Returning Indigenous knowledge in central Australia:

Barbara Glowczewski (1, 2)

1 LAS - Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale
2 SASS-JCU - School of Arts and Social Sciences-James Cook University

Many people in the modern world identify with a culture essentially transmitted through live or recorded images and sounds. Image and sound are at the core of the traditional transmission of knowledge for many Indigenous peoples. Today, multimedia
technology and the internet offer a fantastic way to promote and transmit oral cultures both for the benefit of the Indigenous peoples concerned, as well as to demonstrate the importance of local knowledge in the global system. Though text is still present in the new technologies, audiovisual information allows more direct access to Indigenous languages and cultures. Debates about ‘New Technology, Anthropology, Museology and Indigenous Knowledge' at the 2001 UNESCO symposium on ‘Indigenous Identities' have demonstrated the importance of making these new information technologies available to all Indigenous peoples. Such access will enable Indigenous peoples to control the data available on the Internet and to produce their own tools for education and communication. This will also help to commit researchers and museums to returning material, developing projects in partnership with
Indigenous communities and respecting ethical protocols. Drawing on my personal experience of using multimedia technology to return material to the Warlpiri people of Lajamanu, with whom I have been working since 1979, I discuss a part of the Australian
experience which has been groundbreaking in this domain.

Mots clés: Warlpiri; songs and stories; Central Australia; art; myth and mapping; indigenous knowledge; ritual; Dreaming and totemism; multimedia; returning anthropological data; ethics

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie; Informatique

Barbara Glowczewski. Returning Indigenous knowledge in central Australia:: ‘this CD-ROM brings everybody to the mind'. edited by Graeme K Ward and Adrian Muckle. ‘The Power of Knowledge, the Resonance of Tradition'. Electronic publication of papers from the AIATSIS Indigenous Studies conference, September 2001, AIATSIS, Canberra, pp.145-160, 2004, Research Program The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. ⟨halshs-00177953⟩