“The Songline is Alive in Mukurtu”: Return, Reuse, and Respect
In Kimberly Christen's essay, "The Songline is Alive in Mukurtu": Return, Reuse, and Respect, the author explores the intersection of cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, information ethics, and the use of digital technologies in Indigenous communities globally. The essay focuses on the Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Archive, a community resource, and digital access platform that has been in use since 2007 and has grown into a free and open-source content management system used by Indigenous communities around the world. Christen talks about a group of women from different family groups in the Barkly region who are connected through songlines. These songlines acknowledge the responsibility they have towards their country, their language, and their ancestors who have carried these on. Looking at how monumental these songlines are, this community started a project to repatriate both recordings and materials related to the songlines in order to conserve the knowledge surrounding the songlines. This opens up a big conversation regarding the accessibility and ethical collection of these materials: "The focus turned to providing appropriate access to the digital corpus – now and in the future" (154). The concern of these open-source digital access platforms regards the protocols for circulation that are probably the most important in "providing appropriate access to the digital corpus – now and in the future" (155). This project was at once the recognition of the importance of orality, listening, and group circulation. This brought to the table the brainstorming of ways in which we can preserve knowledge and the understanding of the ways such can travel, reach, and grow today.
The Mukurtu Archive is essentially part of a larger network of a preexisting cultural exchange that includes humans, ancestors, analog systems, and digital platforms (156). Kimberly Christen situates digital return, reuse, and repatriation as a set of decolonizing practices. This idea of "return" is firstly dissected as a first step in recovering lost cultural knowledge and materials. This concept encompasses practices that involve future access, use, and circulation, positioning archival documents as both evidence and knowledge today. When piecing together the archive, the biggest conversation and concerns are those regarding cultural preservation through community policies of the Indigenous collections of knowledge. In the essay, Christen thinks about the traditional course of knowledge and the hierarchy of access to it. These communities expressed an interest in preserving their traditions and stories to better preserve them and pass them on to children and kin. Through the Mukurtu platform, Indigenous communities can reclaim and reframe cultural materials, repurposing them as vehicles for community empowerment, re-narrating misunderstood events, and reconnecting family histories. The essay emphasizes that return goes beyond mere access to the past; it involves a deep engagement with the materials and a sense of responsibility toward the knowledge they hold. In the essay, during the first stages of the archive, Christen accompanied a group of Warumungu women and men in collecting lost information in archives in Darwin. After the collection of these materials, it was clear to the team that they were "to be managed within the existing social and cultural protocols the community already had for viewing and circulating cultural materials" (157).
In the realm of ethical access and the spread of information, communities demanded these protocols present in their communities to be honored and incorporated into the digital platforms in which the archive would live. These protocols are based on a series of different factors, including family and country, which remain some of the most important and are honored in the Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari archive. The archive prioritized these protocols to allow these returned materials to be "accessed, viewed, managed, and circulated within the community following their own clearly articulated set of community protocols and kin-based knowledge system" (158). It is important to note that without following these protocols, the archives would only follow a preexisting trope of exploitation and appropriation of indigenous knowledge when making it available for public consumption. In this way, the Mukurtu Archive commits to making this a space that meets the needs and values of these communities. A passage from the essay that sparked my interest was one that talked about the traditions where elders kept sacred items in a "dilly bag" from which novices had to get permission to access. This was the reason the archive was named "Mukurtu," which means dilly bag in Waramungu. The archive was built with the purpose of giving these traditions and values a platform. Secondly, Christen touches upon the concept of "reuse." Indigenous communities utilize digital technologies to narrate, reframe, and share their stories, histories, knowledge, art, and culture (159). The digitization of knowledge and cultural materials allows for their repurposing, reuse, and reimagining, contributing to community empowerment and cultural preservation.
The Mukurtu platform facilitates the repositioning and reframing of materials through enriched metadata, customizable categories, and vocabularies that align with Indigenous knowledge systems. The archive evolved into something bigger as they discovered a larger aboriginal history. The scope of their research expanded as people committed to returning more digital materials, helping other communities as well. This is when the archive's name changed from "Mukurtu" to "Wurrppujinta Anyul Mappu" – "a gathering place." These cultural materials are repurposed, reused, and reimagined as vehicles for community empowerment (160). When thinking of the past and the history of settler colonialism, these archives are an important tool for the decolonization of Indigenous communities. The archive, therefore, achieves a re-narrating of misunderstood events and reconnects these family histories. Furthermore, the essay discusses the significance of "repatriation" within the context of Mukurtu CMS. While the platform was initially conceived as an access platform, it has evolved into a tool for facilitating return, reuse, and repatriation. Thus, "digital repatriation thus explicitly acknowledges histories of dispossession and disruption as a fundamental part of the return practice" (167). The Mukurtu Archive enables the reconnection of Indigenous communities with their cultural materials and provides a means to reposition and reframe them within a digitized context. The focus is on Indigenous knowledge, and the platform supports the protection and preservation of cultural heritage.
Overall, Kimberly Christen's essay explores the ways in which technology can be used as a tool to preserve a side of history that is often forgotten. The essay emphasizes both the negative and positive aspects of these digital technologies on the traditions and customs of these already marginalized communities. I believe that the most important concept explored in this text is the protocols and regulations of such knowledge as it is transferred to a digital platform. These technologies pose a threat to the privacy and interruption of sacred traditions, ensuring these protocols are honored is one, if not the most important part of the process and conversation regarding these types of archives. Drawing connections to Michael Christie's text "Words, Ontologies, and Aboriginal Databases," they explore the transformative impact of digitizing technologies on cultural knowledge. He agrees that the physical and digital form must work together and complement one another to achieve the major goals of the diverse needs of each tribal community that seeks the preservation and reinvigoration of traditional knowledge for future generations (168). He recognizes the importance of following protocols and regulations concerning access to materials. Christie also advocates for the development of digital object management systems to ensure the proper protection and preservation of stories and cultures. Seeing as the exclusion of these in the process would "inhibit or undermine the intergenerational transmission of Aboriginal knowledge" (52).
In conclusion, Kimberly Christen's essay emphasizes the complex intersection of cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, information ethics, and digital technologies within Indigenous communities. The essay frames the Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Archive as a significant resource and digital access platform that enables Indigenous communities, now worldwide, to reclaim, reframe, and repurpose their cultural materials. The essay underscores the importance of honoring community protocols and kin-based knowledge systems to ensure appropriate access and circulation of materials. By following these protocols, the Mukurtu Archive strives to create a space that respects the needs and values of Indigenous communities, countering the historical exploitation and appropriation of their knowledge. Additionally, the essay explores the new and diverse ways that digital technologies facilitate the reimagining of cultural materials as activism. Through these sorts of archives, Indigenous communities reconnect with their heritage and preserve fading histories. Overall, Christen’s text highlights the transformative potential of digital technologies in today's world, “It could be a way of intentionally entangling the old and the new, of making technology traditionally modern” (170) offering to preserve and revitalize traditional knowledge while acknowledging the critical need to respect and incorporate community protocols in the process.
Christen, Kimberly. (2019) “The songline is alive in Mukurtu': Return, reuse, and respect." In Archival Returns: Central Australia and Beyond, edited by Linda Barwick, Jennifer Green, and Petronella Vaarzon-Morel, 153–172. Sydney University Press. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24882/.
Christie, M. (2005). Words, Ontologies, and Aboriginal Databases. Media International Australia, 116(1), 52–63. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1329878X0511600107
