Policies and guidelines
Position statement: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander collections and services in NSLA libraries – NSLA (2021)
Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research – AIATSIS (2020)
The code ensures that research with and about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples follows a process of meaningful engagement and reciprocity between the researcher and the individuals and/or communities involved in the research.
Guidelines for Accessing Sensitive Collections – State Library of New South Wales (2021)
"It is important for the Library to help people access information about themselves and their cultural heritage. At the same time we need to ensure that we have guidelines to protect personal information and culturally sensitive information. These guidelines include information on how to identify these collections and how to go about seeking access."
Working with Indigenous data – ANDS
"Data that pertains to Indigenous peoples is a complex legal and ethical terrain. Whether it is cultural, linguistic, medical or otherwise, such data usually needs to be managed and shared with care. Data may need to have access mediated under specific conditions relating, but this should not be a barrier to the proper handling and care."
Articles and presentations
Aboriginal histories in Australian government archives: Working with records of trauma – Kirsten Thorpe and Cassandra Willis (Los Angeles Archivists Collective, 2020)
This article shares the authors' experiences of using government records that were "deeply racist and often contained within them atrocities and crimes against humanity" in their work with the New South Wales Aboriginal Trust Fund Repayment Scheme from 2005–2011.
The management of restricted Aboriginal objects by the National Museum of Australia – Davis Kaus (reCollections journal, 2008)
"The National Museum of Australia holds a sizeable collection of Aboriginal ethnographic objects that cannot be placed in the public domain because of strong cultural proscriptions on their use, display and viewing. This article outlines how the museum manages its restricted collections and the mechanics of their management and repatriation."
See also: National Museum of Australia: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander secret/sacred and private material policy (v2.3, 2019)
‘I am anxious to have my children home’: recovering letters of love written for Noongar children – Elfie Shiosaki (The Conversation, 14 February 2020)
"Archives in the State Records Office of Western Australia hold hundreds of letters written by Noongar people to the Chief Protector of Aborigines and other government officials from the turn of the 20th century. The letters were captured within manic record-keeping systems used to surveil and control Aboriginal people...Aboriginal people are working to reclaim knowledge about our families in archives. The recovery of these letters has become a catalyst for storytelling, as we piece together archival fragments and living knowledge."
Deciphering Arrernte archives: The intermingling of textual and living knowledge – Jason Gibson, Shaun Angeles, Joel Liddle (University of Hawai'i Press, 2019)
Interviews exploring some of the issues Arrernte peoples confront as they work through archives, including the limitations of conventional cataloguing requirements and the importance of reading archival texts in a way that sees them emplaced and tested against the knowledge of Elders, and the role of digital technologies in the future dissemination of cultural materials.