The role of local digital archives within the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia

  • Allan Marett, Charles Darwin University and University of Sydney, Australia
  • In 2002 the Garma Symposium on Indigenous Performance brought indigenous performers from across northern Australia together with researchers and curators based in universities and national and state institutions in order to explore future directions in the research and archiving of Australian Indigenous music and dance. A statement emanating from this symposium called for the establishment of a national project to record and document the endangered and important traditions of Indigenous performance in Australia and for a network of digital archives that would make this material in local Indigenous commnities.
    Now in 2008, following numerous consultative meetings and pilot projects, the National Recording Project has been responding to this call for about six years. Working in collaboration with the Local Knowledge Centre program of the Northern Territory Library, as well as with a number of individual research projects dedicated to the recording and documentation of endangered traditions, the National Recording Project has helped to make available both newly recorded and archival material in a number of communities across the Top End.
    This paper will evaluate the various models that have evolved in communities such as Wadeye, Belyuen and Kabulwanamyo as well as plans for further archives. It will outline plans to train local indigenous people to record, document and archive their own traditions, and on the role of national and territory institutions in providing safe backup for the more vulnerable community-based archives.