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ABSTRACT
The Strathfieldsaye Estate collection at the University of Melbourne Archives is discussed in relation to recognising, protecting and reclaiming Koori (First Peoples of southeast Australia) heritage. The settler collection includes early 1900s photographs of Koori people within two distinct albums – a family album that includes a series of studio portraits of Koori adults and children, and an album depicting Koori families on Ramahyuck Aboriginal Mission Station. In the past, these albums have been defined by, and limited to, traditional archiving practices excluding Koori interpretation, authorship and social context. Restoring Koori ownership and authorship of intangible heritage plays a large part in consolidating ancestor photographs with Koori perspectives of identity and culture.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the Hugh Williamson Foundation and the Melbourne Engagement Grant funding scheme at the University of Melbourne for supporting the research that has informed the writing of this article. We also thank Melbourne Pursuit journalist, Andrew Trounson, for the 30 November 2016 article that reported on the Strathfieldsaye Estate Koori photographs. Sincere thanks to the organisers of the 2017 Information Technologies Indigenous Communities (ITIC) symposium, Dr Lyndon Ormond-Parker, Discovery Indigenous Scheme Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne and Julia Mant, President of the Australian Society of Archivists. Special thanks also to Kim Burrell and Michaela Hart for their considered reading and contribution to the drafts.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. Joseph Nepparnga Gumbula quoted by Joel Gibson in ‘Reclaiming the Past Can Be Personal’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 April 2017, available at <https://www.smh.com.au/national/reclaiming-the-past-can-be-personal-20070409-gdpvai.html>, accessed 25 September 2018.
2. ibid.
3. Information Technologies Indigenous Communities (ITIC) was a two-day symposium on 27–28 September 2017, at the University of Melbourne. It was held with the support of and in conjunction with the Australian Society of Archivists National Conference. The ITIC Symposium was held in memory of the late Dr Joseph Nepparnga Gumbula from northeast Arnhem Land, who was a major contributor to establishing the National Recording Project and to enhancing knowledge of Indigenous archives and collections in Australia and internationally. Dr Gumbula was a researcher, Yolngu leader and ARC Indigenous Fellowship recipient who passed away in 2015. He worked extensively with Australian archives, museums and universities including the University of Melbourne, University of Sydney Archives, the Macleay Museum, Museum Victoria and the Australian National University amongst many others.
4. The University of Melbourne Torres Strait Islander Cultural Heritage Policy (MPF1289), 2017, available at <http://policy.unimelb.edu.au/MPF1289>, accessed 25 September 2018.
5. Koori is a term used by Aboriginal people of Victoria and the southern region of New South Wales. The term is these Indigenous people’s own word for themselves. Koori is derived from the Awabakal language from the northeastern coast of New South Wales and means ‘man’. Robert MW Dickson et al. Australian Aboriginal Words, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1990, pp. 169–221. Alternative spellings for Koorie are Koorie, Kuri and Coorie. See: William Stanley Ramson (ed.), The Australian National Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1988, p. 354.
6. Sharon Huebner and Kooramyee Cooper, ‘Koorie Culture and Technology: A Digital Archive Project for Victorian Koorie Communities’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 35, no. 1, May 2007, pp. 18–32; Sharon Huebner, ‘Nidjuuk, Niih, Kaatitjin – Look, Listen, Learn: Noongar and Kooris Interpreting the Silences of a Colonial Archive’, PhD thesis, Monash University, Melbourne, 2016; Sharon Huebner, ‘A Digital Community Project for the Recuperation, Activation and Emergence of Victorian Koorie Knowledge, Culture and Identity’, in L Ormond-Parker, A Corn, C Fforde, K Obata and S O’Sullivan (eds.), Information Technology and Indigenous Communities, Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Research Publications, Canberra 2013, pp. 171–84; Sharon Huebner and Ezzard Flowers, ‘“It’s a Resting Place, Where Our Spirits Go”: Bringing Back Lost Ancestor Memories to Western Australia’s Great Southern – Noongar Boodja’, Journal of Arts & Communities, vol. 8, nos. 1–2, 2016, pp. 75–92.
7. The High Court of Australia’s decision ‘Mabo v The State of Queensland’ No 2, 1992 was a turning point in recognising the unique connection and rights of Indigenous peoples to their lands and waters. Legislation that followed such as The Native Title Act, 1993, compelled governments to disclose the details of the heritage collections that they managed. The dedicated project to describe the collections within SAMA was funded by the Attorney-General’s Department of South Australia. Listing projects sought to disclose details of these collections, so that they could be discoverable to Native Title applicants, for research and to use these records that evidenced connection to lands. The Board for Anthropological Research (BAR) collection was created during 40 field expeditions over the course of 50 years. An alpha-numerical system of identifiers enables researchers and families to identify people across a wide range of media (including film, photographs, sound recordings, genealogies, maps, vocabularies, drawings) as it relates to anthropological, sociological and linguistic information. Available at <http://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/collections/information-resources/archives/board-for-anthropological-research-aa-346>, accessed 25 September 2018. The records pertain to an estimated 5500 Aboriginal people and their kinship groups. This collection is deeply imbricated with the vast records of anthropologist Norman Tindale, who was a central participant on the BAR expeditions and whose genealogies include an estimated 50,000 Aboriginal people. South Australian Museum Archives, available at <http://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/collections/information-resources/archives/tindale-dr-norman-barnett-aa-338>, accessed 25 September 2018; ‘Tindale Tribes’ A Catalogue and Map of Aboriginal Language Groups, 2000, available at <http://archives.samuseum.sa.gov.au/tribalmap>, accessed 25 September 2018 and <http://archives.samuseum.sa.gov.au/tindaletribes/index.html>, accessed 25 September 2018. Published first in hard copy as Norman B Tindale, Aboriginal Tribes of Australia: Their Terrain, Environmental Controls, Distribution, Limits, and Proper Names, University of California Press and Australian National University Press, Berkeley and Canberra, 1974.
8. Cecily Close in Melinda Barrie et al., Primary Sources: 50 Stories from 50 Years of the Archives, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne, 2010, p. 8 and Frank Strahan in University of Melbourne Archives, University of Melbourne Archives Guide to Collections, University of Melbourne, Parkville, 1983, p. vii.
9. Close, p. 10.
10. University of Melbourne Archives 1983, p. 82.
11. See essays in Strathfieldsaye Estate (1976.0013) Units 74–76. How much and to what extent collecting institutions can meaningfully address the inequity and limitations of their own descriptive systems, to be genuinely inclusive of Koori knowledge, memory and experience, leads Wiradjuri man Nathan Sentance to enquire if institutions can truly challenge the structures which continue to benefit them. Perhaps, he suggests, ‘[…] White fragility, is more of a concern to some people than the truth.’ See ‘Engaging with the Uncomfortable’, Archival Decolonist, 8 April 2018, available at <https://archivaldecolonist.com/2018/04/08/engaging-with-the-uncomfortable/>, accessed 25 September 2018.
12. In 1976 the University of Melbourne received the ‘Strathfieldsaye Estate Bequest’ comprising land, buildings, domestic and business contents therein: equipment, stock, cash and securities for the establishing of The Strathfieldsaye Institute of Teaching and Research in Agriculture and Allied Sciences. Seventeen metres of historic records were transferred to the UMA.
13. Bryan Egan, ‘Disher, Harold Clive (1891–1976)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian National University, available at <http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/disher-harold-clive-10020>, published first in hardcopy 1996, accessed 25 September 2018.
14. Strathfieldsaye Estate collection (1976.0013) described and listed online via the UMA Catalogue, available at <https://archives.unimelb.edu.au/>, accessed 25 September 2018.
15. Phillip Pepper and Tess De Araugo, What Did Happen to the Aborigines of Victoria? The Kurnai of Gippsland, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1985, p. 131.
16. Argus, Melbourne, 2 January 1866.
17. Reports of the Board for the Protection of Aborigines in Victoria, 1861–1925. Digitised and online available at <https://digitised-collections.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/21345>, accessed 25 September 2018.
18. Meredith Fletcher, Strathfieldsaye: A History and a Guide, Centre for Gippsland Studies, Churchill, 1952, p. 19.
19. Since this collaboration began, the existence of the Strathfieldsaye photographs have moved descriptively from one reference in the finding aid of a pastoralist family ‘Ramayhuck Mission Station Album’ to the present 42 unique catalogue entries, naming people, relationships and place; each searchable in their own right. The Family Album contains seven Koori portraits, identified by the following item reference numbers: 1976.0013.00094–1976.0013.00100. The Ramayhuck Mission Station Album contains 17 photographs, which are identified by the following item reference numbers: 1976.0013.00101–1976.0013.00117. A further 17 loose photographs have been catalogued as: 1976.0013.00081; 1976.0013.00085–1976.0013.00086; 1976.0013.00088–1976.0013.00092; 1976.0013.00118–1976.0013.00126. Search keywords (e.g. Ramahyuck) or item reference (e.g. 1976.0013.00116) in the ‘Search digitised items’ field available at <https://archives.unimelb.edu.au/>, accessed 25 September 2018. Since 2008, UMA has been actively auditing its holdings, identifying and describing Indigenous Australian records. This complex undertaking is ongoing. Those seeking records of a particular region or place are encouraged to contact UMA reference services.
20. See ‘Aboriginal Mission Station, Ramahyuck’, photographic montage c.1875 by Frederick Cornell (1833–90), State Library of Victoria, Lady Loch album, Sale and environs (H87.16/11), available at <http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/290242>, accessed 25 September 2018. Refer to Jane Lydon’s ‘“Watched Over by the Indefatigable Moravian Missionaries”: Colonialism and Photography at Ebenezer and Ramahyuck’, The La Trobe Journal, vol. 76, Spring 2005, pp. 27–48. In the Disher family album not only are these photographs hand-tinted, they are also annotated with names, relationships and place of origin. These inscriptions (not yet forensically confirmed) were possibly written by Bridget Stephens, whose dedication to Miss Disher ()) bears great similarity to those on the carte-de-visite portraits (, , ). This precedent of acknowledging name, relationship and place cannot be underestimated.
21. Ebenezer and David Syme, ‘Ramahyuck, Aboriginal Mission Station, Lake Wellington, Gippsland’, Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers, Melbourne, 4 January 1869, p. 5, available at <https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/60450329>, accessed 25 September 2018.
22. Giordano Nanni, ‘Time, Empire and Resistance in Settler-Colonial Victoria’, Time Society, vol. 20, no. 1, 2011, pp. 11–12.
23. Refer to Ian Clark, A Peep at the Blacks: A History of Tourism at Coranderrk Aboriginal Station, 1863–1924, De Gruyter, Berlin, 2016.
24. The album is signed by Harold Clive Disher and annotated on the fly cover ‘Ramayhuck Mission Station, around 1900’. Phillip Pepper identifies the photographs as between 1898–1901. Pepper and De Araugo, pp. 219, 223, 233.
25. Thomas Osborne cited by Joan M. Schwartz, ‘“Having New Eyes:” Spaces of Archives, Landscapes of Power’, Archivaria, vol. 61, Spring 2006, p. 25. Henrietta Fourmile contends that ‘in the context of Aboriginal sovereignty it is completely untenable that one “nation” (i.e. European Australia) should have monopoly and control of such a substantial body of information concerning another, the Aboriginal “nation”’, in ‘Who Owns the Past – Aborigines as Captives of the Archives’, Aboriginal History 1989, vol. 13, no. 1, p. 4.
26. See Pepper and De Araugo; Tindale, 1974/2000.
27. Pepper and De Araugo, pp. 288, 310–19; Richard Broome, Aboriginal Victorians: A History Since 1800, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2005, pp. 138, 142, 155, 186; Museums Victoria Collections Catalogue, available at <https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/>, accessed 25 September 2018; State Library of Victoria Catalogue, available at <https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/search-discover>, accessed 25 September 2018; National Archives of Australia, ‘Discovering Anzacs’, available at <https://discoveringanzacs.naa.gov.au>, accessed 25 September 2018.
28. Sharon Huebner et. al., ‘No Longer a Wandering Spirit: The Story of Bessy Flowers’, 2016, screened at the State Library of Victoria, 1 December 2016, part 1, available at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6UWQ3P_M2Y>, accessed 25 September 2018, and part 2, available at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEVd-BZ2n5s>, accessed 25 September 2018. Also see Andrew Trounson, ‘Aboriginal Voices in the Afterlife of Photographs’, Pursuit, University of Melbourne, 30 November 2016, available at <https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/aboriginal-voices-in-the-afterlife-of-photographs>, accessed 25 September 2018.
29. Briggs in Maxine Briggs, Jane Lydon and Madeline Say, ‘Collaborating: Photographs of Kooris in the State Library of Victoria’, The La Trobe Journal, no. 85, May 2010, p. 121.
30. Jim Berg quoted by Sharon Huebner, ‘Nidjuuk, Niih, Kaatitjin’, p. 36.
31. Briggs, p. 120.
32. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, University of Otago Press, Dunedin, 1999, p. 146.
33. ibid.
34. Deborah Bird Rose, Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2004, pp. 11, 31–2.
35. University of Melbourne, 2017.
36. Palmer cautions against an interpretation that is merely limited to a Western notion of market exchange. Suggesting that ‘gift’ and its attendant obligations might be closer. Dave Palmer, Ngapartji Ngapartji: The Consequences of Kindness, Big hART, Alice Springs, 2010, p. 4.
37. The Melbourne Social Equity Institute facilitated a Community of Practice, July 2017–April 2018, investigating multi-disciplinary reflections on community-engaged research, culminating in a symposium held during the Place and Partnerships Conference, 5–6 April 2018, available at <https://socialequity.unimelb.edu.au/community-of-practice>, accessed 25 September 2018. Director/producer Shannon Owen, 12 February 2018, spoke of the imperative for individual practitioners to articulate and interrogate where they stand in their practice. Owen contended that ethics are too often assumed to be instinctual or are self-evident, and, in the case of institutions, often assumed to be authoritative. If archivists seek to explicitly articulate the ethics and methodologies of their practice, not only will this bring transparency, but it will also engender trust.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Sharon Huebner
Dr. Sharon Huebner is a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne’s Indigenous Health Equity Unit and an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Monash Indigenous Studies Centre. For the past two decades she has been partnering with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families to reclaim and preserve cultural heritage using innovative approaches to digital media.
Stella Marr
Stella Marr has worked as a film consultant and archivist at the South Australian Museum (2003-2006); reference officer at the National Archives of Australia – Melbourne (2007) and as a collection manager and archivist at the University of Melbourne Archives (2007 to present). Stella holds a BVA History from the University of South Australia and a Graduate Diploma in Law & Collection Management from the Institute of Art and Law, London.