Long Road

I’ll be leaving Australia in a few days. It’s been 7 1/2 weeks and 1200+ pieces of content (mainly photos but some video and documents) loaded into the Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari archive in Tennant Creek. WOOT!

This was the main reason for my trip to Tennant Creek, although with the intervention I was also able to witness (and blog about) the insanity of the Howard/Brough team up close and personal and see how people have and continue to challenge and work around the policies put into place by people who seem to have no idea what their lives are actually like.

But enough of that. The archive.

It was a long gestation but well worth it. After two years of community consultation (ah hem, note to Brough actually working with people to figure out what they want and need can get you a long way), the archive is now installed in the Nyinkka Nyunyu Art and Culture Centre. I should say here that a majority of the Warumungu people who have worked on this project are CDEP workers, past and present. Part of the impetus for this archive was the hard work of Trisha Narrurlu Frank and Michael Jampin Jones over the last four years since Nyinkka Nyunyu first opened its doors. It was their dedicated vision that gave the work purpose and a clear aim. They wanted an archive that was built around Warumungu protocols for accessing and distributing materials (in many forms). One of the first mandates was that everyone had to have a password so that they could only see materials that they were meant to see based on their family/country/community status.

Every person begins by filing out a user profile. This information (gender, mother’s/father’s family and country, community status-elder, community member, child) then sets the parameters for what one will be able to access when they login to the archive. To add content to the archive the administrator (community members who work at Nyinkka Nyunyu) uses either a CD or USB drive and uploads the content through a 4 step process. The process is labor intensive, but necessary. First the image is uploaded (via a single or batch upload process). Second the metadata is added: file type (auto-generated) date, location of the original image, location of digital file, location of copy (all so one can trackback to the actual photo/video etc if need be), people in the photo (first, last + skin + is deceased) location of person in the photo (if more than one person), country, families in the photo, photographer and there is also an “add story” feature so each piece of content can be narrated. Third the “sharing protocols” are added: either “open” – everyone can see or “set restrictions” –is the item sacred (elders only) is it for men or women only, which families can view the content, people who belong to X countries can view — any combination of these is allowed: men from the Smith and Jones family who belong to Pullman country, etc. Fourth: “add to archive.”

When someone logs in they are taken to the “My Family Items”page. One can search via keywords or browse from 8 hard coded categories (chosen by community members): country, family, year, song and dance, art and artefacts, animals, bush tucker and bush medicine. Or simply click on an image and go directly to it.

The “My Family Items” page displays all the content that has been tagged with the family/country/gender that matches the user’s profile. So if I am a women, Smith + Jones families, Pullman + Santa Cruz countries then I will only see content that is tagged with that information. Users can then add comments (so you get a dynamic record), print, add to a collection (their own personal albums) and burn a CD.

Before I left Tennant Creek, people were coming in to Nyinkka Nyunyu to view and print photos. We had requests for a photo of a woman who recently passed away and we were able to use the “admin override” function to search the entire archive in one go to find a photo of her.

TR is continuing adding content to the archive everyday and others are learning how to use the system.

I’ve demonstrated the archive to many people and organizations including Central Land Council and Northern Territory Libraries. I gave a public talk at the ANU on Thursday and tomorrow I’ll be at Sydney Uni showing the PARADISEC group. All this is working towards building collaborations so that this software can be used and improved upon. It will, eventually, be licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) again with an eye towards collaboration and improvement.

Once I’m back in the US and have some time Craig Dietrich and I will be making a demo of the software and putting it up online. Our first priority was to get it installed in Tennant Creek and to make sure that everything was as it was supposed to be. Now we will be able to make a demo beyond my low-rent screen grabs here!