Representations of Indigenous Cultural Property in Collaborative Publishing Projects: The Warlpiri Women's Yawulyu Songbooks^*

* The names of deceased Warlpiri women are used in this paper. With consideration to cultural sensitivities, family members wish for their names to be used so that they can be honoured for their knowledge and contributions to the continuation of the tradition of yawulyu through generations of Warlpiri women.

ABSTRACT

This paper explores issues around the representation of Indigenous cultural property, voices and images in two books of Warlpiri women's yawulyu song traditions that form part of a series published by Batchelor Press (Gallagher, C.N., et al., 2014. Jardiwanpa Yawulyu: Warlpiri Women’s Songs from Yuendumu. Batchelor: Batchelor Press and Warlpiri Women from Yuendumu. 2017. Yurntumu-wardingki juju-ngaliya-kurlangu yawulyu: Warlpiri Women’s Songs from Yuendumu [with Accompanying DVD]. Batchelor: Batchelor Press). These publications stem from collaborations between Indigenous knowledge holders and non-Indigenous researchers and involve long-term relationships between the team members. We draw out discussion of the motivations for making these books, and the agency within these intercultural teams, considering the colonising impact of academic research, the intercultural dimensions to Indigenous identities and the role of publications such as these in repatriation and reparation efforts. We demonstrate how Warlpiri women have directed the production processes and surrounding events so that these books not only represent forms of Warlpiri cultural knowledge but also contribute to the dynamic forms of cultural reproduction that ensure continued engagement with these song traditions into the future.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous cultural property
• Indigenous Knowledge
• intercultural publication
• intercultural identity
• Warlpiri women
• Warlpiri cultural knowledge
• Warlpiri song traditions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Georgia Curran is a research associate at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the University of Sydney, conducting research as part of the Australian Research Council Linkage project ‘Vitality and change in Warlpiri songs’. She lived in Yuendumu from 2005 to 2007, undertaking research for the ‘Warlpiri Songlines’ project, where alongside senior Warlpiri men and women, she recorded, transcribed and translated many different genres of Warlpiri song. Her current research interests include the repatriation of ceremonial recordings and their utilisation as ways to inspire community-led revitalisation of song traditions.

Margaret Carew is based at Batchelor Institute for Indigenous Tertiary Education and co-ordinates a range of Indigenous language research and publishing projects. During the 1990s she was based in Maningrida and has maintained a connection with that community since then through collaborations on language projects with family groups, Maningrida College and Maningrida Arts and Culture. Since 1997 Margaret has been based in Alice Springs and has worked with a number of community language teams to develop resources and publications that support repatriation of recordings and other community-led uses of documented language and cultural material.

Barbara Napanangka Martin is a Warlpiri woman from Yuendumu and has worked all her adult life as a teacher at the Yuendumu School. In her retirement, she continues to assist at the school's Bilingual Resource Development Unit (BRDU) as well as working on other community-based cultural projects. She is a skilled Warlpiri to English transcriber and translation and has interests in engaging senior women to figure out ways of representing traditional oral stories and songs in written form.

Notes

* The names of deceased Warlpiri women are used in this paper. With consideration to cultural sensitivities, family members wish for their names to be used so that they can be honoured for their knowledge and contributions to the continuation of the tradition of yawulyu through generations of Warlpiri women.

1. Whilst men also inherit kurdungurlu rights from their mother, in the gender segregated realm of Warlpiri ceremony, it is their mother's brother who guides them in their responsibilities in this role.

2. The Australian Research Council, Linkage project ‘Warlpiri Songlines: Anthropological, linguistic and Indigenous perspectives’ was conducted between 2005 and 2007 as a collaboration between the Australian National University, the University of Queensland, the Central Land Council and the Warlpiri Janganpa Association. A central aim of this project was to record Warlpiri songs with community elders who still had good knowledge of these endangered song traditions.

3. Sadly, Long Maggie also passed away several months following this visit. Both sisters are acknowledged as key custodians of this yawulyu in a dedication at the beginning of the book. They are also both singers on the recordings which are provided both through audio links accessible with a ‘singing pen’ and on a CD which inserts in to the back of the book.