This essay focuses on the claims of the Dja Dja Wurrung Aboriginal people of north-western Victoria in their attempt to repatriate a set of rare bark artefacts that were loaned to Museum Victoria from two British museums. We argue that understanding the significance of the barks to the Dja Dja Wurrung requires an appreciation not only of a history of cultural loss but also of dynamic forms of cultural continuation. The essay highlights the ongoing tension between museums and Indigenous communities over issues of authority and ownership, and illustrates the expectations, obligations and new hegemonic relationships that can arise even within ‘new’ museum practices. Consideration of what the Dja Dja Wurrung see and know through ‘looking at those barks’ indicates the need for collecting institutions to negotiate, understand and participate in both old and new imaginings of history within contemporary Australia.
In 2002 two bark etchings from the 1850s were discovered within the collections of the British Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Servaes and Prendergast 2002). Staff at the Royal Botanic Gardens contacted Museum Victoria (MV) in Melbourne, where curators connected the barks with one produced in the 1870s from the museum’s own collection. Curator Elizabeth Willis’s interest in the barks led her to write two articles about them. The first article detailed their discovery and also their importance as the earliest extant bark etchings produced by Victorian Aboriginals (Willis 2002). In her second article, Willis investigated the relationship between Scottish settler John Hunter Kerr and the Dja Dja Wurrung people who produced the barks and lived near Kerr’s station on the Loddon River in north-western Victoria. According to Willis’s study, Kerr maintained ‘good relationships’ with the Dja Dja Wurrung and had commissioned them to make the barks for him (Willis 2003). Given the rarity of these pieces, and the fact that the barks were first put on display in the Melbourne Exhibition of 1854 (the year of MV’s foundation), the barks were borrowed from the British museums to be used as part of MV’s 150th celebration in 2004 (Willis 2002).
The barks were brought to Melbourne to be displayed in a small-scale exhibition called Etched on Bark 1854: Kulin Barks from Northern Victoria. Etched on Bark was exhibited in Bunjilaka, the Aboriginal centre at MV’s Melbourne Museum campus, from 18 March to 27 June 2004. The exhibition contained the three bark etchings, an emu ceremonial figure hewn from bark (also on loan from Britain), and photographs Kerr had taken of the Dja Dja Wurrung in the 1850s (Willis 2004). Something of the nature of the exhibition was captured in a review, which noted that while ‘at first glance, Etched on Bark 1854 is not very striking’, ‘the humbleness of this exhibition is its strength’ (Nelson 2004).
Figure 11.1 Dja Dja Wurrung Elder Gary Murray and one of the barks at the Melbourne Museum
Photograph: Craig Abraham. The Age Photo Sales.
Nevertheless, it soon became apparent that these etchings were ‘striking’ to some. Early intimations of what was to occur can be found in a news article ‘Petition calls for return of Koori etchings’ published on 27 May 2004 (Usher 2004). Three weeks later, on 18 June, Rodney Carter, an Aboriginal cultural heritage inspector appointed under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 (Cwlth) (the Heritage Protection Act) placed an emergency declaration upon the barks.1 He did so on behalf of the Dja Dja Wurrung and Jupagalk Aboriginal groups to prevent the items from going back to the museums in England. Carter is a descendant of the Dja Dja Wurrung and a former manager of Bunjilaka; both Carter and members of his family are also part of MV’s Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Advisory Committee (ACHAC; see Museum Victoria 2000; Sculthorpe 2001). The emergency declarations were based on the information that the two barks from England were produced in the 1850s by Dja Dja Wurrung people, and on the Dja Dja Wurrung assertion that they had a right to their ancestor’s cultural objects (R. Carter 2004a). Throughout the period of the dispute, research on the area was being conducted by Gary Murray, the elected Dja Dja Wurrung representative and spokesperson in the dispute (G. Murray 2005).
MV was due to return the barks to England after Etched on Bark finished, but the emergency declarations made this impossible. Thus MV was put in a difficult position: the museum could not return the artefacts and break Australian heritage law; but if they did not return the items to England they would dishonour their loan contracts with the British museums and would be liable to pay £900,000, the insured value of the barks.2 Subsequently the two British museums released a media statement indicating that they wanted the artefacts returned and that the emergency declarations jeopardised the legal framework of borrowing and lending for all museums (British Museum 2004). For the British museums, repatriation raised legal problems as well: under The British Museum Act 1963, it is illegal to de-accession artefacts unless they are a duplicate of the original, deteriorated and damaged, or ‘unfit to be retained in the collections of the Museum and can be disposed of without detriment to the interest of students’ (Wilson 1989, 24).
Under these circumstances the dispute escalated. Carter renewed the emergency declarations after their expiry every 30 days, issuing eight in all.3 In one of the ensuing declarations he added the emu ceremonial figure. The emu figure was subsequently cause for speculation about the original exchange between Kerr and his Aboriginal ‘friends’. According to some Dja Dja Wurrung accounts, it was and still is not customary practice to give away or display sacred material such as the emu figure (N. Murray 2004a).4 Other controversies erupted at MV during this period, including concern regarding the lack of engagement with members of the Aboriginal community at the time of the arrival of the barks.5
After the initial declarations, senior officials at MV attempted to defuse the dispute by trying to engage British Museum officials to negotiate with the Dja Dja Wurrung. In meetings between MV and the Dja Dja Wurrung, the elders expressed a desire to discuss the matter directly with the British Museum, but attempts to engage the British Museum failed on a number of occasions.6 Within this period, the Curator of Pacific and Australian Collections at the British Museum Lissant Bolton came to Victoria to meet with the Dja Dja Wurrung. She listened to their concerns and provided them with an inventory of all Victorian Aboriginal artefacts within the British Museum’s collection; but the British Museum insisted that Bolton was not there to negotiate with Aboriginal people.7 Carter states that Bolton’s visit was to apologise for not inquiring into the necessary Aboriginal protocols and ceremonies for the barks when they arrived and that she had no real power to effect any communication between the Dja Dja Wurrung and senior officials of her museum.8
In the period after the first declarations, local and international media reported the dispute. Frequently articles described the dispute as a fight between the British and Aboriginal peoples; headlines included ‘Brits seek legal advice: Kooris grab museum art’9 and ‘Aborigines “hijack” artefacts loaned by Britain’ (Alberge 2004). During this time, while the British Museum remained relatively silent on the matter, Gary Murray, Deputy Chairperson of the North-West Nations Clans (which includes groups such as the Dja Dja Wurrung and the Jupagalk) was much quoted in the media. Also a member of MV’s ACHAC advisory committee, Murray has been an important Koori community leader in Bunjilaka’s activities, and was the official spokesperson for the Dja Dja Wurrung in the dispute. The British Museum’s position of non-negotiation with Aboriginal representatives resulted in the expression of considerable frustration by Murray and other members of the Dja Dja Wurrung; on the North-West Nations Clan website, a photo of Murray appears with the caption ‘Nemesis of the British Museum’ (North-West Nations Clan 2004).
In late September 2004, MV publicised their decision to take the Dja Dja Wurrung to court. Their decision to challenge Carter’s application of heritage law for the return of the barks damaged their relationship with many Aboriginal staff and advisors to the museum. Prominent Aboriginal spokesperson and senior curator for south-eastern Australia Gary Foley expressed anger regarding the museum’s decision in an email that was distributed to all staff.10 On the following day, MV’s chief executive officer Patrick Greene sent a response that explained MV’s position; shortly afterwards Greene sent another email requiring that all staff refrain from commenting to the media. Greene argued that MV staff would be in contempt of the law if they spoke about the dispute publicly.11 The second email, in particular, was felt by many of the Aboriginal staff to be a strategy to ‘gag’ them, which increased the existing tension within the museum. With loyalties both to their elders and community, as well as to their workplace, many Aboriginal staff found themselves in a difficult position; Foley and Bunjilaka Gallery staff staged a protest by ‘walking off work’ on 22 September 2004.12 Another source of tension for the Koori community associated with the museum was the fact that MV enlisted the legal aid of Peter Seidel, a lawyer with the firm Arnold Block Leibler who had handled the Yorta Yorta Native title claims. Seidel’s employment by MV served to escalate the dispute.13
On 9 November 2004, a directions hearing held in the Federal Court concluded that the Dja Dja Wurrung and MV should enter into mediation, but the dispute remained unresolved and litigation continued. Justice Ryan eventually heard the case on 15 and 16 December 2004. In the legal proceedings, MV aimed to test the validity of Carter’s successive declarations according to the Heritage Protection Act, and their legal representative argued that Carter had misused the law. Representatives for Carter from Holding Redlich attempted to introduce the cultural importance of the etchings for the Dja Dja Wurrung in order to defend Carter’s actions (Federal Court of Australia Victoria District Registry 2004). The British Museum was not represented, and the Victorian Minister for Aboriginal Affairs was not present. Throughout the dispute Minister Gavin Jennings had the power under the Heritage Protection Act to make a permanent declaration on the artefacts and thus end the dispute between MV and the Dja Dja Wurrung; the Dja Dja Wurrung applied for his assistance many times to no avail (Federal Court of Australia Victoria District Registry 2004).14 On 20 May 2005, Justice Ryan supported the contention that Inspector Carter lacked the power to make the successive emergency declarations (Museums Board of Victoria v Carter 2005). After the decision, the Dja Dja Wurrung still hoped the minister would place a permanent declaration on the barks, but he decided against this. Subsequently, on 27 May 2005, MV sent the bark etchings and emu ceremonial figure back to the British museums in recognition of their ‘ownership’.
In the last 30 years disputes about ownership have been the cause of frequent contestation between indigenous peoples and museums (McBryde 1985; Greenfield 1989; Mauch-Messanger 1989; Kaplan 1994; Peers and Brown 2003; Simpson 1996). In Australia, Aboriginal peoples have lobbied for their rights to participate in the research, management and care of their cultural heritage, with particular focus since the 1970s on the return of human remains (Langford 1983; Ucko 1983; Davidson 1991; Burke et al. 1994; Museums Australia 1996; Pearce 1998; Ward 1998; Batty 2002; Museums Australia 2005). Nevertheless, while moves to repatriate human remains are increasingly recognised and accepted by institutions such as museums and universities, the repatriation of objects has been relatively neglected. Against this background, this study arose from a desire to work towards an understanding of the arguments made by the Dja Dja Wurrung and other Indigenous speakers in this dispute. Originally undertaken as a broader study of the roles played by the British Museum, MV and the Dja Dja Wurrung (Fung 2005), the essay published here brings to the fore the often complex nature of the relationships between Aboriginal people and museums, and challenges assumptions in ‘new’ museum practices. It aims to contribute to an understanding of the aspirations invested in repatriation by Koori people in south-eastern Australia.
The bottom line for the Dja Dja Wurrung as it is for the Greeks, the Ethiopians and every other Group robbed and pillaged by the British, is that the Two Etched Barks and Ceremonial Emu Head Figure are culturally significant to us as they connect us to country and our ancestors (G. Murray 2004c).
Dja Dja Wurrung people have maintained that the bark etchings and emu figure currently owned by the British museums should be returned to Dja Dja Wurrung elders and community. They also insist that the barks should remain in Dja Dja Wurrung traditional country. At a wider level, their argument encompasses other Aboriginal cultural objects and human remains that are held in museums nationally and overseas without Aboriginal consent; they contend that this material should be owned and controlled by Aboriginal people (R. Carter 2004a). For the Dja Dja Wurrung, as for other Aboriginal groups, culture is living and dynamic, and their position in the dispute was formed within a wider context of Koori self-determination, relating in particular to the right to participate in the narration, definition and assignation of value to material culture and cultural identity. For the Dja Dja Wurrung, the bark etchings have the potential to play a critical role in the (re)signification and (re)inscription of identity.
Rosalind Langford’s seminal paper on Aboriginal cultural heritage articulates what is at the heart of such disputes over the ownership of cultural material:
The issue is control. You seek to say that as scientists you have a right to obtain and study our culture. You seek to say that because you are Australians you have a right to study and explore our heritage because it is a heritage to be shared by all Australians… We say that it is our past, our culture and heritage, and forms part of our present life. As such it is ours to control and it is ours to share on our terms (Langford 1983, 2).
Similarly Henrietta Fourmile contends that Aboriginal people need to be safe in their own ownership and knowledge of their culture before they can partake in the sharing of their culture (Fourmile 1989). In other words, while Aboriginal people want to share their culture, they argue their needs should come first.
Dja Dja Wurrung Elder Aunty Fay Carter has stressed continually, for example, the significance of the barks to her community: ‘How many pieces do we have that we can look at done by our ancestors? It’s our connection and our children’s connection… there’s so much in looking at those barks’ (F. Carter 2004). Thus the Dja Dja Wurrung argue that if returned the barks would be something that they have not yet possessed: a set of tangible objects that are specifically listed as Dja Dja Wurrung culture that can be looked at, touched, studied, objects that elders would be able to show to younger generations (Lenaghan 2004). In particular, Dja Dja Wurrung claims suggest the potential of the barks, upon return, to function in their rightful cultural context. Murray states, ‘we have a belief that those artefacts, if they’re going to retain their cultural integrity, that integrity is here in Australia. Particularly it’s in the Dja Dja Wurrung people’s area’ (G. Murray 2004a). These barks are invested then with Koori aspirations and an assertion of the continuance of Koori culture: the return of the barks would enable the Dja Dja Wurrung to reinsert them into an Aboriginal framework that, as has been noted elsewhere at MV, stresses the interrelatedness of land, spirituality, law, culture and people (Museum Victoria 2000). Such arguments about cultural integrity are informed by, and attempt to address, knowledge of a widespread history of misrepresentation of Aboriginal people and culture, particularly in south-eastern Australia (Langton 1993; Birch 2003).
Thus arguments about cultural integrity provide, at one level, a critique of the practices of collection and exhibition, which result in the removal of objects from their cultural contexts. By stressing cultural integrity, the Dja Dja Wurrung are responding to the de-contextualisation of their cultural material (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1991), which they see as one way in which their culture has been misrepresented. Their claims for repatriation address the appropriation of their culture by ethnographers into non-Aboriginal narratives of Aboriginal culture, including exhibitions. As Ivan Karp argues, ‘what is at stake in struggles for control over objects and the modes of exhibiting them… is the articulation of identity. Exhibitions represent identity’ (Karp 1991, 15). Given that objects and exhibitions can represent cultures and groups of people, for the people who are the subject of exhibitions, control is important. Hence at one level, we can understand Dja Dja Wurrung claims for the barks as an assertion of their right to speak for themselves.
Dja Dja Wurrung arguments are also then about foregrounding how the practice of colonial collecting has disrupted their culture and life in a wider context. Murray states, ‘It must be remembered that museums like invading governments acquired these artefacts, just like others acquired our Country, lands and waters, our language, our art and artefacts, our dead and burial grounds’ (G. Murray 2004c). Such efforts to repatriate the barks are invested with the need to remember the conditions in which the barks were removed; and others have noted that ‘when the process of collection becomes a metaphor for the removal of freedoms, liberties, dignities, culture and even life, the objects collected take on a huge moral and semiotic load as symbols of persecution’ (Glass 2004, 123). Indeed a central point of contention in this dispute is the circumstances in which the British museums came to acquire the barks. In 2002 Caroline Servaes at the Royal Botanic Gardens traced diary entries and references in Melbourne (1854) and Paris (1855) exhibition catalogues to ‘rude’ and ‘curious’ bark drawings, but noted that ‘there is no explanation for how both the British Museum and Kew ended up with one each’, and that while at Kew ‘Kerr is recorded as the donor… no such information exists for the British Museum’ (Servaes and Prendergast 2002). More importantly for the Dja Dja Wurrung, throughout the dispute both museums insisted that they rightfully owned the barks because Kerr gave them the barks, and also because, on his own testimony, he had a ‘friendly relationship’ with the Dja Dja Wurrung and, again on his own testimony, had commissioned the making of the barks in the 1850s (Alberge 2004; Willis 2004).
We may never know the full history of the exchange that occurred between Kerr and the Dja Dja Wurrung he ‘befriended’, but the museums’ arguments presume a problematic equality by flattening out the different conditions of power and privilege (or lack of) that would have existed between Kerr and the Dja Dja Wurrung of the time. Both Henrietta Fourmile and Moira Simpson have questioned the equity of power relationships in such exchanges, arguing that ‘virtually all were on a basis which could not be seen as constituting transactions under fair and equal conditions for both parties’ (Fourmile 1990, 58; see also Simpson 1996 and Nicks 2003). Bain Attwood’s study of the Dja Dja Wurrung in the period 1837–64, describes the rapid and violent settlement of Dja Dja Wurrung country by squatters (Attwood 1999). Attwood’s study reminds us the barks were ‘given away’ at a time when the positions of Aboriginal people and settlers were greatly unequal. Dja Dja Wurrung efforts to repatriate the barks are about reminding everyone of the colonial violence that displaced Aboriginal people and disrupted their ways of life. Hence, the process of making a case for the return of the barks becomes also a way for Dja Dja Wurrung people to ‘find a legitimate framework for injurious experiences… against which a claim can be established’ (Myers 2004, 209). Repatriation represents a focal point for Dja Dja Wurrung agency: it is a process that enables the Dja Dja Wurrung to call into account wider injuries wrought by colonisation.
Thus repatriation is also invested with the possibility that it can be potentially restorative for Aboriginal culture and people. Murray argues that the Dja Dja Wurrung’s repatriation claims are aimed at ‘picking up the loose ends [of] dispossessions, dispersal and de-culturalisation’ (G. Murray 2004a), and it has been argued that the practice and process of returning can become a strategy ‘to redress historical grievances and to address present and future cultural needs specifically through reuniting people and objects “at home”’ (Glass 2004, 123). Dja Dja Wurrung efforts to reclaim their culture are hence about the possibilities of re-possession, revitalisation of culture and the re-gathering of dispersed Aboriginal people. Indeed, Denis Byrne has described repatriation as ‘archaeology in reverse’, and further suggested that repatriation enables the ‘reinstatement of Aboriginal visibility’ in the land, where colonisation and the practices of collecting have erased the physical traces of Aboriginal ownership (Byrne 2003, 73, 77).
Although Byrne’s analysis is focused on human remains repatriation, his work is illuminating for Dja Dja Wurrung claims, which can be understood as a form of restoration work focused on reversing settler perceptions of the erasure of Aboriginal presence. In particular, Murray’s reference to loss in his claims of ‘dispossession, dispersal and deculturalisation’ can also be understood in relation to claims that Aboriginal culture was ‘wiped out’ in south-eastern Australia. Murray and the Carter family have been (and still are) involved in Native title land claims, but other cases dismissed in court (such as the Yorta Yorta’s) clearly demonstrate the continuing power of beliefs that Aboriginal culture has not survived in the south-east (Birch 2001; Aboriginal Community Elders Service and Harvey 2003). Through their arguments the Dja Dja Wurrung draw attention to the injustice of what Byrne and Thomas call ‘the illogicality of colonialism’ (Thomas 1994, 60; Byrne 2004, 251), and thus Dja Dja Wurrung arguments for repatriation also actively criticise as unjust the hegemonic legal and governmental definitions of Koori culture, which seek to punish Koori people for surviving and living within conditions of subjugation and control.
Rather the Dja Dja Wurrung have emphasised the possibilities of re-possession, revitalisation of culture and the re-gathering of dispersed Aboriginal people. In the court hearing on the barks dispute, Rodney Carter drew attention to Dja Dja Wurrung and wider Koori interpretations of ‘preservation’ in the Heritage Protection Act, where preservation of culture occurs through the continued use of the barks by their traditional owners. Carter used the language of the legislation to argue that the barks would be ‘injured and desecrated’ if they were to be separated from the traditional owners (Federal Court of Australia Victoria District Registry 2004). Moved to respond poetically while considering the dispute, Carter wrote:
‘This is a bark’
Oh no! They are much more
They have an opportunity to tell their story
Then they shall turn to dust from whence they came
If the traditional owners do not hear the story it will be lost forever
Yet forever in our soul, minds and hearts, etched.
(R. Carter 2004b)
To illustrate the potential for the story of the barks to be heard, younger members of the Dja Dja Wurrung set to produce new bark etchings. On 6 August 2004 these new barks were presented to Senator Rob Hulls at a land claim meeting for the North-West Nations at Lake Boga. The new barks were also offered as a possible replacement for the barks that the British museums own (G. Murray 2004b).
By doing this, the Dja Dja Wurrung similarly demonstrate that the tradition of producing these bark etchings can be recalled and reinstated into present Dja Dja Wurrung culture. Ngarra Murray, a project officer for Bunjilaka, made a set of 10 bark etchings in collaboration with other Koori artists for an exhibition in the Aboriginal centre, drawing materials from traditional Dja Dja Wurrung country (G. Murray 2005). Due to the conflicts that have ensued from the barks dispute, the 10 new bark etchings produced were not exhibited in Bunjilaka,15 and have since been purchased by members of the Boort Council who plan to build a cultural centre in collaboration with members of the Dja Dja Wurrung.16
The reinstatement of Dja Dja Wurrung cultural practices is part of a wider Koori assertion of culture and identity, which entails a radically different definition of preservation. Their repatriation claims amount to what might best be described as a ‘counter-collection’ strategy. Byrne argues that ‘[f]or Indigenous minorities to retain identity within the invented community of the settler nation they have had to mount various localising, decentering, counter-collection strategies’ (Byrne 2004, 248). Ngarra Murray argued that the term ‘re-appropriation’ is a more accurate expression of the Dja Dja Wurrung’s present moves in reclaiming the barks (N. Murray 2004). It is a term that asserts the agency of Aboriginal people today to take back what has been removed from them, that signifies ‘the changing relationship between Indigenous people and museums’, and that ‘carries with it the memories of previous transactions and prior relationships’. Sandra Pannell further stresses that for Aboriginal people today ‘in the post-Mabo landscape museums represent important collecting sites… a somewhat different identity to the former status of museums as sites of indigenous collections’ (Pannell 1994, 18). Re-appropriation – the making of an object into one’s own again – is an important way of describing Dja Dja Wurrung claims to the barks.
Chris Healy has argued that by working with collections of Aboriginal material in museums and other archives, Aboriginal people have been actively ‘reclaiming memories which were stolen’ (Healy 1994, 44). Dja Dja Wurrung repatriation claims identify myriad strategies of reviving culture and reinstating Koori identity, and as Healy argues further, there can be dynamic and creative ways of working with objects, which ‘might be shifted towards remembering and renewal, towards… a possibility of history for life’ (Healy 1997, 105). The Dja Dja Wurrung people’s claims for the barks are dynamic and creative responses to dominant constructions of Koori culture and identity. In their efforts to reclaim the barks the Dja Dja Wurrung have mobilised many strategies to assert their agency in the way their culture and identity is understood.
Museum Victoria is proud to work closely with Aboriginal communities to ensure the preservation and display of Aboriginal heritage and culture. However, Museum Victoria also acknowledges its obligations to abide by its loan agreements with the British Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew (Museum Victoria 2004).
The position of MV in the bark etchings dispute is complex: museum representatives have stressed throughout that they have obligations to both the British museums and the Dja Dja Wurrung. In late September 2004, however, board members and the CEO of MV Patrick Greene challenged Carter’s emergency declarations on the barks in court to facilitate their return to the British museums. Moreover, earlier interviews and correspondence indicate that MV’s intention was always to facilitate the return of the barks to the British institutions because they privileged their contractual obligations to these museums (Greene 2004b).17 Thus while MV officials maintained also that they had a proud and close relationship with the Dja Dja Wurrung, they were also pushing for the return of the barks to the British museums against the Dja Dja Wurrung’s wishes. Such moves provoke reconsideration of the relationship between MV and the Dja Dja Wurrung, and finally the nature of obligations and ‘goodwill’ in ‘postcolonial’ museology.
Since the 1980s, MV’s relationships with Aboriginal communities can be characterised broadly as progressive, and representative of much new museum practice (see Vergo 1989; Hooper-Greenhill 2000). The formation of ACHAC, policies on repatriation, Indigenous involvement in public programs, the creation of Bunjilaka in collaboration with the wider Koori community, as well as the repatriation of the Jaara baby burial bundle to the Dja Dja Wurrung in 2003 (G. Murray 2003; Minchin 2004) are all illustrative of the close relationship that had been formed between MV, the wider Koori community and Dja Dja Wurrung representatives. MV’s support for the return of the Jaara baby bundle, in particular, set a positive mood for collaboration with Indigenous communities, but one that was subsequently disrupted for some by the barks dispute. Senior curator Foley stated:
The history of Museum Victoria is severely tainted in most of its 150-year history… but the last twenty years it has been changing. Up until a year ago, Museum Victoria was promoting itself as most progressive… the barks episode has clearly demonstrated how superficial that commitment is (Foley 2004).18
This sense of reneging on the goodwill generated through a recent history of consultation and cooperation has been engendered in particular by MV’s insistence that it ‘knows best’ on issues of negotiation and repatriation, and that it acts as a ‘neutral’ player in a landscape occupied by a number of competing groups or claims. One key to the barks dispute was MV’s continued attempts to wrest authority from the Dja Dja Wurrung to decide the ‘most appropriate’ way to repatriate the barks. Throughout the dispute, CEO Greene stated that ‘MV has a role of responsibility to basically talk to communities about what is better for them’, and also insisted that MV’s ‘powers of persuasion, discussion and negotiation are better’.19 In the media Greene also downplayed the importance of repatriating cultural objects by insisting that ‘human remains are our number one priority’ (Greene 2004a), and that the Dja Dja Wurrung position threatened the return of human remains and cultural material belonging to other groups (Greene 2004b). Arguments that favour the return of human remains over cultural objects clearly have wide appeal and the issue of the return of human remains has become less controversial than the repatriation of artefacts (see Peers and Brown 2003). Still this effectively ignored the Dja Dja Wurrung stance that ‘objects have been neglected but are just as important’ (G. Murray 2004d).
Thus although the Dja Dja Wurrung did not agree, MV presented itself as ‘knowing best’ and ‘doing the best’ for Aboriginal people. In the bark etchings dispute then, the museum’s position reveals the parameters of their engagement with Indigenous people, and perhaps their unwillingness and unreadiness for ‘indigines [to really be] in charge’ (Branche 1996, 120). While MV was placed in a difficult situation, financially and legally, the barks dispute and the arguments and alignments involved foregrounded the limitations of MV’s work for Indigenous communities, and what Julie Marcus has described as the ‘soft but critical edge’ to such statements that seek to ‘control and express once again settler and Aboriginal perceptions of Aboriginal society and culture’ (Marcus 1997, 33). Such appeals to a liberal sense of ‘good politics’ have been characterised by Andrew Lattas as ‘attempts by whites to determine what is good, moral politics [which] keeps alive the pastoral powers of European culture’ (Lattas 1993, 260). While new postcolonial museum practices are founded on the twin aims of democratising and decolonising museums, clearly new hegemonic forms emerge within the realm of ‘progressive’ politics and also, in this context, of ‘progressive’ museology. As Gillian Cowlishaw and Barry Morris have argued, attention needs to be paid to specific contexts in which such formations exist and are made legitimate (Cowlishaw and Morris 1997).
While the museum and the Koori community have done much to democratise and decolonise MV’s exhibitions and collections, it seems useful to be reminded that disputes between MV and Koori community members were at times the catalyst for such changes. As Sculthorpe writes, MV’s lending of Aboriginal human remains to American institutions in the 1980s angered Indigenous members of staff at MV and also set about a chain of events which led to court cases and the eventual forming of the Koori Heritage Trust (Sculthorpe 2001). Such recollections of MV’s history are perhaps suggestive of the way in which new paradigms and protocols for Indigenous rights in the realm of museums have not necessarily been forged only out of ‘the powers of negotiation and persuasion’, but also out of conflict and dispute.
Yet it is conflict and dispute that have been sidelined in some respects by those (provisionally ‘victorious’ in this dispute) seeking to locate their analysis in relation to notions such as ‘historical accuracy’.20 Since the barks dispute ‘ended’, some shifts in Bunjilaka’s exhibitions reflect also what some have described as an increasing tendency towards ‘safety and conservatism’ in approaches to repatriation and Aboriginal history at MV.21 One of the gallery’s exhibits about repatriation, for example, has been replaced. The original exhibit displayed Aboriginal objects wrapped (as though in storage) and atop of a series of text panels discussing regional Koori Keeping Places; a set of grey cabinets sat underneath, and inside one of the drawers could be read an article about Greek claims to the Parthenon Marbles; there were also drawers which opened to reveal labels indicating that objects had been returned to their communities of origin. This exhibit is gone, and has been replaced with a painting by a local Koori artist about the return of Aboriginal human remains.
Other changes in staffing and management at Bunjilaka indicate the need not only for MV to work to re-establish trust, commitment and a sense of the importance of Aboriginal rights within museum culture, but also for Aboriginal people to have a say in their own cultural heritage ‘as things that inspire action as well as “contain meaning”’ (Muecke 2004, 11). When museums acknowledge the authority of Indigenous stakeholders this also has wider implications. As Moira Simpson has pointed out, increasingly staff working with museum collections are being called upon to address wider social and political issues such as Indigenous land claims (Simpson 1996). The role and function of museums for Indigenous people is thus changing, and museums have the potential to bring about greater change as a site for the recovery of important cultural heritage, family histories or even evidence for land claims. Michael Ames states: ‘control over museum collections and exhibitions are only the more immediate stages in the broader struggle for economic, political and cultural sovereignty’ (Ames 1996, 212). Hence the importance of the physical presence of the barks to the Dja Dja Wurrung is one thing, but the symbolic importance of repatriating the barks is another. It is the symbolic importance of repatriation that museums need to focus on, as it can provide the necessary conditions for a relationship of respect to occur.
The Dja Dja Wurrung continue their efforts to repatriate the barks and to lobby more broadly for their return. They also continue their re-creation and development of the tradition of making bark etchings, partly as a result of the physical alienation of the barks from them, and also based on their sense of ongoing connection. As a group of Aboriginal members in ACHAC have emphasised previously, ‘it is the Aboriginal community who lives its culture’ (Rabberts 1994, 37). Asserting their own ‘deep narrative’ about the barks, Dja Dja Wurrung actions in this dispute also indicate the nature of the complex negotiations, understandings and imagination required in contemporary Australia, where, as Stephen Muecke has more recently argued, ‘[s]imple truth is not enough to answer to power; something more like creative events are needed to answer back to the blunt force… that tends to insist that “we” are ahead of the Others’ (Muecke 2004, 12).
It would be grossly unfair to characterise MV as a ‘blunt force’, and it should be noted that Murray issued a media release during the dispute emphasising that the Dja Dja Wurrung ‘are proud of Museum Victoria’s more recent policies on repatriation which we regard as best practice and of a world standard’.22 Yet in a subsequent lecture on the barks dispute at the University of Melbourne, the original curator of Bunjilaka’s Koori Voices exhibit, Tony Birch, raised an important question. Given the museum’s reliance on the goodwill and intellectual input of Kooris, such as the Dja Dja Wurrung in the creation of Bunjilaka, Birch asked, how will MV gain such significant information from the Koori community in the near future?23 It remains to be seen how the relationship between local Koori groups and the museum will fare, how the museum will continue to represent Koori communities, and how the museum will meet its obligations to those it relies on to help create and validate exhibitions with stories and approval. How will the museum address Dja Dja Wurrung Elder Aunty Fay Carter’s powerful desire to continue looking at the barks?
The authors would like to thank the following people for interviews, as well as access to unpublished material and personal archives: Philip Batty, Tony Birch, Aunty Fay Carter, Rodney Carter, Gary Foley, Patrick Greene, John Morton, Gary Murray, Ngarra Murray, Gaye Sculthorpe, Elizabeth Willis and the Bunjilaka customer service officers at Museum Victoria.
1 For details of the Heritage Protection Act, see the Australian Legal Information Institute database: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/ consol_act/aatsihpa1984549/. Part IIA refers specifically to Victorian Aboriginal cultural heritage (which, subsequent to this dispute, was subject to amendment in 2005); section 21C covers emergency declarations of preservation on Victorian Aboriginal cultural property.
2 Patrick Greene to Director of Aboriginal Affairs Victoria Angela Jurjevio, letter, 10 August 2004, archive of Gary Murray, Melbourne.
3 Rodney Carter to Pamie Fung, email, 8 March 2005.
4 Rodney Carter to Pamie Fung, email, 8 March 2005.
5 As an employee at the Melbourne Museum, Pamie Fung heard many concerns expressed about the lack of a ‘proper welcome’ for the barks during the period of the dispute.
6 Patrick Greene, ‘Affidavit of John Patrick Greene, Federal Court of Australia, Victorian District Registry, 13 September 2004’, archive of Gary Foley, Melbourne.
7 Neil Macgregor to MV Director of Collections Research and Exhibitions Robin Hirst, email, 9 July 2004, archive of Gary Foley, Melbourne.
8 Rodney Carter to Pamie Fung, email, 8 March 2005.
9 Herald Sun, 27 July 2004.
10 Gary Foley to all staff at Melbourne Museum, email, 21 September 2004.
11 Patrick Greene to all staff at Melbourne Museum, emails, 22 and 30 September 2004.
12 Bunjilaka gallery staff, personal communication with Pamie Fung, 30 September 2004.
13 Seidel’s profile at the Arnold Bloch Leibler website details his involvement in the Yorta Yorta case: http://www.abl.com.au/default.asp?p=4,118,120&i=2080118. In an interview with Aboriginal Elder Aunty Fay Carter, Fung was provided with an email communication to Arnold Bloch Leibler by Yorta Yorta Elder Wayne Atkinson written on behalf of the Dja Dja Wurrung (dated 8 October 2004). It expressed various concerns about Seidel’s relationship with MV (F. Carter 2004).
14 Rodney Carter to Pamie Fung, email, 8 March 2005; (G. Murray 2005).
15 An exhibition featuring the barks, Ngatuk (Possum Skin Cloaks) and Mityuk (Barks), was subsequently held at the Meatmarket Arts House, North Melbourne, 4–16 April 2006, featuring works by principal artist Ngarra Murray and other Koori artists, including Lyn Thorpe, Alistair Thorpe, Jason Tamiru and Doris Atkinson.
16 Ngarra Murray, personal communication with Pamie Fung, 9 June 2006.
17 Patrick Greene to Director of British Museum Neil Macgregor, email, 24 June 2004, archive of Gary Foley.
18 Foley has since resigned from his position as Senior Curator of South-Eastern Indigenous collections at MV.
19 Patrick Greene, ‘Affidavit of John Patrick Greene’ (Greene 2005).
20 Throughout the dispute, both British museums have configured their arguments concerning ownership in this way. MV curator Willis sought also to distinguish ‘historical research’ from ‘politicisation’ (Willis 2006).
21 Tony Birch, comments and questions raised at ‘The bark etchings dispute’ lecture by Gary Murray, Gary Foley and Wayne Atkinson, 17 May 2005, Department of Political Science, University of Melbourne.
22 Gary Murray, unpublished media release, 23 July 2004.
23 Tony Birch, comments and questions raised at ‘The bark etchings dispute’ lecture, 17 May 2005.
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Cite this chapter as: Fung, Pamie; Wills, Sara. 2006. ‘There’s so much in looking at those barks: Dja Dja Wurrung etchings 2004–05’. South Pacific Museums, edited by Healy, Chris; Witcomb, Andrea. Monash University ePress: Melbourne. pp. 11.1–11.16.
© Copyright 2006 Pamie Fung and Sara Wills
All rights reserved. Apart from any uses permitted by Australia’s Copyright Act 1968, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission of the copyright owners. The fact that this book is published online does not mean that any part of it can be reproduced without first obtaining written permission: copyright laws do still apply. Inquiries should be directed to the publisher, Monash University ePress: http://www.epress.monash.edu/contacts.html.