Curator, anthropologist, cultural heritage consultant and valuer with over 45 years' experience in the museum sector. Specialist expertise in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural heritage, material culture and art. A valuer for the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program and Specialist Assessor for the Commonwealth's Protection of Cultural Heritage Committee and Australian Research Council. Specialist services as consultant for exhibition and collection development; repatriation of Indigenous remains; provenance research; significance and risk assessment of ATSI collections; and collections/cultural heritage policy. Address: Woodend, Queensland, Australia
Encyclopedia of National Dress Volume 1 Traditional Clothing Around The World, 2013
This paper looks at the way in which cultural and environmental differences across Aboriginal Aus... more This paper looks at the way in which cultural and environmental differences across Aboriginal Australia are reflected in the diversity of dress and body adornment. Clothing was worn for protection from the elements and also for cultural reasons. The forms could be dictated as much by aesthetics as their practicality, while at the same time could be dictated by age, gender, status, group affiliation and ritual practice.
Museums continue to be cast as anachronistic—‘weary’, ‘tired’, and ‘out of touch’—trophy houses e... more Museums continue to be cast as anachronistic—‘weary’, ‘tired’, and ‘out of touch’—trophy houses embedded in the colonial past, with object collections considered hollow remnants of that past. This article contests this notion and reveals how museums have emerged over the past fifty years as active field sites where Indigenous communities, scholars, artists, and artisans in the Pacific have been and are engaging with their cultural patrimony. This approach has seen new meanings and readings of, and new life breathed into, these collections in ways never imagined or anticipated. The museum is a space where differing epistemologies have engaged, conflicted, and negotiated, enabling the reshaping and recovery of meanings within the things held in collections; a process that sits at the centre of the current decolonizing discourse. For Indigenous people, these museum holdings are a unique and tangible link to the past that can perhaps be found only in memory. This article provides a nuanced understanding of the complexities associated with museum collections and their enduring legacies realized through the engagement of Indigenous people with their cultural patrimony.
The most common problem all museums share is a lack of space for their collections. For nearly 20... more The most common problem all museums share is a lack of space for their collections. For nearly 200 years artifacts have accumulated in buildings which have not been designed for the functions of a museum. To see so many artifacts crowded together in small rooms raises not only fears for their very safety, but also questions how successful our attempts have been to make the collections known and accessible. This catalogue seeks to untangle our collections so that we may view each item. In this way each item can be assessed on its own merit, and each item is seen as a separate and distinct cultural document. The catalogue contains the entire ethnographic collection and primary information on artifacts from within the boundaries of the state of Queensland, with the exception of those of a secret-sacred nature. The publication of this data may be of use to Aboriginal people, researchers, private collectors, and the general public.
This paper is a preliminary report on research undertaken with a Rakow Grant for Glass Research (... more This paper is a preliminary report on research undertaken with a Rakow Grant for Glass Research (2019) that enabled us to build on a previous study of objects with glass beads from the western Pacific (Australia and Papua New Guinea). We expanded our research by examining a significant number of beaded objects and trade bead cards at 14 museums worldwide.
This chapter provides an analysis of the Donald Thomson Collection, which was amassed over five d... more This chapter provides an analysis of the Donald Thomson Collection, which was amassed over five decades by the University of Melbourne Professor of Anthropology, Donald Finlay Fergusson Thomson (1901-1970). The primary focus of the chapter is his anthropological collecting, although at heart Thomson was a field naturalist, consumed by observing, recording, photographing, and collecting. His keen interest developed from childhood and endured throughout his life, undertaking formal training at the University of Melbourne. During his undergraduate years Thomson developed a desire to join an expedition to remote places, but did not eventuate until he completed a Diploma of Anthropology at the University of Sydney in 1927 after which he undertook extensive anthropological research with Aboriginal people on Cape York Peninsula (1928-1933), Arnhem Land (1935-1937, 1941-1942), and the Western Desert (1957, 1962, 1965). While Thomson's collecting rationale and field methodology were part of his broader anthropological inquiries, his his natural science training is evident in his approach to collecting.
This chapter explores the nature of current research models relating to Indigenous collections he... more This chapter explores the nature of current research models relating to Indigenous collections held by cultural institutions. I present insights into how two museum collections have been pivotal to the aspirations of Lamalama people – those of Herbert Hale and Norman Tindale (South Australian Museum, Adelaide); and of Donald Thomson, whose field material from Port Stewart in 1928 through to 1932 is on loan to Museum Victoria, Melbourne. In this chapter I reveal the value of applying a cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary research framework that brings together academic, curatorial and Indigenous interests, all of which are connected through the long standing relationships and close friendships between anthropologists and key Lamalama elders, many now passed away.
This is a thesis completed as part of Masters of Arts (Qual.) in the Anthropology Department at t... more This is a thesis completed as part of Masters of Arts (Qual.) in the Anthropology Department at the University of Queensland.
In 2007 the author travelled to Europe to investigate the holdings from Princess Charlotte Bay in... more In 2007 the author travelled to Europe to investigate the holdings from Princess Charlotte Bay in museums as part of research for the ARC Linkage Project, Oral Tradition, Memory and Social Change: Indigenous Participation in the Curation of Collections. The research is being undertaken by a multi-disciplinary team from the University of Queensland, Deakin University and Museum Victoria. It came about at the request of the Lamalama community, whose traditional country is on Princess Charlotte Bay in Cape York Peninsula. Discussion with elders for the research project identified the need to research material in overseas collections. This article discusses what was located in museums in Leipzig and Cologne in Germany, Amsterdam in The Netherlands, Madrid in Spain, and Rome in Italy.
This article is a review of the exhibition, Gapuwiyak Miaylurruwurrr Gong Djambatjmala - Women wi... more This article is a review of the exhibition, Gapuwiyak Miaylurruwurrr Gong Djambatjmala - Women with Clever Hands, that showcases Arnhem Land fibre practice from Gapuwiyak in the Top End of Australia. The exhibition opened at Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery in September 2010 followed by installations at Craft ACT and Design Centre in Canberra in 2013 and the University of Queensland Anthropology Museum in February 2014. Drawn from the largest private collection of Arnhem Land fibre art, it explores the breadth and depth of fibre art practices and how ideas and styles from the past and in the present can be traced in the work of contemporary practitioners.
The cultural record of the Lamalama people of far north Queensland is well-represented in the Nor... more The cultural record of the Lamalama people of far north Queensland is well-represented in the Norman B. Tindale Collection held at the South Australian Museum (SAM). This record derives from the Expedition to Princess Charlotte Bay in 1926–27, a collecting trip sanctioned by the SAM’s Board of Governors to expand ‘the hitherto meagre Museum collections’ from southern Cape York Peninsula. Norman Tindale would establish his reputation as the Museum’s ethnographer on this trip, and despite spending only a few days at Port Stewart, he and expedition leader Herbert Hale recognised Aboriginal people camped in the bed of the Stewart River as having diverse clan-estate, language and genealogical relationships. A vast quantity of artefacts was collected and many still images and a small amount of moving image were taken. The latter collections, together with their written accounts and documentation, provide compelling testimony of the lives of those people who survived the violence and displacement of the nineteenth century colonial frontier in north Queensland. Over recent decades, the Lamalama have worked closely with the authors to access their cultural patrimony in museum collections, including making two trips to the SAM (1997 and 2010). The aims of this paper, therefore, are to demonstrate the importance of engaging Indigenous people in a dialogue about their cultural patrimony in museums such as may be found in the Norman B. Tindale Collection, consider Lamalama responses to the record created by Tindale and Hale and investigate the nature of Tindale’s archive and its continuing relevance to Lamalama people.
The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections brings together, for the first ... more The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections brings together, for the first time, histories of the making and of the makers of most of the major Indigenous Australian museum collections. These collections are a principal source of information on how Aboriginal people lived in the past. Knowing the context in which any collection was created - the intellectual frameworks within which the collectors were working, their collecting practices, what they failed to collect, and what Aboriginal people withheld - is vital to understanding how any collection relates to the Aboriginal society from which it was derived. Once made, collections have had mixed fates: some have become the jewel of a museum's holdings, while others have been divided and dispersed across the world, or retained but neglected. The essays in this volume raise issues about representation, institutional policies, the periodisation of collecting, intellectual history, material culture studies, Abor...
This article is a review of the exhibition, Gapuwiyak Miaylurruwurrr Gong Djambatjmala - Women wi... more This article is a review of the exhibition, Gapuwiyak Miaylurruwurrr Gong Djambatjmala - Women with Clever Hands, that showcases Arnhem Land fibre practice from Gapuwiyak in the Top End of Australia. The exhibition opened at Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery in September 2010 followed by installations at Craft ACT and Design Centre in Canberra in 2013 and the University of Queensland Anthropology Museum in February 2014. Drawn from the largest private collection of Arnhem Land fibre art, it explores the breadth and depth of fibre art practices and how ideas and styles from the past and in the present can be traced in the work of contemporary practitioners.
Encyclopedia of National Dress Volume 1 Traditional Clothing Around The World, 2013
This paper looks at the way in which cultural and environmental differences across Aboriginal Aus... more This paper looks at the way in which cultural and environmental differences across Aboriginal Australia are reflected in the diversity of dress and body adornment. Clothing was worn for protection from the elements and also for cultural reasons. The forms could be dictated as much by aesthetics as their practicality, while at the same time could be dictated by age, gender, status, group affiliation and ritual practice.
Museums continue to be cast as anachronistic—‘weary’, ‘tired’, and ‘out of touch’—trophy houses e... more Museums continue to be cast as anachronistic—‘weary’, ‘tired’, and ‘out of touch’—trophy houses embedded in the colonial past, with object collections considered hollow remnants of that past. This article contests this notion and reveals how museums have emerged over the past fifty years as active field sites where Indigenous communities, scholars, artists, and artisans in the Pacific have been and are engaging with their cultural patrimony. This approach has seen new meanings and readings of, and new life breathed into, these collections in ways never imagined or anticipated. The museum is a space where differing epistemologies have engaged, conflicted, and negotiated, enabling the reshaping and recovery of meanings within the things held in collections; a process that sits at the centre of the current decolonizing discourse. For Indigenous people, these museum holdings are a unique and tangible link to the past that can perhaps be found only in memory. This article provides a nuanced understanding of the complexities associated with museum collections and their enduring legacies realized through the engagement of Indigenous people with their cultural patrimony.
The most common problem all museums share is a lack of space for their collections. For nearly 20... more The most common problem all museums share is a lack of space for their collections. For nearly 200 years artifacts have accumulated in buildings which have not been designed for the functions of a museum. To see so many artifacts crowded together in small rooms raises not only fears for their very safety, but also questions how successful our attempts have been to make the collections known and accessible. This catalogue seeks to untangle our collections so that we may view each item. In this way each item can be assessed on its own merit, and each item is seen as a separate and distinct cultural document. The catalogue contains the entire ethnographic collection and primary information on artifacts from within the boundaries of the state of Queensland, with the exception of those of a secret-sacred nature. The publication of this data may be of use to Aboriginal people, researchers, private collectors, and the general public.
This paper is a preliminary report on research undertaken with a Rakow Grant for Glass Research (... more This paper is a preliminary report on research undertaken with a Rakow Grant for Glass Research (2019) that enabled us to build on a previous study of objects with glass beads from the western Pacific (Australia and Papua New Guinea). We expanded our research by examining a significant number of beaded objects and trade bead cards at 14 museums worldwide.
This chapter provides an analysis of the Donald Thomson Collection, which was amassed over five d... more This chapter provides an analysis of the Donald Thomson Collection, which was amassed over five decades by the University of Melbourne Professor of Anthropology, Donald Finlay Fergusson Thomson (1901-1970). The primary focus of the chapter is his anthropological collecting, although at heart Thomson was a field naturalist, consumed by observing, recording, photographing, and collecting. His keen interest developed from childhood and endured throughout his life, undertaking formal training at the University of Melbourne. During his undergraduate years Thomson developed a desire to join an expedition to remote places, but did not eventuate until he completed a Diploma of Anthropology at the University of Sydney in 1927 after which he undertook extensive anthropological research with Aboriginal people on Cape York Peninsula (1928-1933), Arnhem Land (1935-1937, 1941-1942), and the Western Desert (1957, 1962, 1965). While Thomson's collecting rationale and field methodology were part of his broader anthropological inquiries, his his natural science training is evident in his approach to collecting.
This chapter explores the nature of current research models relating to Indigenous collections he... more This chapter explores the nature of current research models relating to Indigenous collections held by cultural institutions. I present insights into how two museum collections have been pivotal to the aspirations of Lamalama people – those of Herbert Hale and Norman Tindale (South Australian Museum, Adelaide); and of Donald Thomson, whose field material from Port Stewart in 1928 through to 1932 is on loan to Museum Victoria, Melbourne. In this chapter I reveal the value of applying a cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary research framework that brings together academic, curatorial and Indigenous interests, all of which are connected through the long standing relationships and close friendships between anthropologists and key Lamalama elders, many now passed away.
This is a thesis completed as part of Masters of Arts (Qual.) in the Anthropology Department at t... more This is a thesis completed as part of Masters of Arts (Qual.) in the Anthropology Department at the University of Queensland.
In 2007 the author travelled to Europe to investigate the holdings from Princess Charlotte Bay in... more In 2007 the author travelled to Europe to investigate the holdings from Princess Charlotte Bay in museums as part of research for the ARC Linkage Project, Oral Tradition, Memory and Social Change: Indigenous Participation in the Curation of Collections. The research is being undertaken by a multi-disciplinary team from the University of Queensland, Deakin University and Museum Victoria. It came about at the request of the Lamalama community, whose traditional country is on Princess Charlotte Bay in Cape York Peninsula. Discussion with elders for the research project identified the need to research material in overseas collections. This article discusses what was located in museums in Leipzig and Cologne in Germany, Amsterdam in The Netherlands, Madrid in Spain, and Rome in Italy.
This article is a review of the exhibition, Gapuwiyak Miaylurruwurrr Gong Djambatjmala - Women wi... more This article is a review of the exhibition, Gapuwiyak Miaylurruwurrr Gong Djambatjmala - Women with Clever Hands, that showcases Arnhem Land fibre practice from Gapuwiyak in the Top End of Australia. The exhibition opened at Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery in September 2010 followed by installations at Craft ACT and Design Centre in Canberra in 2013 and the University of Queensland Anthropology Museum in February 2014. Drawn from the largest private collection of Arnhem Land fibre art, it explores the breadth and depth of fibre art practices and how ideas and styles from the past and in the present can be traced in the work of contemporary practitioners.
The cultural record of the Lamalama people of far north Queensland is well-represented in the Nor... more The cultural record of the Lamalama people of far north Queensland is well-represented in the Norman B. Tindale Collection held at the South Australian Museum (SAM). This record derives from the Expedition to Princess Charlotte Bay in 1926–27, a collecting trip sanctioned by the SAM’s Board of Governors to expand ‘the hitherto meagre Museum collections’ from southern Cape York Peninsula. Norman Tindale would establish his reputation as the Museum’s ethnographer on this trip, and despite spending only a few days at Port Stewart, he and expedition leader Herbert Hale recognised Aboriginal people camped in the bed of the Stewart River as having diverse clan-estate, language and genealogical relationships. A vast quantity of artefacts was collected and many still images and a small amount of moving image were taken. The latter collections, together with their written accounts and documentation, provide compelling testimony of the lives of those people who survived the violence and displacement of the nineteenth century colonial frontier in north Queensland. Over recent decades, the Lamalama have worked closely with the authors to access their cultural patrimony in museum collections, including making two trips to the SAM (1997 and 2010). The aims of this paper, therefore, are to demonstrate the importance of engaging Indigenous people in a dialogue about their cultural patrimony in museums such as may be found in the Norman B. Tindale Collection, consider Lamalama responses to the record created by Tindale and Hale and investigate the nature of Tindale’s archive and its continuing relevance to Lamalama people.
The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections brings together, for the first ... more The Makers and Making of Indigenous Australian Museum Collections brings together, for the first time, histories of the making and of the makers of most of the major Indigenous Australian museum collections. These collections are a principal source of information on how Aboriginal people lived in the past. Knowing the context in which any collection was created - the intellectual frameworks within which the collectors were working, their collecting practices, what they failed to collect, and what Aboriginal people withheld - is vital to understanding how any collection relates to the Aboriginal society from which it was derived. Once made, collections have had mixed fates: some have become the jewel of a museum's holdings, while others have been divided and dispersed across the world, or retained but neglected. The essays in this volume raise issues about representation, institutional policies, the periodisation of collecting, intellectual history, material culture studies, Abor...
This article is a review of the exhibition, Gapuwiyak Miaylurruwurrr Gong Djambatjmala - Women wi... more This article is a review of the exhibition, Gapuwiyak Miaylurruwurrr Gong Djambatjmala - Women with Clever Hands, that showcases Arnhem Land fibre practice from Gapuwiyak in the Top End of Australia. The exhibition opened at Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery in September 2010 followed by installations at Craft ACT and Design Centre in Canberra in 2013 and the University of Queensland Anthropology Museum in February 2014. Drawn from the largest private collection of Arnhem Land fibre art, it explores the breadth and depth of fibre art practices and how ideas and styles from the past and in the present can be traced in the work of contemporary practitioners.
This paper is a review of the book, Djalkiri - Yolŋu art, collaborations and collections produced... more This paper is a review of the book, Djalkiri - Yolŋu art, collaborations and collections produced to coincide with the exhibition Gululu dhuwala djalkiri: welcome to the Yolŋu foundations in the University of Sydney's new Chau Chak Wing Museum that opened in November 2020.
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