Digital archives and discoverability : innovating access to the Strehlow collection

The Strehlow collection is one of Australia’s unique cultural treasures and represents a fundamentally interconnected set of archival data collected between the early 1900s and 1970s relating to the ceremony, land tenure and genealogical connectivity of Central Australian Aboriginal people. The research of Carl and TGH Strehlow resulted in one of the world’s largest and best-documented collections of material relating to Indigenous ceremonial life, and is a rich and complex source of anthropological data and cultural and family history information. Through database development and digitisation programs, the Strehlow Research Centre aims to promote increased access to, engagement with and participation in the management of the Strehlow collection by Aboriginal custodians. This chapter provides some background to the Strehlow archive and considers the historical context that has informed current approaches to the repatriation of Indigenous cultural property by museums and other collecting institutions more broadly. The latter part of the chapter examines Aboriginal engagement with cultural archival records and the repatriation of ceremonial objects from the Strehlow collection. This chapter also discusses the challenges of accessing and navigating the Strehlow material in an attempt to initiate digital repatriation while opening appropriate access to the Strehlow collection to researchers and the general public. It provides a work-in-progress account of several projects that have been subject to the complex, evolving worlds of convergent media, digital heritage preservation and intercultural communications.