Music Endangerment, Repatriation, and Intercultural Collaboration in an Australian Discomfort Zone

Abstract

To the extent that intercultural ethnomusicology in the Australian settler state operates on a colonialist stage, research that perpetuates a procedure of discovery, recording, and offsite archiving, analysis, and interpretation risks repeating a form of musical colonialism with which ethnomusicology worldwide is inextricably tied. While these research methods continue to play an important role in contemporary intercultural ethnomusicological research, ethnomusicologists in Australia in recent years have become increasingly concerned to make their research available to cultural heritage communities. Cultural heritage communities are also leading discovery, identification, recording, and dissemination to support, revive, reinvent, and sustain their practices and knowledges. Repatriation is now almost ubiquitous in ethnomusicological approaches to Aboriginal music in Australia as researchers and collaborating communities seek to harness research to respond to the impact that colonialism has had on social and emotional well-being, education, the environment, and the health of performance traditions. However, the hand-to-hand transaction of research products and represented knowledge from performers to researcher and archive back to performers opens a new field of complexities and ambiguities for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants: just like earlier forms of ethnomusicology, the introduction, return, and repatriation of research materials operate in “social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination” (Pratt 2007 [1992]). In this chapter, we recount the processes and outcomes of “The Junba Project” located in the Kimberley region of northwest Australia. Framed by a participatory action research model, the project has emphasized responsiveness, iteration, and collaborative reflection, with an aim to identify strategies to sustain endangered Junba dance-song practices through recording, repatriation, and dissemination. We draw on Pratt’s notion of the “contact zone” as a “discomfort zone” (Somerville & Perkins 2003) and look upon an applied/advocacy ethnomusicological project as an opportunity for difference and dialogue in the repatriation process to support heterogeneous research agendas.

Central Australian Aboriginal Songs and Biocultural Knowledge: Evidence from Women's Ceremonies Relating to Edible Seeds

“…Further information on these song sets, including the locations of archival deposits and the recording dates, is given in Appendix 1. We take an “applied ethnomusicology” approach, which is “almost ubiquitous in research on Aboriginal song traditions in Australia” (Treloyn 2016:24). Our methods involved transcribing the songs during fieldwork and working with singers to identify the words, meanings, and associated stories.…”

“…Our research is informed by the Guidelines for Ethical Research in Aboriginal and Indigenous Studies (GERAIS), produced by the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). Underpinning GERAIS is the recognition that Indigenous peoples have rights to determine how their cultural practices and knowledges are researched and to participate in that research (Barney 2015) and that research must have positive impact on the participants and their communities (Swijghuisen Reigersberg 2011; Treloyn 2016). We take a collaborative approach to research between Aboriginal knowledge holders and researchers and have facilitated the production of co-authored song books and audio-visual resources to assist communities in sustaining their endangered singing traditions (e.g., Curran 2017; Gallagher et al 2014; Laughren et al 2011).…”