Cotidianamente tiende a confundirse la

Insider research has to be as ethical and respectful, as reflexive and critical, as outsider research. It also needs to be humble. It needs to be humble because the research belongs to the community as a member with a different set of roles and relationships, status and position. The outside ‘expert’ role has been and continues to be problematic for indigenous communities.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith 2008:139

Museums holding ‘ethnographic’ collections have a unique relationship with their source communities. Peers and Brown (2003) outline key aspects of this complex and changing relationship over time, notably concerning relationships of power between museums and their source communities, the growing participation of Indigenous agents across many levels of museum practice and the broader interrogation of the contexts surrounding collection of ethnographic material. However, it is the persistently invoked dichotomous nature of this relationship, that of being either Indigenous or “non”, around which the relationship between people and objects can be framed and positioned within anthropological practice. The same is also true for research. In her ground-breaking ‘Decolonising Methodologies’ (2008), Linda Tuhiwai Smith contrasts ‘insider research’ with the research generated by the ‘outsider’—or ‘expert’. Interesting things happen in both museum practice, and research, at the intersection where the insider and outsider knowledges meet, where the source community and museums meet. Thus this is where my research is positioned.

As clearly evidenced in this thesis, I identify as an Indigenous person, specifically with Yuwaalaraay heritage passed down through my father’s line. Throughout my adult life my experience as a Yuwaalaraay person has developed through my experiences as part of the Yuwaalaraay diaspora; what could be understood in a contemporary Indigenous vernacular as being ‘off-country’. The politics of identity regarding Indigeneity are complex and have informed my methodology and approach (in the sense that they are ‘relational’ and ‘contextual’, see Harris et al 2013). In this thesis I draw on them to the extent that they are useful in understanding me, and my invoking of an Indigenous, Yuwaalaraay heritage—at the perhaps perceived expense of my white Australian heritage. Instead of exploring the complexity of identity politics as it plays out in me, I

93 have instead, chosen to explore how they play out in relation to Indigenous museum collections. These collections, as well as being cross-cultural entities, can also be understood in an Indigenous vernacular as also being diasporic or ‘off country’.

Similarly I am off-country. I work in Canberra at the National Museum of Australia and my education at this point is shepherded by the Australian National University. How do these factors affect the nature of my research as an insider/outsider—and should they?

When I began this research project I intended to omit any information relating to my identity, so as not to influence the way my research was interpreted, or to have other factors influence the overall impression of my work. I wanted it to ‘stand-alone’. To be assessed in the vein of other scholars such as Ruth Phillips, Laura Peers, Howard Morphy, James Clifford, Mary Louise Pratt and others. The academy is a realm for thinkers, and participation within this realm is a privilege only afforded to some. These thinkers join a long line of other privileged people whose task it has been to help make collective sense of the world. The self-other paradigm has featured within this space as an important factor in structuring the nature of enquiry and its findings. My contribution to the academy also follows in this line, although identifying myself as an ‘outsider’ I always thought would be to the detriment of my contribution to museological scholarship.

My pathway through this research project has, however, been heavily influenced by my position as an ‘outsider’ to the academy and more specifically, the discipline of anthropology. This ‘outsider’ position has shaped the nature of my enquiry. It has influenced the theoretical approach I use, it has guided me through the field of data collection, and it has influenced the way I relate to my supervisory panel. At times it has also undermined my confidence, made me angry and upset but also determined and purposeful. Now benefiting from interdisciplinary intervention, contemporary reflections from the discipline remind us that perhaps when collections such as Tindale and Birdsell’s were being developed, enquiries like mine—from source communities, from descendants of their human-subjects—were not considered. As Peers and Brown write:

Ethnographic collections, in particular, were built up on the premise that the peoples whose material heritage was being collected were dying out, and that the

94 remnants of their cultures should be preserved for the benefit of future generations (Cole 1985; Griffiths 1996; Schildkrout and Keim 1998; Krech and Hail 1999; O’Hanlon and Welsch 2000). That those future generations might be the descendants of those with whom early collectors interacted was undoubtedly inconceivable at the time collections were assembled: museum collections were thought to be ‘for’ dominant-society audiences, whether of specialist researchers or the general public. (Peers and Brown 2003:1)

While this kind of statement serves to reinforce my experiences as an ‘outsider’ to this research field, it also elevates my awareness that my insights, analyses, findings and approach are something the discipline duly needs to gain relevancy in the context of increasing engagements between Indigenous scholars, communities and museums. Peers and Brown’s statement also highlights the significance of how we language our historical actions; simplifying all anthropological enquiry at the time as being guided by an imperative of salvaging material and knowledge from those ‘dying out’ is a broad statement which can both limit the way we understand historical texts, and undermine cross-cultural relationships of the past.

However, the historical rationale for the formation of museum ethnographic collections —such as those quoted above—evoke a level of trauma; trauma which can be difficult to set aside, or incorporate objectively into this thesis. This is where my identity as an insider—as a member of a source community—comes into play. My Yuwaalaraay heritage is more than just a contextualizing detail in this thesis, but it situates me as someone also subject to the perceived ongoing colonial legacies within contemporary museum practice. The undertaking has been fraught.

Since the commencement of this thesis in 2010, I have had two children and also worked in one of the museums whose collections I have been researching. This disclosure is important. My employment with the National Museum of Australia was not directly related to collection, acquisition, and community access of the objects I have focused on. However, my position inside the institution has given me insights not afforded to those probing from the outside. It is this exposure to both scholarly and professional practices which has informed my investigation of intersections between museums and source communities. This approach, I found to be incredibly useful, as I have been able to claim a membership of both source communities and museums, and therefore able

95 to test hypotheses using the benefits of this dual membership. Museum anthropology thus sits comfortably as an overarching context of this research.

I also note the significant effect that having two children has had on my research approach. PhD research, while sometimes seeming like an endless pursuit, has an ‘end goal’. Having two children has decisively moved that end-goal for me; away from a foreseeable gowned future, to one which involves my children’s similarly mixed cultural heritage and their future pursuits of knowledge in museum collections. This work has to be for them. Acknowledging and acting on this has meant less emphasis on deadlines and milestones, and a stronger focus on seeking effective, practical, and important change. I have since dedicated my research, my work and the networks and connections I have made within the museum sector both in Australia and overseas to this longer- term goal. I have taken care—and it has taken time, and throughout, I have been mindful that this research opportunity needs to have more than an individual impact.

I acknowledge that my research is contextualized by my identity as a Yuwaalaraay woman, and the approach I use here leverages off this perspective by employing techniques that allow for Indigenous voices to take a visible place. Such an approach creates a space which allows an Indigenous way of knowing and being to have agency within this research project. I have done this using a variety of techniques, including:

• Drawing from my relational ontology to position myself within the research;

• Drawing from the cultural interface theory to create a space to analyse data;

• Using storytelling to present my analysis; and

• Deploying autoethnography to reflect upon my findings.

Below I further explore each of these approaches and conclude with a presentation of the scope and empirical elements of the research.

96

A Relational Ontology

This key concept has been used to explain to how Indigenous people make meaning, connections, and knowledge in the world (Martin and Mirraboopa 2003). It is based on a fundamental understanding that absolutely everything is connected, and further, that the relationships that underly and enact these connections are where meanings, knowledges and understandings are made and re-made (Kwaymullina 2005).

Indigenous or Aboriginal ontological understandings have been extensively researched in anthropology, and as Anna Kenny notes in her reflection on Carl Strehlow’s early ethnological work in Australia, the Indigenous premise of ‘relatedness’ as an ontological understanding is now well accepted.

It is a given of contemporary Australian anthropology that at the heart of Aboriginal ontology lies the person-land-ancestral inter-relationship (Rumsey 2001: 19), and that this system of belief, glossed in English as ‘the dreaming’, encompasses all dimensions of life (Stanner 2011; Berndt 1970). (Kenny 2013: 135).

Many anthropological understandings of Australian Indigenous ontology—including the work of those quoted by Kenny above—have focused on myth, the Dreaming and creation stories and the realm of the spiritual to investigate Indigenous ontologies (Spencer and Gillen 1899,Stanner 1968, 1979, Wolfe 1991). These understandings—as Kenny herself attests—were not simple characterisations, but were developed and refined over long periods of time. Western perceptions of Indigenous ontology are very interesting, and there is room for further interrogation into the ways ‘Western’ anthropologists have allowed themselves to become subsumed into this realm of connectedness—or not.

Alongside anthropological interpretations of Indigenous ontology, are of course those understandings generated or articulated by Indigenous people themselves. It is useful to seek insights about these from beyond anthropology, within arenas which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are active participants. For example, Aboriginal academic, researcher and consultant Vicki Grieves’s exploration of Indigenous

97 ontologies32 _{was produced within the field of Aboriginal health. Her work privileges} Indigenous ways of being and knowing, and yet remains cognisant of the traditional anthropological views which speak to—and has informed contemporary understandings of the concept.

As an Aboriginal woman, Grieves interrogates the dichotomous relationship between Indigenous ontology (often contemporarily invoked as Indigenous ways of being and knowing) and its Western equivalent. In discussing contemporary Indigenous ontology, she suggests the interaction between these different modes of being, be understood as a product of Indigenous- coloniser history.

It is… a fundamental principle that an understanding of Aboriginal wellbeing needs to take into account the different ontologies (understandings of what it means to be) and epistemologies (as ways of knowing) that characterise the experience of colonised peoples. Aboriginal Australians today may live predominantly within one or the other of the ontological/epistemological systems, glossed as Aboriginal or Western. In either case, they have to contend not only with the existence and influence of the other but are continually dealing with a world in which these different ontologies collide. This has produced decades of immense tension as the pull to be one kind of person in one world conflicts with the pull from the other. (Grieves 2009:2)

Grieves’s perspective here is significant and helpful in clarifying the position from which I write this thesis. Three points are crucial here. Firstly, that there is a difference between Indigenous and Western ontologies. Secondly, that there are different Indigenous ontologies—in part reflective of peoples’ diverse historical and contemporary experiences. And thirdly, that western and Indigenous ontologies can collide, compound over time and in Grieve’s words, generate ‘immense tension’.

The implications of this perspective is that non-Indigenous people, coexisting on an ancient land surrounded by cues and signs of both Indigenous relationships to country— and also of Australia’s colonial history, are also possibly experiencing similar collisions with the ontological beliefs of Indigenous Australians. The compounding effects of these collisions arguably manifesting differently in non-Indigenous Australians to those

32_{Grieves in her discussion paper “Aboriginal Spirituality: Aboriginal Philosophy the Basis of Aboriginal}

98 identified by Grieves above, however these collisions and their compounding effect are certainly worthy of deep and further exploration. The implication here is that while ontological collisions might have played out traumatically for Indigenous people, these same collisions have possibly been a positive for non-Indigenous people, offering them the benefit and insight of long-standing connections to country.

T.G.H Strehlow offers an interesting example of someone who had embraced and relied upon an ontological collision between his Lutheran missionary parents and the Arrente world alongside which he was born, left, and later returned to.

A challenging identity, possibly Ted Strehlow thought of himself as Arrente as much as European…. At a time when ethnographic eyes were turned to social systems, T.G.H. Strehlow explored the poetic imagination in indigenous man-land relations. (Austin Broos 2009: 20)

While seemingly a positive for Strehlow, assisting him to produce a comprehensive, published body of knowledge on Aboriginal people of Central Australia, the experiences and impacts of these collisions are not always of such a positive, lucrative or mutually beneficial nature.

Concepts relating to Indigenous ways of being have also made a mark in museum contexts and indeed, there are instances where particular concepts have effectively been etched out through the long-term participation by Indigenous people in the museum sector. Most notably, the Indigenous concept of ‘country’ has been broadly embraced in the museum and cultural heritage sector. Deborah Bird Rose’s reflection on the Indigenous notion of ‘country’, as mentioned in an earlier chapter, can be understood as a product of efforts to work cross-culturally, which took place in the very active cultural heritage and environmental history realm in the politically charged mid 1990s33 _{. It is quoted again below not to define the term ‘country’ again, but rather to} consider the way that this concept can also illustrate an ontological collision; Rose’s desire to articulate and communicate an Indigenous concept of country is written in a

33 _{The Mabo ruling in 1992 signaled a significant progression in the discussion of Native Title and Land}

Rights for Indigenous Australians. The Australian Natural Heritage Charter of 1996 – which followed the ICOMOS Burra Charter, itself revised in 1996 – was also of significance as a redefinition of ‘place’ as it relates to Australian contexts, which included the consideration of tangible and intangible significance. (AHC 2002, Australia ICOMOS 2013)

99 way to suggest that she has come to take on or prescribe to this concept or philosophy of country personally.

Country in Aboriginal English is not only a common noun but also a proper noun. People talk about country in the same way that they would talk about a person: they speak to country, sing to country, visit country, worry about country, feel sorry for country, and long for country. People say that country knows, hears, smells, takes notice, takes care, is sorry or happy. Country is not a generalised or undifferentiated type of place, such as one might indicate with terms like ‘spending a day in the country’ or ‘going up the country’. Rather, country is a living entity with a yesterday, today and tomorrow, with a consciousness, and a will toward life. Because of this richness, country is home, and peace; nourishment for body, mind, and spirit; heart’s ease. (Deborah Bird Rose 1996:7)

Rose’s blog Love at the Edge of Extinction offers insights into what could be understood as a personal exploration into these ontological collisions, also offering critical engagement from within an academic context34_.

Translating concepts such as ‘country’ from one worldview to another is not without fundamental epistemological issues, many of which are broadly broached in the field of critical race and whiteness studies. An example of this can be seen in the writing of Indigenous academic, feminist and activist Aileen Moreton Robinson on the concept of ‘whiteness’, as indicated below.

Whiteness establishes the limits of what can be known about the other through itself, disappearing beyond or behind the limits of this knowledge it creates in the other’s name. As Said (1978) has argued, the West interpreted and made sense of the Orient, producing knowledge and constructing representations as signifiers of its reality. This is because in the West, whiteness defines itself as the norm and ‘is always glimpsed only negatively: it is what allows us to see the deficient and the abnormal without itself being seen’ (Montag 1997:291). In this way, Whiteness is constructive of the epistemology of the West; it is an invisible regime of power that secures hegemony through discourse and has material effects in everyday life. (Aileen Moreton Robinson 2004:75)

While Rose’s reflection on the Indigenous notion of country is a significant attempt to create a discourse between two worldviews via sympathetic perspectives on protecting

34 _{See blog posts ‘Dingoes on my mind’ 13/08/2016 and ’Hope is the way of the world’ 31/05/2016 for}

100 and valuing cultural heritage, it continues a ‘norm’ or set of discursive assumptions that remain intact or unaltered by interventions brought about by a more radically different world view. The alternative of this would be to define ‘country’ as a western concept, through the example Rose herself uses— ‘spending a day in the country’, ‘going up the country’ (whose meanings are all implied). The norms implied within these usages are very rarely defined by those from outside the worldview which produces them.

Norms such as these, and their implications for the understanding of collections, are brought into focus throughout this thesis.

Even though reflections such as Rose’s seek to create a middle ground to understand