Part 1
13:00-14:00 Window to the Soul: Pearshell, Pearling and Saltwater Country. Investigations of the pearling history of North-West Australia from an Aboriginal and decolonial perspective by anthropologist and curator Sarah Yu.
‘Window to the Soul’ describes pearling histories in West Kimberley, Australia, from an Aboriginal perspective. Previously, pearling history has been of a colonial nature, without acknowledgement of that Aboriginal peoples’ relations with pearls in archaeological record span thousands of years.
Yu argues for the presence of ‘a cult of dis-remembering’, a fundamental lack of Aboriginal presence in how the pearling history as is told. Yu calls this dis-remembering ‘a habit’ of non-Aboriginal Australians. Histories of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal participation in the colonial pearling history are told by Yu from an Aboriginal perspective, foregrounding that cosmological and spiritual parts of Aboriginal relations with the pearl is central to both tangible and intangible heritage of a larger Kimberley region, in ways that can be traced in maps.
Sarah Yu has lived and worked in the Broome region of northwestern Australia for over 40 years, working as an anthropologist, teacher, curator and heritage consultant focusing on relationships between people and their historical and cultural connections to country.
Since 1995, Sarah has worked with groups in the west Kimberley region to record their cultural values and ethno-biological data. She has worked on two native title claims and as a consultant anthropologist, wrote one of the first studies of the cultural value of underground water. In 2011, Sarah produced the award-winning Yawuru Cultural Management Plan to underpin joint management plans for the proposed Yawuru Conservation Estate.
In 2007, Sarah curated the ‘Opening the Common Gate’ exhibition about the racial restrictions endured by Broome’s Aboriginal and Asian communities in the 1960s.
14:00-14:30 Break
Part 2
14:30-16:00 Panel discussion: Engaging Australian Kimberley collections in European museums
The Kimberley region, which is the Western Australia’s northern most region, was a paradise for European collectors at the beginning of the last century. A time when Australian indigenous people held a very particular position in European ethnography.
What was collected there and how? What became the material culture of Aboriginal Australians in European museums, and how should we engage with this today?
Currently, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Studies (AIATSIS) are encouraging the return of Australian collections from abroad. What stories can be told with these objects and how should we think of return?
These and other questions regarding Kimberley collections, returns and dialogical encounters will be discussed by anthropologist and curator Sarah Yu from the University of Notre Dame in Australia, anthropologist Carsten Wergin from the University of Heidelberg in Germany, curator Maria Dahlström from National Museums of World Culture in Gothenburg, Sweden, and anthropologist and curator Gro Ween form the Museum of Cultural History in Norway.
About Carsten Wergin
Carsten Wergin is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Heidelberg, with long-term fieldwork experience from the Kimberleys. Wergin’s work describes tangible and intangible heritage, as practiced by Aboriginal groups in the Kimberleys, in museums, in the tourist industry, as well as in situations of conflicts with extraction industries.
About Maria Dahlström
Maria Dahlström is a curator at the National Museums of World Culture (NMWC) in Sweden. Since 2008, she has been working with the collections of the four museums that is the NMWC. Now, she is focusing on questions relating to the illicit trafficking of cultural property as well as provenance research and repatriation. Maria Dahlström has an MA in archaeology with a focus on classical archaeology.
About Gro Ween
Gro Ween is Professor of Anthropology at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, and Keeper of the Australian, North American and Arctic collections. Ween’s work involves issues such as repatriation, collaboration, and indigenous methodologies.
The panel discussion will be led by Postdoctoral Fellow Anna Mossolova from the Museum of Cultural History.
After the seminar, we will continue the conversation more informally.