In 2023, with the assistance of funding from a University of Otago
Alumni Appeal General Funds, the Otago University’s Hocken
Collections embarked on a programme of digitisation work with the
intent to increase visibility and access of archives relating to and
selected by the local iwi, Kāi Tahu (or Ngāi Tahu). After initial kōrero
(discussions) with local rūnaka (tribal councils) and the Ngāi Tahu
Archive, the decision was made to digitise the James Herries Beattie
papers (ARC-0162), a collection held by the Hocken Collections
which was listed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Aotearoa
New Zealand Register in 2018.



Considered to be the first cohort of material in the Hocken’s Kāi
Tahu digitisation programme, the Herries Beattie digitisation project
also involved establishing a Kāi Tahu digitisation advisory group to
discuss tikanga (protocols) around care and handling of archival
taonga, description, cultural statements and digital access.



This Lightning Talk, presented by Rauhina Scott-Fyfe (Māori Archivist
– Hocken Collections) will focus on one practical example of how
the Hocken’s Kāi Tahu digitisation advisory group worked together to
develop culturally specific ‘Taoka Māori’ use and copyright statuses.
The statuses communicate expected culturally appropriate use of
digitised Māori collection material made publicly available for
research and access, in accordance with Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

The Tracking Tandanya Project is a collaboration between the
Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research, in
partnership with the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash
University, and the Australian Society of Archivists
(ASA). Tracking Tandanya aims to collect information about
activities associated with the activation of the Tandanya-Adelaide
Declaration in Australia. We are seeking information from
individuals and organisations in Australia, and overseas institutions
that are working on the return of materials to Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander people in Australia.



This presentation will discuss Tracking Tandanya and share more
about the information we seek to capture to understand how
Tandayna is achieving its goals for a radical transformation of
archives to support Indigenous priorities. By establishing an
evidence base of how the Declaration is being implemented we
hope to shine a light on areas of strength and areas that can be
improved to support Indigenous self-determination in archives. Our
paper will share our method and plans for the distribution of the
survey and reporting tools.

National Archives of Australia has been part of the International
Council of Archives (ICA) Expert Group on Indigenous Matters
(EGIM) since its inception in 2018 and discussions about the
drafting of Tandanya in 2019. In October 2019, the ICA and National
Archives of Australia held the first Indigenous Summit See us, Hear
us, Walk with us: Challenging and Decolonising the Archive. At the
conclusion of the Summit the EGIM presented the Tandanya-
Adelaide Declaration – the first international archives declaration on
Indigenous people and matters.



Five years have passed since the declaration called on archives of
the world to acknowledge and adopt themes and commitments of
the declaration for immediate action. We all have a '...responsibility
to re-imagine the meaning of archives as an engaging model of
social memory; to embrace the Indigenous worldviews and
methods of creating, sharing and preserving valued knowledge. To
decolonise our archival principles with Indigenous knowledge
methods, to open the meaning of public archives to Indigenous
interpretations,...the remodelling of traditional archival principles’
‘The result will be a new model of public archives as an ethical
space of encounter, respect, negotiation and collaboration without
the dominance or judgement of distant and enveloping authority'.



In this presentation, National Archives will share our journey of
applying and implementing the declaration in practice. This includes
the development of the National Archives Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Strategy and Our Way Protocols. What, in practice,
has changed at National Archives of Australia with regards to
working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and
records? How has change been implemented, and what further
commitments and action needs to happen?

The archives of the Australian War Memorial were established from
1917 with a national aim – to preserve as ‘sacred things’ the records
made by the Australian Imperial Force in the war of 1914-1918.
Overtime, the Australian War Memorial and its archives have
expanded to include Australia’s involvement in Wars of Empire to
recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and peacekeeping and
humanitarian operations; however, the Memorial resisted, amidst
intense national debate, the forty-year call for extensive coverage of
the wars on Australian soil, by which Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander peoples were dispossessed and the nation state of
Australia was formed.



In September 2022, the Australian War Memorial committed to
proper recognition of Australia’s Frontier Wars in its galleries, an
important endeavour that requires unwavering execution of best
research and curatorial practice in relation to First Nations’
knowledges, cultural material, intellectual property, and
experiences of war, violence, discrimination and trauma.
Critical to this task are re-readings of the Memorial’s archive that are
revealing documentary evidence of intra-national conflict and also
documents, including valuable records of language, which
demonstrate respectful encounter and collaboration.



As the Memorial seeks to open and develop its archives to support
its forthcoming truth-telling, Memorial curators are working to
implement the Tandanya-Adelaide Declaration and Indigenous
Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) protocols to establish ‘an
ethical space of encounter, respect, negotiation and collaboration’.

Despite the encouraging aspirations of the 2019 Tandanya-Adelaide
Declaration, the Pacific context demonstrates that much more work
is required if these goals are to be met. Pacific island nations are
indigenous dominated and led. The years since independence
should have resulted in improved “self-determination” where
indigenous people “freely determine their political status and freely
pursue their economic and cultural development” (UNDRIP). But
this has been dipicult for Pacific people to recognise in their region.
Poor recordkeeping contributes to inadequate public services,
stifled strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation. It has deprived
people of their right to vote, hampered auditing exercises, and has
led to cynicism in the state being able to meet its responsibilities.
Since 2005 the Pacific Regional Branch on the International Council
on Archives (PARBICA) has been trying to get recordkeeping and
information management /information governance on the regional,
national, and local agenda with little success.



The lack of awareness of the true value of records, a pervasive
international development agenda, and the clash of knowledge
cultures have combined to prevent leaders from recognising Pacific
records as information assets and documentary heritage requiring
proper systems and governance. Self-determination – the ability to
“freely pursue their economic and cultural development” will continue to be hampered until this situation is acknowledged at the
highest levels and turned around.



I am currently undertaking doctoral research towards a history of
information management at four points of confluence in the Pacific.
With this, I aim to better understand the forces/elements at play,
and make a strong enough case to win allies and push for
meaningful change, in pursuit of a Pacific where our indigenous
people can experience a more concrete sense of self-
determination. This paper will explore what further work is required
to implement the Tandanya-Adelaide Declaration in the Pacific.
What are the gaps? Who needs to be involved? How to do attack it?
Where do we get funding? How can we keep this on the table?

This lightning talk will focus on the ways in which First Nations
Collections, under the leadership of Nathan Mudyi Sentance at The
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney are encoding the commitments
outlined in the Tandanya Declaration in their work. Specific focus
will be given to ‘Property and Ownership’ and ‘Knowledge
Authorities’ through two recent Powerhouse projects and initiatives.
Collections Coordinator, First Nations Tammi Gissell will discuss
‘Property and Ownership’ through the newly instituted (2022) ‘MABO
Deed of Deposit’ as an alternate method for acquisition. The Deed
brings together the institutional recognition of IP with ICIP and
places the emphasis on Cultural Authority. The Deed is a First
Nations only acquisition mechanism which confronts the values of
individual ownership as outlined at 2(c) and moves away from
transfer of ownership to the institution. When objects and materials
come into the collection by way of the Deed, the maker and/or their
community retains full legal title, they outline the conditions under
which the materials must be cared for and they may withdraw them
at any time.



Yuki Kihara’s ‘Paradise Camp’ (2023) is an exquisite example of the
ways in which ‘Knowledge Authorities’ can be creatively and
culturally explored, expressed and later institutionally embedded
with support from collections workers. The Paradise Camp
phenomenon was not merely an exhibition of ‘things’...It was
knowledge in action and radically challenged colonial
underpinnings of archival practice and the authority it has held for
so long over First knowledges.



Yuki’s work was a sucker punch which flowered out from her
exhibition into dynamic community action and engagement -
forums, performances, publications, and further community
commissions - all of which deeply informed the Powerhouse as an
institution – allowing us to confront our own practices, see the
biases they enable and then make systematic organisational
change.

For Aboriginal collections workers getting the balance right between
academic thought and colonial collections that have both been
entrenched over multiple lifetimes is the daily grind. What are the
instruments we have available to us to translate well articulated
theory into practical outcomes with contentious collections?
Looking at library permissions and consultation processes this
paper will respond to theories of protectionism.

The Tasmanian Archives holds 18 volumes of papers that were held
in the Colonial Secretary’s Opice Correspondence, all concerning
colonial relations with Tasmanian Aboriginal people. These records
represent the central documentary record of the brutal frontier
conflict and dispossession in Lutruwita/Tasmania. As a result of
their collation in 1864, these volumes were all indexed as a single
file, labelled “Aboriginal”. They have been used by numerous
researchers over time, many of whom had to examine the
handwritten records on microfilm. Over the past few years work has
been undertaken to index and summarise these records in detail,
with the intention of presenting the data alongside the digitised
records as a searchable database through the Tasmanian Names
Index.



This paper will discuss the ways in which the Tandanya/Adelaide
declaration and consultation with the Tasmanian Aboriginal
community has influenced the project, including the crafting of
cultural advice, the identification of Palawa-kani placenames and
the choices of how to identify individuals whose true names have
been forgotten. While this project has the potential to empower
truth-telling and move towards de-colonising the archive, care
needs to be taken to ensure that the material is presented in a way
that is culturally safe.