Wonu Veys travelled to Australia as part of an international collaborative project entitled Globalization, Photography, and Race: The Circulation and Return of Aboriginal Photographs in Europe. She has worked extensively with the photographic collections found within the Musée du quai Branly, but more specifically with pictures from the Museum of Ethnology.

The following is a blog account of Wonu’s travels that have been translated from Dutch to English.

Recent research in Numbulwar, Arnhem Land, Northern Territory (Friday, February 14th, 2014)

The Museum of Ethnology preserves in its collections a total of 470 photographs taken by Alex van der Leeden during his fieldwork in Numbulwar from January 29, 1964 until January 29, 1965.

It turned out that Professor Victoria Burbank from The University of Western Australia had worked with the Numbulwar community in 1977. When I arrived at UWA a meeting was arranged for me to meet with Victoria. This was a fantastic interview where she was incredibly generous with her information, and gave me a lot of tips and names of people I could contact the ground.

Although Burbank’s research was focused more so on the situation of women in the Arnhem Land communities – she thought it would be very valuable sharing our photo collection to the entire community. Professor Burbank certainly helped me to prepare for my trip to Arnhem Land.

During our meeting, she could confirm for example, that attitudes to show pictures of deceased relatives to Aboriginal people no longer had the same concerns today as they might have in decades past. In fact in 2007, members of the Numbulwar community were shown pictures of a relative that had passed only two months prior and were received without problems.

The port city of Fremantle (Saturday, February 15th, 2014)

Before I flew out to Canberra from Perth, I decided to visit the port city of Fremantle. The historic town is half an hour from Perth and dates back to 1829. The village style atmosphere is in contrast to Perth a houses a large number of historic buildings and quaint shops.

Whilst there I visited the historic Fremantle Market that offers a wide selection of jewelry, leather, honey, bread, fruit and other foods and went to Fremantle Oval, the home of the Bulldogs, the Australian football team which consists of eighteen members. I was even able to visit a fortune teller at City Hall and for the cost of $60 was told of my possible future.

Also towering above the city skyline sits Fremantle Prison. It is famous not only for its history as a prison from 1850 to 1991, but received a UNESCO World Heritage status from 2010.

Fremantle Markets, Western Australia

Sunday in Canberra (Sunday, February 16th, 2014)

Canberra, the Federal Capital of Australia, is the home of the Australian Parliament and all national institutions such as the Australian National University (ANU), the National Art Gallery of Australia, the National Library, the National Museum of Australia, and so on.

The American architect Walter Burley Griffin designed the city with a tight geometric plan in the early twentieth century.

Canberra is not really a city for pedestrians. Nevertheless, I went to the National Gallery of Australia where there is a beautiful Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Wing and is furnished with pieces from their contemporary art collection, apparently the largest in the world. One of the highlights is The Aboriginal Memorial created by the Arnhem Land artists from the Northern Territory.

Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Studies (Monday, February 17th, 2014)

On Monday I had a meeting with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Studies (AIATSIS). As mentioned earlier, the Dutch anthropologist Alex van der Leeden had a collection of 470 black and white photos, as well as 75 objects and made several recordings during his fieldwork in 1964-65 in the Numbulwar community, Arnhem Land. I wanted to compare our photo collection with the collection housed within AIATSIS.

The Australian photo collection was not as detailed in their information as our collections were, but I did make some interesting discoveries. Some photos I could not view. They were covered by a paper, which was labeled “restricted men’s ceremonial” (restricted, men ceremony). As I had similar photos that I had brought from our collection, I knew that I had to deal carefully with some of the images that may be considered to be ‘restricted’ material.

Today, it is very common in Aboriginal communities that when dealing with images and information pertaining to secret / sacred ceremonies or objects special permission must be sought from the relevant knowledge holders or communities to get access. Now I know that I must deal will gently with a dozen photos when I have to ask you also to share with other members of the settlement of these pictures the permission of an elder “(an older man) numbulwar am and probably first.

Wonu Veys travelled to Australia as part of an international collaborative project entitled Globalization, Photography, and Race: The Circulation and Return of Aboriginal Photographs in Europe. She has worked extensively with the photographic collections found within the Musée du quai Branly, but more specifically with pictures from the Museum of Ethnology. 

The following is a blog account of Wonu’s travels that have been translated from Dutch to English.

University of Western Australia

University of Western Australia (Monday, February 10th, 2014)

Perth, on the campus of the University of Western Australia starting my research trip.

Professor Jane Lydon and Wonu Veys

The University was founded by John Winthrop Hackett in 1911 as the first “free university” of the British Commonwealth who wanted to offer equal opportunities to all social classes. It is high summer in Perth, and the temperature runs constantly around 30°C and by early afternoon a fresh sea breeze is blowing.

Although the campus caters to thousands of students, the grounds are also inhabited by a large population of galah’s (an Australian cockatoo) – they look like parrots but are grey with a pink breasts – and peacocks including a large number of male peacocks with their long, feathery tails. The peacocks will greet you at your office window every now and then!

Together with Professor Jane Lydon, the project leader of the Australian Research Council study, we prepared for my trip from Perth to Canberra and eventually onto Arnhem Land. My month will be mostly dedicated to finding additional research on  a group of photos that were taken in Western Australia at the end of the nineteenth century, and then to research and share a collection of 470 photographs that were taken fifty years ago by the Dutch anthropologist Alex van der Leeden in Numbulwar, a settlement in Arnhem Land.

Rottnest Island – Wadjemup from prison to holiday Island (Tuesday, February 11, 2014)

Quokka at Rottnest Island, Western Australia

Rottnest Island got its name from the Dutch navigator Willem de Vlamingh because he thought that the many nests of the marsupials, known quokkas (Setonix brachyurus), which he found in 1696 on the island, were rats. So, “Rottenest” eventually became “Rottnest”.

The aboriginal name Wadjemup is almost never used, although the site is closely linked to the recent colonial Aboriginal history. Around 6,500 years ago, people lived on the island before it was closed off from the mainland by the rising sea levels.

The Island still plays an important role for the Noongar Aboriginal communities as a place where spirits dwell. A painful chapter came in 1838 when the first 10 Aboriginal men were sent as prisoners to the island. In 1931, the prison closed its doors. Sadly during that period 369 Aboriginal men, mostly leaders and bearers of cultural knowledge lost their lives. Nowadays hundreds of tourists visit the island daily, enjoying the beautiful scenery and accommodations for holidaymakers.

Although the Noongar Cirlcle of Elders and the Rottnest Island Deaths Group Aboriginal Corporation continue to make sure that the public is educated on the Aboriginal history of Rottnest and that tourists are well aware of sacred places within the landscape.

Wadjemup, Rottnest Island

The Berndt Museum of Anthropology (Wednesday, February 12th, 2014)

Barbara Bynder, The Berndt Museum of Anthropology

The Berndt Museum of Anthropology was named after its founders Ronald and Catherine Berndt, in 1976, and is actually a University Museum where a wealth of Aboriginal art and artifact collections is kept. I was particularly interested in their small collection from Melanesia, particularly Papua New Guinea.

I had an appointment with Ted Snell, the Director of the Cultural Precinct, which includes all university museums and Barbara Bynder, Deputy Director and Curator of the Berndt Museum. During this meeting I came to know a lot about how Aboriginal communities deal with photographs. Barbara Bynder, a Noongar woman told me that many older people are a lot more cautious than some younger Noongar people when it comes to what pictures can and cannot be seen by the general public.

In general, the Museum works with the different communities and allows them access to the various collections that has beneficial outcomes for both the museum and communities involved.

The Western Australian Museum (Thursday, February 13th, 2014)

In the Western Australian Museum, Dr. Moya Smith, Head of Department of Anthropology and Archeology and Mr. Ross Chadwick, the Curator in the Department of Anthropology and Archeology greeted me. The museum houses both skeletons of wildlife and humans.

The setting up of the Aboriginal Australia arrangement has been held up for more than four years. With every photo and every object Aboriginal owners were contacted to obtain the necessary permissions. Moya and Ross, I also discussed a set of photographs that I had found in Paris, at the Musée du Quai Branly, which was sent at the beginning of the twentieth century by the Western Australian Museum in the former Musée de l’Homme.

I suspected that the pictures were taken by the Australian collector John Thomas Tunney (1870-1929) who was appointed in 1895 as the museum collector. His task was to build natural history and ethnographic collections for the growing Western Australian Museum. When Tunney received a camera in 1898 from his museum director Bernard Woodward, he did not know how to use it. Luckily he got lessons during one of his collecting expeditions. He limited his photos to portraits of people in Coolgardie, Carnarvon, Broome Beagle Bay, Murchison, Yalgoo, Nullagine, Northam, Ashburton River, Derby and Bunbury to the front and back view and profile shots.

I was happy to hear that my suspicions were confirmed. The photos were indeed taken by John Thomas Tunney. Moreover, both Moya and Ross were not aware that any of Tunney’s prints had ever left Austrralia and were now in Cambridge and Paris. This study lifts a corner of the veil on the extensive networks that existed between museums around the world where objects and photos were exchanged and the turn of the nineteenth century.

Moya Smith and Ross Chadwick, The Western Australian Museum

The Storylines project in the State Library of Western Australia (Thursday, February 13th, 2014)

Damien Webb and John Geijsman have been working on a great project that focused solely on the Aboriginal photographic and some audio collections housed in the State Library of Western Australia. The project is called “Storylines” and the system allows Aboriginal people’s from all over Western Australia to find family names, places of significance and view recorded footage and photographic archives of family and community members. The programme is highly interactive and intuitive and is continually being updated to provide more information for its users.

For those wanting to visit the site themselves you can enter as a guest at: http://storylines.slwa.wa.gov.au

John Geijsman

A public lecture by Christopher Morton, sponsored by the Institute of Advanced Studies (UWA) (27 August 2013)

Wanamuchoo was an Aboriginal man brought by a police trooper to Adelaide for trial in March 1893 for the murder of another Aboriginal man in Innamincka, some 850 miles away. After trial, he was photographed at the City Watchhouse. According to a local newspaper account, his confusion was such that ‘when confronted by the camera he appeared to think that it was some awful instrument of the white man’s vengeance’.

A print of this photograph was sent by an Adelaide resident, John Bagot, in November of that year, to the Curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. Some years later the Curator mounted the print with a number of others from South Australia, and added the information that Wanamuchoo had been ‘hanged for the murder of a shepherd’. However, it is clear from contemporary reports that he was in fact considered insane at trial and sent to the City Asylum, where he seems to have survived a further eleven years, dying there in March 1903.

The case of Wanamuchoo caused a lively debate in the press of the day on the topic of the applicability of English law to Aboriginal cases such as this, and its themes of dislocation, mistranslation and separation continue to resonate for many Aboriginal people to this day. This lecture will show how the current international research project Globalisation, Photography and Race: the Circulation and Return of Aboriginal Photographs in Europe, led by Jane Lydon at the University of Western Australia, has been exploring visual histories held in remote photograph collections such as Oxford, the ways in which it has attempted to reconnect the images to relevant indigenous communities today, and the research and curatorial issues that have emerge

Found at http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/morton

Listen to his UWA lecture HERE

Image: Lynnette Wanganeen with Dr Chris Morton and copy of an 1867 photograph of her ancestor. Image courtesy: Pauline Cockrill and History SA.

Family portraits are valued items that give us a unique snapshot of a moment in time and through those image memories that can be cherished for years to come. Such images can also become an important historical record.

But not everyone in the community has access to such images and there may be pieces of one’s past that are unknown due to a loss of photographs, which also becomes a gap in the historical records.

Trying to obtain images from previous generations can be difficult, but one researcher is doing all she can to use the past to change the future.

Professor Jane Lydon, an ARC Future Fellow and the new Wesfarmers Chair of Australian History at the University of Western Australia, wants to establish visual history as a key aspect of Australian and Indigenous historiography.

Professor Lydon is using her Fellowship to reverse the previous flow of a significant heritage resource of Indigenous Australians to European collections, and to make those precious documents available to the communities, relatives and descendants of the Aboriginal people in the photographs.

“To do this we need to return those images—which are often in museum collections held overseas in Europe, having been collected by European explorers from the mid-nineteenth century—to Australia and to the descendants of the people in the photographs,” Professor Lydon said.

“Today they are very much valued as family portraits, they also document a colonial past that isn’t otherwise available through documented images, and they document cultural heritage and cultural traditions that may not have been remembered or recorded in other ways.”

Professor Lydon has had great success with her research under her Future Fellowship.

In December 2012 Professor Lydon published The Flash of Recognition: Photography and the Emergence of Indigenous Rights. The book presents a new way of looking at the relations between Aboriginal people and settler society in the past through visual imagery.

“What I’ve argued in that book is that images were an important way of campaigning on behalf of Aboriginal people, both up until the 1930s as used by white activists and then from the 1930s on as used very much by Aboriginal people themselves to argue for their rights,” Professor Lydon said.

“The book puts forward an innovative argument and brought together a lot of these images for the first time.”
This dedication to her research field was recently rewarded at the 2013 Queensland Literary Awards where Professor Lydon won the history book category.

It’s not the only one of Professor Lydon’s books to receive high recognition. Fantastic Dreaming: The archaeology of an Aboriginal mission (AltaMira, 2009), won the Australian Archaeological Association’s John Mulvaney Book Award in 2010.

She is now working on a new book looking at how photographs have played a role in shaping ideas of what it means to be human.

The book will be international in its scope, but will be framed through the lens of race relations in Australia and the way that Aboriginal people have been represented by photographers and have represented themselves.

Her research will also be developed further by a six-month visiting fellowship to Cambridge University this year, enabled by her Future Fellowship.

Another achievement has been the collating of a database that brings together images from four overseas collections in the UK, Netherlands and France. This will be an important resource to establish which images held overseas relate to which communities here in Australia. It will also serve as an important tool for returning those images.

This collaborative work has led to strong links with the renowned Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, UK. In August last year Dr Christopher Morton, Curator of Photograph and Manuscript Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, who is working with Professor Lydon on her research project, visited Australia presenting a public lecture Searching for Wanamuchoo—Researching and returning Aboriginal photographs from the Pitt Rivers Museum.

This lecture highlighted the importance of Professor Lydon’s research project in exploring visual histories held in remote photograph collections such as Oxford, the ways in which it has attempted to reconnect the images to relevant indigenous communities today, and the research and curatorial issues that have emerged.

While in Australia, Dr Morton was fortunate to be introduced to a descendant of one of the early Aboriginal portraits in the Museum’s collection. The portrait in question is of James Wanganeen, an Aboriginal member of Poonindie Mission in Port Lincoln, South Australia, and his descendent is Lynnette Wanganeen (James’s great great great granddaughter).

Dr Morton was delighted to be able to present Lynnette with a print of this portrait, as well as one of James with his third wife, Mary Jane.

“The presentation of the copy of the PRM portrait was a very emotional moment for Lynnette, who felt a close bond to James despite the generational distance,” Dr Morton said.

“She spoke of the importance of seeing James and having a copy of his portrait, and for me it was a transformational moment also, in that I had known this portrait for many years, pasted onto a mount with maybe twenty or more other portraits.

“James was placed there in about 1931 by Henry Balfour in a box containing hundreds of historical portraits of Aboriginal people. Reunited with his family, the portrait in Oxford takes on a new meaning, and begins a new life with family in South Australia.”

It is these precious moments that make Professor Lydon’s research even more rewarding and she has a very clear picture of what she wants to achieve in the future.

“In a broad sense I’m hoping that a research outcome of my Future Fellowship will be establishing visual history as an important field of research and visual archives and photographs as an important heritage resource, particularly for Indigenous communities.

“I want to help the Australian public to become more conscious of the legacies of the past in the present. I’m hoping the books will also have an impact on Australian history and heritage.

“We all want to be acknowledged for our intellectual contribution to research, but I’d also like to be thought of as someone who tried very hard to mentor and collaborate with Indigenous people.

“I’d like to draw more Aboriginal people into academia and bring them into the field as researchers of their own past and their own heritage,” Professor Lydon said.

For more information please contact Professor Jane Lydon.

Article found at http://www.arc.gov.au/news-media/news/future-fellow-committed-using-pictorial-past-shape-our-future

“Portrait of young Aboriginal man called James Wanganeen (1836–1871) in European coat, waistcoat, shirt and necktie. Plain studio background. James Wanganeen was a catechist or lay preacher at Poonindie mission.” Pitt Rivers Museum; Accession # 1998.249.33.9

 The process of returning historical photographic collections to Aboriginal communities today is a complicated process. This is why it is fundamental that the process of returning photographic materials is handled in a culturally appropriate manner. Having personally worked with Indigenous visual and audio archival collections previously and been involved with the returing of photographs to communities – some of which contained culturally sensitive materials, it is important to fully understand the significance these compilations represent for Indigenous peoples.

It is often said that a photograph can speak a thousand words, but for Indigenous peoples these archival images represent so much more. Not only do they depict images of people’s ancestors, their country and places of significance, but they become ‘living entities’ in their own right – able to remove themselves from the Western concept of ‘the past’ and place themselves within the ‘here and now’.

By recording our histories within oral traditions, Indigenous peoples were able to keep alive the memories of love ones and the knowledge of country without the necessity of the archival record. Having said that however, with greater access to relevant visual collections, our Indigenous peoples and communities today are able to amalgamate the visual image with their oral stories and histories. As a result, the concept of time becomes somewhat blurred whereby the past, present and future co-exist in the here and now.

“Group of five senior Noongar men wearing European trousers, with ornate white paint on their bodies, faces, arms and legs. Left to right: Joobaitch, Woolber, Monnop, Dool and Genbursong.” Circa 1900; Source: Henry Balfour. Accession #1998.172.34.3

Many collections today are welcomed by the majority of Aboriginal peoples who see these records as evidence of their survival and strength, not as depictions of a ‘dying race’ or the colonised. What is more important to community members is the people, places of significance and country that can be found within these images. The photographic archive is a powerful source of information for Aboriginal peoples. In each image we see where we’ve been and in turn what we’ve become. They are ‘living’ proof that Aboriginal people are survivors and that our culture has survived through tremendous adversity.

Visual repatriation is, in many ways, about finding a present for historical photographs, realizing their potential to seed a number of narratives through which to make sense of the past in the present and make it fulfill the needs of the present.

(Elizabeth Edwards)
***

“Group of Aboriginal women and children. The children are sitting, while the older women are standing. The women are all wearing long-sleeved long dresses or long skirts and blouses. There are trees in the background.” Photo originated in Daisy Bates Collection. Accession #14325

 Traditionally, Aboriginal people recorded their history orally and were able to keep alive the memories of loved ones and the knowledge of country without the necessity of the written word or archival record. Since colonisation however, people’s oral histories in many places have become fragmented. With access to relevant photographic collections, Indigenous people/communities today are able to amalgamate the archival image with their oral histories. As a result, the concept of time becomes somewhat blurred whereby the past, present and future co-exist in the here and now. Not only do they depict images of people’s ancestors, their country and places of significance, but they become ‘living entities’ in their own right – able to remove themselves from the spectrum of time and the Western concept of ‘the past’ and place themselves within the ‘here and now’.

In the past, Indigenous interaction with Institutions like museums and state government run libraries and departments have been limited and one sided. In many cases Indigenous peoples had become the object and subject of archival collections –collected and archived through the eyes of the non-Indigenous outsider. However, with greater access to resources that allow Aboriginal communities greater agency, the process of reconciling aspects of the past can begin. With Aboriginal peoples now looking back at these institutions through the looking glass (so to speak), the relationship between institutions and Aboriginal people can be based upon a more equal footing.

“Group of Aboriginal women and children. The children are sitting, while the older women are standing. The women are all wearing long-sleeved long dresses or long skirts and blouses. There are trees in the background.” Photo originated in Daisy Bates Collection. Accession #1998.249.12.3

Finally, with access to these images, we as Indigenous people are able to come full circle – what was then has become the now. For many today, finding and receiving images of one’s ancestors may be the only link people have to their pasts. It is especially relevant for members of the Stolen Generations who were forcibly removed from their families and cultural heritage. Thus, they are able to begin a healing process and find – for want of a better term – an ‘end in the beginning’. It is also rewarding to be a part of a process that can also bring so much joy to many Indigenous families and communities who are able to view images of their ancestors long since departed. What was once a research tool used to “study” Aboriginal peoples, the photographic archive has now become an amazing window into our pasts.