Mukurtu

News and Comments on the Project

The Mukurtu Archive is discussed by Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Anne Barker (http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/008/02/06/2156218.htm) and ABC Radio PM (20080206pm06-digital-archive.mp3 [1.8 Megs]).

Listen to Dr. Kimberly Christen discuss the Mukurtu project on the BBC radio program "Digital Planet" (original air date January 29, 2008 or download the podcast at: digitalp_20080129-1300.mp3 ^{link updated} [12.9 Megs]).

The Mukurtu Archive is mentioned in an article by BBC News: Locking down open computing, by Bill Thompson. The article discusses approaches to digital permissions and rights management: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7212803.stm

Dr. Wendy Seltzer, Fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School: "Rather than fight copyright norms with bad code, we should learn from the Warumungu and build code (and law) to support social practice" (January 11, 2008, http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2008/01/11/mukurtu-contextual-archiving-digital-
restrictions-done-right.html)

Dr. Michael Brown Professor at Williams College and author of Who Owns Native Culture: "For state-of-the-art work in Aboriginally controlled archives, check out the newly launched Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Archive" (January 7, 2008, http://www.williams.edu/go/native)

Dr. Jason Jackson, Associate Professor at Indiana University and Editor of the Museum Anthropology journal: "It is remarkable and worth looking at up close. The key point to note here is that the Warumungu community archive is built with software tools (and community collaboration principles) that will be portable to other communities and collaborations within which they can be adapted to local cultural values and needs." (January 3, 2008, http://digitaloklahoma.net/2008/01/03/mukurtu)

Press Release

January 29, 2008

Download: Digital Dilemmas, Cultural Solutions: the Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Archive  [MS-Word, 27 KB]

Digital Dilemmas, Cultural Solutions: the Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Archive

Produced by: Dr. Kimberly Christen, Craig Dietrich, Chris Cooney and Tim Dietrich in consultation with the Warumungu community in Tennant Creek, Northern Territory, Australia.

The Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Archive is browser-based digital archive built around the cultural protocols of the Warumungu Aboriginal community in Australia's Northern Territory. The archive provides a cultural solution to the community's concern over access to and the reproduction of recently digitized versions of cultural materials and personal and community photos. With thousands of photos, videos and other materials returned to the community and "virtually repatriated" by national museums, the community needed a way to maintain the cultural protocols surrounding the viewing, circulation, and reproduction of these materials. Off-line, in everyday life, cultural protocols function so that men do not view women's rituals, people related to one "country" (specific places) cannot access or view other people's countries without permission, and family members do not view images of the deceased (to give a few examples). In order to make the digital images of families, artifacts, scared sites, ceremonies and other cultural materials accessible to Warumungu community members, we needed to create a digital system that would replicate the cultural protocols embedded in the community. To create the archive, we leveraged this already existing protocol system to create the archive's internal logic, database structure, and interface features.

Unlike "out of the box" digital archives that primarily provide storage capacity and cataloguing of images, this Indigenous archive tool emphasizes access, accountability, and the cultural protocols that drive the ways in which people interact with, sort, search for, and reproduce cultural materials, images and the knowledge associated with them. We understand archiving, search, and image reproduction as deeply social and cultural acts. Therefore, we needed an archive and a search engine that was adaptable to a specific cultural system of information management. The Mukurtu archive is concerned not just with preservation, but also with access through socially adaptable and culturally appropriate means.

The archive's innovative database structure, user-friendly interface design, and dynamic interactive features allow users to easily navigate through content, arrange images according to their own categories, tag content with restrictions, add comments, print and burn CDs of content accessible to them. In this way, the archive mirrors the dynamic nature of all cultures as they change over time.

Background

This project grew out of Dr. Christen's long-term collaborative work with the Warumungu community. Dr. Christen has worked with the community since 1995 on a range of projects including compiling a written community history text and DVD in collaboration with Warumungu elders and producing the "Digital Dynamics Across Cultures" website as part of the University of Southern California's Institute for Multimedia Literacy and their online Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular (http://vectors.usc.edu/index.php?page=7&projectId=67). The idea for the archive came out of the community's interest in repatriating and managing their cultural materials through their Nyinkka Nyunyu Art and Culture Centre (www.nyinkkanyunyu.com.au).

Production Team

Project Director: Dr. Kimberly Christen, Assistant Professor Washington State University (kachristen@wsu.edu; www.kimberlychristen.com)

Lead Developer: Craig Dietrich, Graduate Researcher University of Iowa School of Art and Art History, Intermedia Area (craigdietrcih@gmail.com)

Interface Designer: Chris Cooney, Director Web Communications University of Idaho (ccooney@uidaho.edu)

Consultant Developer: Tim Dietrich

Research Supported by

Washington State University New Faculty Seed Grant received by Dr. Kimberly Christen in May 2006.