Frequently asked Questions

Isn't Aboriginal Knowledge in the land itself? How can knowledge be stored in the land and in databases too?

How can we understand Aboriginal people when they say ‘knowledge is in the land? How can science learn how to take that claim seriously? I think of it this way. The land is a set of sites with meaning embedded, with information there in place. But those meanings, necessarily 'in formation' or organised in some way, are accessible only to those who have been educated in the right traditions.

One way to think about databasing in an Aboriginal context is to understand a computer as a simplistic and 'outside' version of one of those meaning-full sites in land. 'Doing databasing' can contribute to the remembering/forgetting that is inherent in community life, just as 'doing ceremony' can.

Databasing can be understood as a way of doing 'outside' collective memory with digitised materials. Images made with digital cameras video and still, audio files, and written texts typed up on a computer can record something that might be presented later in another forum in such a way as to help those involved in some endeavour to remember in a helpful way. Seeing things this way reminds us of the importance of getting the protocols around generation of data-items organised. (HV)

Aren't ritual and ceremony important parts of Aboriginal knowledge? How can you recognise the role of ritual when knowledge is stored in databases?

At a meeting at Garma 2004, some of us were meeting with Galarrwuy and Mandawuy talking about research. With reference to a particular project for making audio recordings of traditional song for the current generation of old people Galarrwuy commented: It is easy to get carried away researching manikay (ancestral song) but it means nothing without bunggul (traditional ceremonial performance including dance). One will die without the other. (MC)

In ritual and ceremony Aboriginal knowledge authorities use many diverse sources of information. In ceremony, dance, painting, song, and story need to be performed correctly and under the right auspices to become knowledge making.

Often people see databases as 'archives'. But we are not seeing them as tiny digitised museums. We are asking if databasing can become a useful additional experience? Can digitised information feed into, complement and extend the already well developed ways that information is handled and managed in Aboriginal communities to support Aboriginal people in doing their knowledge?

Under what conditions might databasing become a useful form of managing information? These are empirical questions and Aboriginal people are the ones who must drive the process to come up with answers. (HV)

Access to Aboriginal knowledge is controlled by elders, and only certain people can know certain things. How does databasing deal with these problems of privacy?

There are a couple of answers to this question. First of all, only SOME knowledge is controlled by elders, other knowledge, like personal memories and ways of talking and acting, are held by many people and are expected to be held by many people. We are working to make sure that none of the secret/scared knowledge held by elders as part of their traditional responsibilities are represented on our databases. (But of course, when old people see a painting, or hear a song, or watch a ceremonial movement, on a computer they may be able to read into that many important things which you and I have no understanding of at all.)

Secondly, although it is rather early to tell, it seems that the more
databasing technology there is available in the remote (and urban) places where we work, the more individual knowers can control access to the data they are looking after. In some places, there is a big focus on the ways in which access to knowledge (and the withholding of access) is a key aspect of particular clan/family identity, so while the database possibilities proliferate, they are allowing people to develop systems exclusively for themselves or their immediate family. Related to this is the question of custodianship (as opposed to access). In the development of Knowledge Centres in the NT, we have found that while people are often prepared to share access to the songs, stories, videos etc which belong to them, they are very unwilling to take responsibility for the custodianship of other people's resources. For example in reporting back from his trip to view the Donald Thompson collection (of photos and artefacts taken from Yolngu land in the 1940s) Joe Neparrnga from the Galiwin'ku Knowledge Centre made it clear that while he was willing to make decisions about Gupapuyngu business and refer it to the Gupapuyngu elders for their viewing and decision making, he felt it was necessary for members of other clan groups to travel to Melbourne to make their own decision about their own business. He was not willing or able to act on their behalf in these matters. (MC)

Aborigines have local knowledge but databases are universal. How is local knowledge used in a database?

The notion of databases as somehow universal knowledge assumes two things. First it takes for granted the existence of ‘facts’ little pieces of knowledge referring to a single 'out-there' reality. And second it assumes that if you could only get enough of them together in one place facts would eventually link up into one complete system of knowledge. In many traditions of Indigenous knowledge (and in many sciences) both assumptions are seen as both wrong and ludicrous.

Anyone who thinks about the notion of universality for very long will see that ‘facts’ are always generated and ‘made solid’ in specific places and times by particular groups of people. It is always done in specific ways.

It is commonplace that it is actually very difficult to get things to link up. It is sometimes very difficult to actually link working databases, for example those that have been assembled in doing biodiversity. Data is just as diverse as biological organisms are.
We found this when we started searching for databases in northern Australia that included ‘indigenous knowledge’. A database is a form of local knowledge. It is a collection in digitised form of data-items that have been generated using very specific local methods.

Of course Aborigines have local knowledge. All knowledge is local. It remains true that sometimes with prodigious collective effort some, or even many, local knowledges can be linked. Sciences often are good at linking up their local knowledges, although sometimes it is very difficult to get different sciences to work together. Sometimes and in some places scientific knowledge and Aboriginal knowledge can be usefully linked.

Databases are forms of Western scientific knowledge, aren't they incommensurable with Aboriginal knowledge? How is this overcome?

The term ‘data’ comes from Latin. ‘Data’ is the plural form of ‘datum’, coming from ‘dare’ the verb ‘to give.’ About four hundred years ago, as science emerged as a social movement amongst men of the upper classes in northern Europe, this old Latin word began to mean ‘a fact given by reality’ a reliable basis for generating true knowledge. The term of ‘database’ implies that there is stuff to be stored data or true facts, and a structure a base, within which to store it.

The very term ‘database’ seems to embed a dualism, one that is central to scientific ways of thinking. It carries notions of the ‘given-ness’ of facts and the neutrality of framing. Yet we usually forget that the term database is a metaphor implying that reality is both content and context. It is when we forget the metaphoricity that Western metaphysics creeps in as the ‘taken for granted’. And then we forget that 'incommensurability' or incompatibility is an outcome.

Often a lot of work and much skill and patience, is required to overcome incompatibilities. Sometimes people think it is not worth it, starting again would be better. But then we need to recognise that every 'starting again' is just a re-start, the old problems are likely to reappear. We need to remember the things we discovered about ourselves before. In the working together of technoscience and Aboriginal knowledge that happens in indigenous databasing, we need to remember that Western knowledge traditions are often not very good at recognising the metaphysics and metaphoricity that is built into all knowledge. (HV)

If young Aboriginal people are using computers doesn't that impair their learning to traditional knowledge, and alienate them from their culture?

In all communities that have access to information communication technologies (ICTs) there are some children who get a ‘kick’ out of using them, and others who find them boring. Some children can for a time get fixated. Children in Indigenous communities are no exception.

Aboriginal children drawn to using computers and digital media will, like all children use them to express their feelings and culture. We often find Aboriginal children doing this in highly original ways. Just as we know that proficiency in two distinct languages can lead to a form of cognitive enhancement for children, seems likely that becoming skilled in using digital/digitising technologies could lead to enhancement of capacities in traditional arenas of learning.

How could elements of traditional culture be strengthened by encouraging Aboriginal people to use computers?

A problem arises if we think of traditional Aboriginal knowledge as ‘anti-modern’, the inverse of modern culture. Then we will begin to think of traditional cultures as stuck in the past, and want to put them in a museum and close the exhibit case. Understanding ‘traditional’ in that way we will think of it as somehow inconsistent, perhaps even incompatible, with computers.

Traditional cultures are contemporary forms of life just as modern cultures are. They are rich in modes of innovation as well as having ways for preservation of cultural forms. We can understand traditional cultures as involving non-modern forms of identity. They have ontologies that make modern assumptions about knowledge and knowing look strange. And they work methods of doing collective memory that contrast with the usual modern forms of remembering.

Digitised information arranged in ways that make sense and are useable by those working within non-modern cultures can surely be devised. As long as we don’t make assumptions based on modern ways of using data-items, if we proceed in open ways, empirically researching how indigenous people actually use digitising technologies, there is the possibility of strengthening traditional forms of cultural innovation with computers.

If computers are a way for transmission of knowledge between generations, how is that reconciled with more traditional ways of passing on knowledge?

Traditional forms of passing knowledge from an older generation, to a younger one often involves young and old being in the same place at the same time doing things together, talking about it. It involves a process of re-imagining it together, finding new forms in which to express the understandings in sharing them.

We often find that indigenous communities want to assemble collections of digitised items for specific reasons. They want to be able to intervene in a specific context in a particular way. Assembling digitised items in these projects becomes a site, a time and place where young and old, with their varying competencies work together. Databasing can become an impetus for young and old to work together in ways that can empower and educate the young while recognising older people as knowledge authorities.

What about protecting intellectual property? Can’t databases easily lead to indigenous peoples losing control over the natural and cultural resources their groups own?

Protecting collective intellectual property is important in all 'closed' knowledge economies. Aboriginal societies are no different than American corporations in this. The issue is one of controlling who knows and how much they know. Strategic revealing and hiding is involved.

Modern companies protect their intellectual property with patent laws, by various technical means, and by selectively authorising and commissioning various knowers. Aboriginal clans have equally effective means of managing the strategic revealing and hiding of intellectual resources.

There are two rather separate elements that need to be considered in thinking about intellectual property and indigenous knowledge with respect to collections of digitised items that point to natural and cultural resources.

The first relates to forms of management for these collections that express indigenous ways of doing intellectual property. Workable ways of respecting different clan ownership of various elements, and recognising differential individual access need to be found. Our stance at this point is to restrict our research to secular contexts. We avoid engaging with knowledge that is sacred and religious.
Second, maintaining collections of digitised material in ways that protect the collections appropriately to avoid piracy from outside interests is important.