This year the School of Australian
Indigenous Knowledge Systems took another group of 15
students to work as volunteers at Garma. We also took
a number of people who were working on the ARCLinkage
project. They were:
• Waymamba Gaykamangu, lecturer CDU
• Mark Yingiya from Milingimbi who has been involved in the project for a while
• Jenny Wulumdhuna a teacher from Djurranalpi, a
homeland Centre on Galwin'ku
• Bevan Koopman, database programmer from DSTC at University of Queensland,
• John Greatorex lecturer and researcher from SAIKS,
CDU,
• Bryce King, research assistant SAIKS,
• Christian, a student of Helen Verran from Uni
of Melbourne
• Michael Christie
We set up the dstc database in the InfoHut, and tried to use it for uploading texts from the garma forum. This worked okay, and Bevan was always on hand making adjustments where necessary. As it turned out we were too optimistic about what we could get transcribed and uploaded from the forum.
We also did a bit of work with Yolngu
looking at databases, but most people were too preoccupied
with things going on out doors. A few people from Ramingining
had a good time looking at old stories from the Yolngu
literature CD. In general, the Yolngu studies database
was still rather too text dependent, and the text being
rather small, we decided to wait until we have a new
trial interface before we work intensively with Yolngu
on that.
Christian worked on looking at the interactions of computers and cameras etc with Yolngu and made some notes and video for analysis for his research. link
Yingiya's interest was primarily in
learning to use the camera for
documenting the Gupapuyngu mob's bunggul, that is their singing and dancing for the Gumatj land owners in the garma each afternoon. Yingiya's involvement at Garma was possible through invitation by the Gupapuyngu elders. Yingiya worked with Bryce at first, and then later alone, filming the bunggul, and then looking through and 'logging' the data. Yingiya made it clear that while there was some important Yolngu protocols to work through and interesting editing work to be done, he could not begin that until significant people at Milingimbi had looked at the whole footage, without it having been edited in any way. Yingiya saw the use for the video as important in helping people back home who had not travelled to the garma, to see exactly how people had performed - the song, dance and playing out of the ritual. Yingiya is keen to be able to do more work on that footage - which is very long, maybe 10 hours. He has been instructed that any errors in song or dance would be corrected by the Gupapuyngu elders before incorporation into a final product.
Wulumdhuna came from Djurranalpi. She is Gumatj, from the Yunupingu mala, but she and her father and family live on Galiwin'ku island where there is also some Gumatj land. She does not often travel to the Gove area where the annual Yothu Yindi Foundation Garma is held at Gulkula. She soon found her 'second father' Joe Djalalingba, the most senior Gumatj ceremonial leader in the Gove area, and they began sharing stories. There were stories which Wulumdhuna wanted Joe to tell to set some traditional business straight for her to take home to her father. John G, Joe and Wulumdhuna went out in the CDU vehicle to Nanydjaka, Cape Arnhem, to significant places belonging to Gumatj, to record the stories on video. Wulumdhuna took many recordings of Joe relating custodial connections to land, place names, recent histories and the importance of recording this information for use by Gumatj families. On subsequent days, Wulumdhuna looked over the footage in the InfoHub and talked with Bryce and John about what could be done.
While at garma, Michael John and Bryce
visited the Dhimurru Aboriginal Land Management Corporation
to look at their database.
Several sorts of products came out
of our work at Garma 2004. Yi\iya’s work produced
footage to be edited and perhaps developed as a movie
footage item in a database or information bank. Wulumdhuna
filmed and edited conversations and places that could
contribute to her digitised information project, ‘For
the Children’.
RMIT students collected sound files from the Garma Forum. These data items will be used in populating a DSTC database for YYF. Christian made 3 DVDs of footage he shot in doing ethnography of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people digitising and assembling data items at Garma 2004. He wrote a paper on what he had seen happening for the subject he was enrolled with Helen at University of Melbourne 'Science as Practice and Culture'. His essay is included in publications along with some images taken from the DVDs link
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Info
hut at Garma