrong” but rather in terms of acknowledging “a legitimate and legal ownership of the material in the first place as a basic right of Indigenous peoples” (Green and Gordon). Two practices have become emblematic of respecting Aboriginal culture in Australia: obtaining permission from the descendants of identifiable individual subjects for the use of photographs, and restricting access to images of deceased people. Restrictions upon knowledge, in part to regulate a person's exposure to spiritual power, are especially characteristic of the societies of Central Australia and the north-west (e.g. Chris Anderson). As anthropologist Eric Michaels explained in an influential account over twenty years ago, such communities object to the unauthorized transmission of secret or restricted materials, the reproduction of a deceased person's body, image or voice in the presence of his or her relatives, and invasions of privacy. Yet responding to the experience of colonization, they also object to “rhetorical narrative devices that isolate Aborigines and constitute them as exotic rather than contemporary peoples” (Michaels 1994 3). These cross-culturally understandable customs have become emblematic of Aboriginal culture in mainstream Australian society and, as a mark of respect, it has become standard to provide an introductory warning regarding images of the deceased for prospective viewers of books, websites or films. Yet such practices sometimes have the further effect of reifying cultural difference, in a cross-cultural dialogue that may also enhance institutional authority. Ironically, it is often non-Indigenous museum staff - sometimes termed the “white door-bitches” - who control access to Indigenous resources. As anthropologist Sandra Pannell has argued, institutional practices of restricting access and preservation re-create a secret status and prompt a “fantasy of the prohibited” in ways that re-affirm the idea that these objects are reified versions of Aboriginality, signifying inalienability, authenticity, singularity and primordiality, with the effect of conferring authenticity and a sense of difference upon museums. Such authenticity consists of a “strange tension between the sacred and the profane” which is exemplified in the act of repatriation itself (108-22).
Digitization
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Nowhere are these issues more pressing than in the rapid digitization of Indigenous intellectual property in the form of imagery and archives, as indicated by a growing literature produced in recent years (e.g. Jane Anderson 2009; Nakata, Byrne, and Nakata; Nakata et al. “Indigenous Digital Collections”; Ormond-Parker). Some institutions have responded by establishing Indigenous Knowledge Centres or digital points of contact between communities and outsiders - such as the Ara Irititja archival project, developed in consultation with the Anangu of Central Australia, that identifies, copies and electronically records history and culture, offering access along such axes as gender, seniority and “sorrow” (mourning) (Jane Anderson 2005 34-35; Hughes and Dallwitz), and the Galiwin'ku Indigenous Knowledge Centre, which records current cultural practices as well as providing a place for the return of historical material to the community (Gumbula). Ara Irititja is shifting from its original object-based database to a “mind-map” that accommodates myriad points of entry. Instead of focusing primarily on keeping objects such as photographs, films and sound recordings safe for preservation and access, the new program will present profiles for people, places, events and cosmological narratives that are organized according to non-linear principles, and searchable by visual and textual tools (Thorner). This shift echoes a broader acknowledgement within heritage practice of the importance of “living expressions” or intangible cultural heritage, to many non-Western societies. Where Western concepts of heritage value have been grounded in material objects and traces, in recent decades there has been growing acknowledgement of the culturally diverse practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, and skills that give meaning to those objects within living traditions around the globe. In Australia within the last few years, an astonishing number of projects have been funded to develop software systems for the digitization and storage of Indigenous heritage collections, including the newly established Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Data Archives at University of Technology Sydney; the “eMob” pilot project undertaken by the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations, which developed an online guide to four UK collections; and an “Indigenous Knowledge Management System”, developed for the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of the American Indian Cultural Resources Center (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Data Archive; Ormond-Parker; Hunter et al.). As Martin Nakata and Marcia Langton, Indigenous leaders in this field, have recently argued, “the path to developing clear and high standards of practice in this area rests on building a strong foundation for understanding what informs the concerns of Indigenous people about the intersection of our knowledge and cultural materials with library and archival systems” (3). To date, research suggests that Indigenous people greatly value all forms of knowledge that inform them about their identity and history, and desire full and equal participation in archive management; they wish to “challenge and limit the ongoing potency which archives carry in the lives of many Koorie people” (Russell et al.). One innovative response is the new Koorie Archiving System, piloted by a collaboration between Monash University and the Public Records Office of Victoria in 2010. This project will collate, preserve and make accessible records relating to Koorie communities, families and individuals from government, community and personal sources, but its major innovation will be to provide a space within which Indigenous people may easily create and add new context to the core collection of data, by providing a mechanism for annotations that interpret, correct, or provide context for information content sourced from official records. Also in 2010 a new National Indigenous Knowledge Centre Project will commence under the direction of Professor Jackie Huggins of the University of Queensland, aiming to establish the feasibility and specifications for building a centralized, standard point of digital access. It looks as though over the next decade a greater understanding of the significance of photography to Indigenous people, allied to a national, centralized access framework, will revolutionize this domain. 13/02/2011 01:58 p.m.
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Indigenous memory There are few studies of current Indigenous (re)valuations of photography, although a handful of analyses by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal scholars has emerged (e.g. Aird; Macdonald; B. R. Smith) that demonstrate the distinctive ways in which the medium is deployed within Indigenous social relations and histories. Such research that has been conducted suggests that Aboriginal practices surrounding new media technologies, and particularly photographs, are fluid and diverse. Anthropologist Jennifer Deger, for example, has recently described a generational shift among the Yol u people of Gapuwiyak, Arnhem Land, for whom images of the deceased have traditionally been destroyed or concealed for a period because of their dangerous potency. Today, photographs of loved ones are often sought out by younger people as part of the mourning process (Deger). Despite these important studies, there is little explicit discussion of what such material means to Aboriginal people today, especially particular communities or individuals, in southern Australia, where invasion and dispossession began and had the most profound effects. Enmeshed within Indigenous narratives, photographs may serve a range of recuperative purposes, confronting the sometimes degrading circumstances in which they were produced. According to some Indigenous scholars and archivists, such as Donna Oxenham, a Yamatji woman from the West Australian north-west coast, when descendants look at seemingly distressing images such as photographs of Aboriginal prisoners, they see past the chains to their relatives recorded within the photograph, bringing those distant in space and time into the present, in a process that creates and extends identities and relationships. Donna says, for example, To me it is important for the viewer … to understand that although these atrocities - such as neck-chaining, slavery and murder - occurred and should invoke … the full sense of disgust for our colonial past, it is also an avenue for Aboriginal people today to find images of their loved ones and ancestors and to be able to place them into physical contexts … When researching my own ancestral history [through photographs] I was able to explain how our pasts, present and futures are intrinsically linked - so that they no longer remained in the past, but are a part of who we are today. (Lydon, “Behold the Tears”; cf. Aird) It is often argued that looking at images of suffering or of difficult pasts constitutes an instrument of remembrance that is both an ethical act and a sign of cultural maturity (Apel; Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others 104). However, writers such as Susan Sontag have also questioned the power of photographs to facilitate historical understanding, arguing instead that they take the place of, and so obscure, the memory of the event itself, being “not so much an instrument of memory as an invention of it or a replacement” (Sontag On Photography 165). Given that the perpetuation of memories necessitates the task of continual renewal, “the problem is not that people remember through photographs, but that they remember only the photographs. This remembering through photographs eclipses other forms of understanding, and remembering” (On Photography 79-80). Sontag contrasted visual imagery with narratives, which, she argued, more effectively facilitated historical understanding. However, in practice, within Aboriginal communities, photographs assume meaning as they are enmeshed in stories and social relationships, most notably structured 13/02/2011 01:58 p.m.
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according to genealogies and memories. As Elizabeth Edwards has recently argued with reference to a range of Australian examples, photographs are not “merely visual” but are social objects that derive meaning from their material and sensory uses: she argues that “it is the fusion and performative interaction of image and materiality that gives a sensory and embodied access to photographs” (27). Such uses have become the focus of attention to the photographic image as a social actor, rather than merely a sign, as scholars ask what photographs do or embody rather than what they mean (e.g. Geismar). Such practices are typical of the Wurundjeri and Taungerong people of southern Victoria (members of the Kulin Nation) whose ancestors lived at Coranderrk Aboriginal Station during the second half of the nineteenth century. Coranderrk was the closest reserve to Melbourne and became the site of thousands of encounters between white photographers and the Indigenous community. It was known then, as now, for the political activism of its residents, and remains a key site in Aboriginal histories. Today many Wurundjeri people, the traditional owners of the Melbourne region, use the photographs to assert a kin-based identity, to record and strengthen family relationships. At a personal, individual level descendants may now define themselves intersubjectively through particular biographies, connections to other family members, and shared histories and values. These intersubjective activities are generated through viewing photographs that were made for very different purposes. For example, Wurundjeri Elder Jessie Hunter (see figure 1), who passed away in 2004, lined her home with family portraits that served to personify her rich family memories. Many of these images were produced at Coranderrk for official purposes rather than as family mementoes or portraits, yet for her their genealogical and personal meanings were paramount. Jessie had multiple copies of some portraits, and gave them to relatives and friends as gifts, a kind of family currency exchanged to flesh out family history, and cement ties between family members. For Wurundjeri people such as Jessie, the images trigger stories, and give people a sense of connectedness to each other and the past. As Gaynor Macdonald argues of the Wiradjuri people of New South Wales,“ Photos of kin link one to ancestors and to one's children's children when myth and history cannot … The void which is the past devoid of myth and history is reformed and given substance through photographs. Photographs have the unique capacity - one not shared by written history of verifying a past which might otherwise remain unknown. The photo can thus counter the non-writing of the past, the secret and silent histories, and the past distorted by imperial histories” and “validate a history of engagement, of involvement and of ancestry in place”. (239)
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FIGURE 1. Wurundjeri Elder Jessie Hunter, holding portraits of her mother and grandmother, Martha Nevin and Jemima Burns Wandin, 2000. Photograph by Jane Lydon. Where many of Coranderrk's residents were moved around the state, visual evidence of their life on the station has become very valuable to descendants. Despite government policies that expelled supposedly “half-caste” Aboriginal people from reserves to make their way without support within mainstream society, many chose to remain on traditional country, near family. Such links have gained fresh importance in the context of Native Title and other forms of legal recognition, requiring demonstration of group affiliation and continuous connections to land. Acutely aware of this history of dispossession and expulsion, Wurundjeri elder Bill Nicholson Senior, for example, speaks of the images that show his forebears working and living at Coranderrk as “factual proof, we are there, on the land” (see figure 2). Standing at Coranderrk in 2000, he oriented himself within the landscape according to a nineteenth-century photographic panorama, pointing out landmarks that still survive, like Bill himself, on traditional country. In this way photographs play a part in establishing Aboriginal identity and proving the continuous relationship of a definable group of people to a particular area. Ironically, where blood-line was used in the nineteenth century against Aboriginal people, to define them as either “full-blood” or inauthentic “half-caste”, and used to force the latter from their homes, today it is used as a source of Aboriginal
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authority. FIGURE 2. Wurundjeri Elder Bill Nicholson Senior, at Coranderrk, 2000. Photograph by Jane Lydon. Descendants of the Wurundjeri claim rights to ownership and control of their heritage through descent from known Wurundjeri ancestors - and especially Barak and his sister Boraat - proved by genealogies and photographs. For example, Murrundindi gives cultural performances at the Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary. He always explains his own direct descent from Boraat. As he talks about Boraat, Barak and other family members, Murrundindi points to each person's photographic portrait, mounted in a display showing five generations. His brother Ian Hunter, who has blue eyes and pale skin, is often asked, “Are you a real Aborigine?” and Ian states that “with the use of the photographs I can then explain how the generations of the Indigenous peoples of Melbourne changed in appearance … people can appreciate that this is how the line of Aboriginal people look like they are today” (Lydon, Eye Contact 222-25). As Macdonald shows, photographs establish the owner's world of social relatedness, meaning and history, exploring the “meanings derived from the different cultural and historical context in which these photos have been owned and treasured” (226). As for the Wiradjuri of western NSW, old Wurundjeri photographs can extend socialities across space and time; by bringing those distant in time and space into the present, they establish the owner's world of social relatedness, identity and cultural legitimacy. In these intersubjective processes of defining self and other, personal and family histories, photographs transcend the distancing, often exploitative purposes of their makers. Such uses also have broader historiographical implications, suggesting their utility in destabilizing “structures of forgetting” that excised Aboriginal people from the national story. Historian Maria Nugent has demonstrated how local Aboriginal people's historical storytelling about Captain Cook's arrival at Botany Bay have placed Aboriginal pasts firmly in the present - overturning non-Indigenous historians' failure to acknowledge their role, and aiming “to impress a sense of historical continuity and of temporal depth” (56). Nugent suggests that oral histories constitute a mode of storytelling that enables Aboriginal people to represent themselves not only as the subjects of history but also as the makers of it too, ensuring that local Aboriginal history is “claimed and championed by present-day Aborigines connected with the same general locality” (57). Where Aboriginal people were constructed by colonists as ahistorical, or a people who had lost culture, and were omitted from the national story,
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such images serve as an alternative source of evidence and stories, and confirm the truth of a history otherwise known only through family stories. In south-eastern or settled Australia, where colonization and dispossession began first and had the most damaging effects, photography may serve as an important means of making history, in an intersubjective process that has produced important Indigenous narratives, grounded in place, that work to counter white amnesia.
Conclusion Archives of colonial photography have also come to be used publicly and collectively by Victoria's Koori community, in exhibitions, television documentary and art. Colonial institutions such as the State Library of Victoria have only recently begun to adopt initiatives designed to “repatriate” its photographic holdings with descendant communities, in a history that exemplifies the tremendous shift that has taken place within Australian cultural institutions regarding Indigenous cultural property (see Briggs, Lydon, and Say). Over the last two decades the Library has seen the subversive re-working of its collection by a range of Aboriginal artists, perhaps most famously Leah King-Smith's 1990 photographic series Patterns of Connection. Originally commissioned by the Library to produce a book that would draw upon the Picture Collection, King-Smith instead decided to overlay nineteenth-century images with her own landscape views, with the intention of changing perceptions of Indigenous relationships to country. In the resulting images, the residents of Victoria's Aboriginal reserves such as Coranderrk and Ramahyuck emerge from the shadowy setting as ghosts that haunt the landscape, underlining a traditional, spiritual relationship with the land, and expressing “a contemporary nostalgia for spiritual roots” (Marsh 116; see also Downer). Leigh Raiford has recently argued that African-American engagements with photography provide a site of “critical black memory”, and “demonstrate the necessity of reinterpreting the black body as well as the assertion of themselves as viewing subjects and not merely visual objects” (114). In the same way, photographs of Indigenous Australians have been used to claim a specific local identity, through bloodline and historical experience, and to serve an important role in teaching children and the general public about Aboriginal history and culture. Family relations are in part defined by the exchange of photographs. In the creative re-working of the nineteenthcentury archive we can see continuities with the past as well as newly emerged public ideas and practices, stemming from colonialism and the cross-cultural encounter. Creating a tangible, performative link between past and present, ancestors and descendants, Indigenous photographic practices challenge colonial histories, reified definitions of Aboriginality, and assert survival in the present.
Acknowledgements This paper originated in a presentation to the day symposium “Photography, Archive and Memory”, at the Centre for Research in Film and Audio Visual Cultures, Roehampton University, London, in June 2009, and I wish to thank the organizers and particularly Julia Peck for their interest. I also thank Bill Nicholson Senior for permission to reproduce his photograph, and Ian Hunter for permission to reproduce that of his mother Jessie Hunter.
Works cited 13/02/2011 01:58 p.m.
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1. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Data Archive (2009) Introducing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Data Archive (ATSIDA). Press release UTS , Sydney 2. Aird, Michael (2001) Brisbane Blacks Keeaira , Southport, QLD 3. Alpana, Roy (2008) Copyright: A Colonial Doctrine in a Postcolonial Age. Copyright Reporter: Journal of the Copyright Society of Australia 26.4 , pp. 112-134. 4. Chris, Anderson (ed) (1995) Politics of the Secret U of Sydney , Sydney — Oceania Monograph 45 5. Anderson, Jane (2005) Access and Control of Indigenous Knowledge in Libraries and Archives: Ownership and Future Use American Library Association and MacArthur Foundation, Columbia U , New York 6. Anderson, Jane (2009) Law, Knowledge Culture: The Production of Indigenous Knowledge in Intellectual Property Law Elgar , Cheltenham 7. Apel, Dora (2004) Imagery of Lynching: Black Men, White Women, and the Mob Rutgers UP , New Brunswick, NJ 8. Australia Council for the Arts (2007) Protocols for Producing Indigenous Australian Media Arts Australia Council for the Arts , Sydney 9. http://www.copyright.org.au/ — Australian Copyright Council. Jan. 2006. Information Sheet G11: Photographers and Copyright 10. Jeremy, Beckett (ed) (1994) Past and Present: The Construction of Aboriginality Aboriginal Studies Press , Canberra 11. Briggs, Maxine , Jane, Lydon and Madeleine, Say Russell, L. (ed) (2010) Collaborating: Photographs of Koories in the State Library of Victoria. Indigenous Victorians: repressed, resourceful and respected, Special issue of the La Trobe Journal 85 , pp. 106-124. 12. Brown, Alison and Laura with members of the Kainai Nation, Peers (2006) “Pictures Bring Us Messages”/Sinaakssiiksi aohtsimaahpihkookiyaawa: Photographs and Histories from the Kainai Nation U of Toronto P , Toronto 13. Deger, Jennifer (2006) Shimmering Screens: Making Media in an Aboriginal Community U of Minnesota P , Minneapolis 14. Downer, Christine (1992) Pictures in Victoria - Images as Records in the La Trobe Picture Collection. La Trobe Journal 50 , pp. 12-19. 15. Edwards, E. (2006) Photographs and the Sound of History. Visual Anthropology Review 21.1-2 , pp. 27-46. 16. Geismar, Haidy (2009) The Photograph and the Malanggan: Rethinking Images on Malakula, Vanuatu. Australian Journal of Anthropology 20.1 , pp. 48-73. [ crossref ] 17. Green, Michael and Phil, Gordon Lydon, Jane and Rizvi, Uzma (eds) (2010) World Archaeological Congress, LeftCoast Press Repatriation: Australian Perspectives 18. Gumbula, J. N. Nakata, Martin and Langton, Marcia (eds) (2007) Exploring the Gupapuynga Legacy: Strategies for Developing the Galiwin'ku Indigenous Knowledge Centre. Australian Indigenous Knowledge and Libraries pp. 25-28. U of Technology P , Sydney 19. Herle, Anita Edwards, Elizabeth and Morton, Christopher (eds) (2009) John Layard long Malekula 1914-1915: The Potency of Field Photography. Photography, Anthropology and History: Expanding the Frame pp. 241-263. Ashgate , Farnham 20. Hughes, M. and John, Dallwitz Dyson, Laurel , Hendriks, Max and Grant, Stephen (eds) (2007) Ara Iritja: Towards Culturally Appropriate Best Practice in
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Remote Indigenous Australia. Information Technology and Indigenous People pp. 146-158. Information Science , Hershey, PA 21. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:929 — Hunter, J., R. Schroeter, B. Koopman, and M. Henderson. “Using the Semantic Grid to Build Bridges between Museums and Indigenous Communities.” Proceedings of GGF11 Semantic Grid Applications Workshop, Honolulu, 10 June 2004. 22. Janke, Terri (1998) Our Culture, Our Future. Report on Australian Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission , Canberra 23. Koorie Heritage Trust (2009) Collections Policy and Procedures Manual Koorie Heritage Trust , Melbourne 24. Langford, Roslyn (1983) Our Heritage - Your Playground. Australian Archaeology 16 , pp. 1-6. 25. Langton, M. (1993) Well, I Heard it on the Radio and I Saw it on the Television …. Essay for the Australian Film Commission on the politics and aesthetics of filmmaking by and about Aboriginal people and things Australian Film Commission , North Sydney 26. Lydon, Jane Behold the Tears: Photography as Colonial Witness. History of Photography 34:3 27. Lydon, Jane (2005) Eye Contact: Photographing Indigenous Australians Duke UP , Durham, NC 28. Macdonald, Gaynor (2003) Photos in Wiradjuri Biscuit Tins: Negotiating Relatedness and Validating Colonial Histories. Oceania 73.4 , pp. 225-242. 29. Marsh, Anne (1999) Leah King-Smith and the Nineteenth-century Archive. History of Photography 23.2 , pp. 114-117. 30. Michaels, Eric (1986) The Aboriginal Invention of Television Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies , Canberra 31. Michaels, Eric (1994) A Primer of Restrictions on Picture-taking in Traditional Areas of Aboriginal Australia. Bad Aboriginal Art: Tradition, Media, and Technological Horizons pp. 1-19. Allen , Sydney 32. Mitchell, W. J. T. (2005) Picture Theory U of Chicago P , Chicago 33. Morton, Christopher Edwards, Elizabeth and Morton, Christopher (eds) (2009) The Initiation of Kamanga: Visuality and Textuality in Evans-Pritchard's Zande Ethnography. Photography, Anthropology and History: Expanding the Frame pp. 119-142. Ashgate , Farnham 34. John, Mulvaney , Morphy, Howard and Petch, Alison (eds) (1997) “My dear Spencer”: The letters of F.J. Gillen to Baldwin Spencer Hyland House , South Melbourne 35. Museum Victoria Policy Statement (31 Mar 2009) Repatriation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Property 36. Nakata, Martin , Alex, Byrne and Vicky, Nakata (2005) Libraries, Indigenous Australians and a Developing Protocols Strategy for the Library and Information Sector. Australian Academic & Research Libraries 36.2 , pp. 195-210. 37. Martin, Nakata and Langton, Marcia (eds) (2007) Australian Indigenous Knowledge and Libraries U of Technology P , Sydney 38. Nakata, Martin , Vicky, Nakata , Gabrielle, Gardiner , Jill, McKeough , Alex, Byrne and Jason, Gibson (2008) Indigenous Digital Collections: An Early Look at the Organisation and Culture Interface. Australian Academic and Research Libraries 39.4 , pp. 223-236. 39. Nora, Pierre (Spring 1989) Between Memory and History:. Representations 26 , pp. 7-24. 40. Nugent, Maria Hamilton, Paula and Shopes, L. (eds) (2008) Mapping
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Memories: Oral History for Aboriginal Cultural Heritage in Australia. Oral History and Public Memory pp. 47-63. Temple UP , Philadelphia 42. Ormond-Parker, Lyndon Anderson, Jaynie (ed) Indigenous Material Culture in the Digital Age. Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration and Convergence pp. 812-816. Miegunyah , Melbourne 43. Pannell, Sandra Anderson, Christopher (ed) (1995) The Cool Memories of Tjurunga: A Symbolic History of Collecting, Authenticity and the Sacred. Politics of the Secret pp. 108-122. U of Sydney , Sydney — Oceania Monograph 45 44. Peterson, Nicholas Pinney, Christopher and Peterson, Nicolas (eds) (2003) The Changing Photographic Contract: Aborigines and Image Ethics. Photography's Other Histories pp. 119-145. Duke UP , Durham, NC 45. Poignant, Axel and Roslyn, Poignant (1996) Encounter at Nagalarramba National Library of Australia , Canberra 46. Poignant, Roslyn (1992) Wurdayak/Baman (Life History) Photo Collection: Report on the Setting up of a Life History Photo Collection at the Djomi Museum, Maningrida. Australian Aboriginal Studies 2 , pp. 71-77. 47. Povinelli, Elizabeth (2002) The Cunning of Recognition Duke UP , Durham, NC 48. Raiford, Leigh (Dec 2009) Photography and the Practices of Critical Black Memory. History and Theory 48 , pp. 112-129. [ crossref ] 49. http://infotech.monash.edu/research/centres/cosi/projects/trust/finalreport/ — Russell, Lynette, Sue McKemmish, Don Schauder, Kirsty Williamson, and Graeme Johanson. Final Report of the Trust and Technology Research Project. Monash University, Public Record Office of Victoria, Koorie Heritage Trust, Victorian Koorie Records Taskforce and Australian Society of Archivists Indigenous Issues Special Interest Group, 2009. 50. Smith, B. R. (2003) Images, Selves, and the Visual Record: Photography and Ethnographic Complexity in Central Cape York Peninsula. Social Analysis (Adelaide) 47.3 , pp. 8-26. [ crossref ] 51. http://www.criticalimprov.com/index.php/perj/article/view/330 — Smith, David A. “From Nunavut to Micronesia: Feedback and Description, Visual Repatriation and Online Photographs of Indigenous Peoples.” Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research 3.1 (2008). 52. Sontag, Susan (1978) On Photography Penguin , London 53. Sontag, Susan (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others Farrar , New York 54. Thorner, Sabra Imagining an Indigital Interface: Aa Irititja Indigenizes the Technologies of Knowledge Management. Collections — in press
List of Figures
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FIGURE 1. Wurundjeri Elder Jessie Hunter, holding portraits of her mother and grandmother, Martha Nevin and Jemima Burns Wandin, 2000. Photograph by Jane Lydon.
FIGURE 2. Wurundjeri Elder Bill Nicholson Senior, at Coranderrk, 2000. Photograph by Jane Lydon. Bookmark with: CiteULike Del.icio.us
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BibSonomy Connotea More bookmarks
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