People and Plants Workshop 2: Western Australia (blog 2)

Introduction

This blogpost reflects on the second in-person workshop of the People and Plants project which took place on 7th November 2022 in Edinburgh. It brought together speakers from the Australian Tropical Herbarium, National Museums Scotland, Ngarluma Yindjibarndi Foundation and University of Western Australia. We collectively focused on a group of historic Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi biocultural material now held at National Museums Scotland. The Museum holds dozens of Aboriginal objects sold and given to it in the 1890s by Dr. Emile Clement, a collector who was managing gold mines in Western Australia. Clement was the most prolific known contributor to British and Irish collections of so-called ‘ethnographic’ objects from Western Australia during the colonial period, and his reflections once dominated how western museums acquired and interpreted Aboriginal material. Now, however, the collection demonstrates the potential of indigenous ethnobotanical material for knowledge-sharing work.

In this, the second of two blogs about the workshop, Nicola Froggatt (Research Manager, the National Trust) discusses her experience of the day.

 Kevin Guiness talks through items from Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi Country with workshop participants (c) Ali Clark

Knowledge through Country

A common thread emerged throughout the day’s discussions: the centrality of Country in better understanding these Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi objects. ‘Country’ is ‘the term often used by Aboriginal peoples to describe the lands, waterways and seas to which they are connected. The term contains complex ideas about law, place, custom, language, spiritual belief, cultural practice, material sustenance, family and identity’.[1] Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi Country, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, encompasses a rich and diverse landscape of coastline, rivers, mountains and more. Clement sold or gave over 1,600 Aboriginal objects to European museums, of which the overwhelming majority came from the Pilbara. Ali Clark (National Museums Scotland) and Alistair Paterson (University of Western Australia) reflected that for many European museums the region effectively became a proxy for Australia, downplaying the diversity of the continent’s hundreds of Aboriginal cultural groups. Speaking with Kate Oosterhof, senior Ngarluma woman Kerry Churnside and senior Yindjibarndi man Kevin Guiness (all Ngarluma Yindjibarndi Foundation) flagged how problematic it is for Aboriginal people to continue finding their distinctive cultural identities carelessly lumped together.

We saw how objects are embedded with information that inherently challenges the ‘flattening’ of diverse indigenous cultural knowledges within colonial worldviews. For example, when read with appropriate cultural expertise, Kevin explained, a wooden spearthrower’s markings can be identified as specifically Ngarluma or Yindjibarndi. Clement’s notes on this point are lacking, but for too long they were the major lens through which curators understood and interpreted the items. Today, working across different collections and ‘types’ of museum connects stories and reveals relationships between objects that have too often been discussed in isolation. We considered a hand fishing net made of spinifex grass cord, and its potential usage alongside botanical fish poison such as an example held at Kew Gardens in London. Such stories of use challenge traditional western divisions between ‘plant specimen’ and ‘ethnographic artefact’.

Objects as connectors

Kerry powerfully discussed how Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi biocultural objects sit within a wider holistic system of being. She introduced the Galharra (skin group) system, within which everyone is connected and understood to carry different roles and responsibilities. People, plants, animals: all sit in relationship to the land and each other under a system written into Country back ‘when the world was soft’. I was struck by the need to appreciate the Galharra system’s significance when thinking about Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi material culture.

Objects are connectors of many different stories and meanings, and this proved especially striking given that many Aboriginal objects are multifunctional. These diverse functions may not be recognised in museum documentation. Kevin returned to a spearthrower, drawing our attention to notches carved along one side. These marks, he explained, reveal something not documented in the museum record. Their significance starts to emerge when placed alongside an unassuming-looking pick-saw, which can be brushed across the notches to make music. Tool, weapon, musical instrument: this spearthrower is all these and more.

Working well

Our conversations also turned to how indigenous biocultural knowledge and objects were and are being used by non-indigenous researchers. Gerry Turpin (Australian Tropical Herbarium) observed that all the world’s biodiversity hotspots have been managed in some way by indigenous peoples. How can we ensure that indigenous biocultural knowledge benefits these communities? How can western researchers and practitioners break cycles of biopiracy, the taking of plant knowledge without negotiation with and consent from those who nurtured and sustained it? These questions are as pertinent to museum practitioners as they are to commercial enterprises like the bushtucker and medicine industries.

Gerry Turpin discusses recording and preserving Indigenous Biocultural Knowledge (c) Ali Clark

 

Kevin and Kerry highlighted a further ethical dimension stemming from the irrevocable link between the objects in Edinburgh and their Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi Country. No matter how far it travels, Kevin noted, a boomerang remains tied with its homeland and the tree it came from. Objects can be homesick, so visiting them is a hard but important thing for Traditional Custodians to do. It is therefore important to respect the emotional and cultural burdens that Aboriginal knowledge holders may be carrying to make research collaborations between Britain and Australia possible. When done respectfully, the knowledge gained through these relationships has the potential to transform how museums can understand and communicate the rich knowledge embedded within ethnobotanical collections.

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[1] Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, ‘Welcome to Country’, https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/welcome-country [accessed 20 December 2022].

People and Plants Workshop 2: Western Australia

The second in person workshop of the People and Plants project took place on 7th November in Edinburgh. The workshop focussed on collections from Western Australia collected by Emile Clement, and brought together speakers from the Australian Tropical Herbarium, National Museums Scotland, University of Western Australia and Ngarluma Yindjibarndi Foundation. 

In this first of two blogs about the workshop, Kathleen Lawther discusses her experience of the day:

Kerry Churnside and Kevin Guiness in conversation with Kate Oosterhof. Photo by Ali Clark, 2022

I was able to join the first People and Plants workshop at the Powell-Cotton Museum as I was just beginning my own collections research project there. This time I was attending as a new doctoral student, having just started a PhD with the University of Leicester. My research project looks at connecting data from different museums as part of the Museum Data Service, so I approached this workshop from a collections data point of view. I have worked with more than one museum that has items collected by Clement, and so I was interested in how museums could share information relating to collections with shared provenance. From Ali Clark I learnt that the majority of Australian Aboriginal material from Western Australia in National Museums Scotland and other UK regional museums came from Clement. This means that his collecting has become a proxy for Australian Aboriginal material in many  museums. Where museums are displaying their collections as representative of the vastness of ‘Australia’, in fact most of these items came from one specific area and were mediated by the collecting of one man. 

While this aspect of the history of collections is revealing about museums, the great thing about these workshops is having the opportunity to hear directly from people with a cultural connection to the collections and the land from which they originate. My museum-centric perspective on collections information was shifted by hearing from the other speakers. 

Gerry Turpin from the Australian Tropical Herbarium described how part of his role at the Tropical Indigenous Ethnobotany Centre (TIEC) is to provide assistance in recording and preserving Indigenous Biocultural Knowledge (IBK). This includes sharing information that the herbarium has about collections back to local language groups - Indigenous names for plants are of particular interest because of the loss of Indigenous languages. He also offers training around intellectual property, protocols and agreements, and legislation to help people understand and advocate for their rights. 

From a data management perspective, I was interested to hear about TIEC’s use of the Miromaa database, which has a cost for institutions to use, but is free for indigenous people to use. It is favoured over more sophisticated systems because it is easy to use and because each database is standalone. While in museums conversations are about how to connect and share data, the Aboriginal groups who work with TIEC prefer that these records are not online because of sensitivity around sharing data and consent. These concerns, which are based on the historic and ongoing exploitation of indigenous knowledge, must be considered when museums which hold collections dating from the colonial period are working on data sharing initiatives. 

In the second part of the day we heard from Kerry Churnside, Kevin Guiness and Kate Oosterhof of the Ngarluma Yindjibarndi Foundation, and had the opportunity to see some of the objects. I appreciated the gestures that NMS staff made towards acknowledging Kerry and Kevin as having ownership over the collections - for example participants were asked to seek permission from them, rather than museum staff, before photographing any objects. 

Kevin Guiness discusses Yindjibarndi spearthrowers with the group. Photo by Ali Clark, 2022.

Kerry and Kevin explained some of the cultural protocols in their communities which museums need to understand when approaching Indigenous groups to work with collections. For example Kerry explained that she and Kevin are considered senior in the community but are not elders. The long distance travel involved in this project made it difficult for elders to participate. She also explained how the Western Australian Museum had suggested training young people in the community as curators to work with the collections, but this was inappropriate because it would not have been culturally safe for a more junior or less experienced person to engage with the collections. Museums need to know this to respect cultural safety and to make it safe to engage with the collections. 

This made me reflect on several aspects of museum work. Firstly the need for large and diverse teams of people to work with collections. People with cultural knowledge (in this case people with appropriate cultural seniority, and both men and women) and people with knowledge of museum systems and history need to work together. Secondly, the way we in museums expect to be able to know and record everything about an object, or collection, and have the ambition to share this knowledge as widely as possible. We think it is our right to know everything, when in other cultures, sometimes the ones from which the collections originate, this is not the case. Of course in the sector there is an awareness of cultural protocols, and I was aware of some of these issues before the workshop, but there is a difference between reading a summary in a book or guidance document (probably written by a non-indigenous person) and having the opportunity to hear directly about people’s experiences and to discuss it in a group of people with diverse connections to the collections. Finally, I reflected on safety and museums. The language of ‘safe spaces’ has become commonplace in museums, and this was reflected in some of the sessions that I attended at the Museums Association conference, also held in Edinburgh that week, so it was a subject that was on my mind. Museums need to do more than assert that they are safe spaces. They need to listen to people when they explain what will make engaging with museums and collections safe(r) for them and follow through with the action required to change their practice accordingly. 

 

People and Plants online workshop, by Inbal Livne.

 Part of the 'People and Plants: Reactivating Ethnobotanical Collections as Material Archives of Indigenous Ecological Knowledge' AHRC networking project, this workshop (July 14 2022) bridged the gap between the first two in-person sessions, in March at the Powell-Cotton Museum, and in November at National Museums Scotland. While the in-person meetings are focused on collections particular to each museum, the online session was an opportunity to talk across geographies and institutions, thinking about the connectedness of ecologies and people and plant relations in Australia, Canada and the African continent.

Short talks by each of the invited speakers were made available via the project’s YouTube channel prior to the event. Due to illness speaker Naima Hassan was unable to attend and so the workshop was based on the talks by Nancy Turner and James Tylor.

Nancy Turner, an ethnobotanist who has worked with First Nations elders and cultural specialists in northwest North America for over 50 years, reflected on ethnobotany’s application to contemporary environmental issues. Visual artist, researcher and writer James Tylor discussed the process of reviving, practicing and continuing Kaurna cultural plant knowledge and care of the environment in South Australia, as a living museum collection. 

The discussion began with James expanding on the issues of land management and fragile eco-systems, and the specific impacts of colonisation and European land management frameworks on Indigenous landscapes. Using kangaroo grass as an example, James discussed the nuanced and complex systems of land management by Kaurna people that had allowed the grass to flourish, in contrast to the impact of European agricultural practices (plants and animals) on Indigenous plant health today. A repeating theme of the workshop was this balance of co-existence between species, and the way in which colonial understandings of land use ignored, and continue to ignore, the importance of site-specific ecology. As James noted, today kangaroo grass can mostly be found growing between the roads and farmland, not on the farmland itself, and only at a fraction of its former height.

Nancy responded by noting the parallels between land practices in Australia and Canada, and the similar impacts of colonial land management. She noted the physical changes in the landscape that have come about today, because of the different – European – plants that were introduced by colonisers. Using the example of a species of clover, Nancy spoke about how, much like the kangaroo grass, clover could be found all around Victoria and was a common food source. These changes to the plant-scape over time, as the city changed and grew, are reflected in herbarium collections, forming a historical record. Therefore, she notes, we must continue to document and collect, to keep those records going for future generations.

As Ali Clark, session chair, noted, these institutional specimens become markers of change, and as those people who care for such specimens in museums, we need to better understand their role as a record of the holistic nature of ecosystems.

The conversation then moved on more specifically to land management, and James began with a fascinating and detailed explanation of the importance of Indigenous land management in Australia. Focusing on the area around Adelaide, he described how the land has been damaged by colonisation and the building of the city. Colonisers were wealthy and wanted a British feel to the city, determined to build European landscapes in environmental conditions that were inappropriate. James noted that South Australia has one of the highest rates of plant extinction in Australia, largely due to land mismanagement by colonisers. Burning, James noted, was a particular area in which European land management continued to be hugely detrimental to the landscape. Catastrophic bushfires come from the continued Euro-centric attitude of the Australian government to fire – a position in which fire is a bad thing. Where the fire departments do burn, it is done at the time of year to best remove fuel load, not when is best for the environment and plants. By contrast, Indigenous fire management is about doing it at the right time, in the right part of the cycle of the plants. The optimal time to burn for plants, is late summer/autumn, which goes against European cultural norms. It has taken recent catastrophic fires, which have led to the deaths of millions of animals, for the Australian government to see the advantage of low-temperature, controlled, Indigenous burning techniques.

James passionately talked about how fire has a beautiful cycle. When Aboriginal people arrived in Australia, they realised they could manage the land through burning in a way that was optimal for all ecosystems. It a system that Aboriginal people have been refining through observations of nature for tens of thousands of years.

In response, Nancy reflected on land management systems in Canada, and the impact of Euro-centric systems. She noted that colonisers carved up the land in line with their agricultural traditions and plants in European ways. In Western Canada, colonisers were blind to the nuanced land management systems that already existed. Indigenous communities weren’t growing annual, seeded crops, but were managing perennials that needed year on year cultivation in different ways. These developments are documented in herbarium specimens and ethnographic accounts.

The discussion turned to knowledge systems and the value we place – now and historically – on different forms of knowledge. In the case of Australia, James noted, the British Empire invaded at the height of its powers. At the same time, ‘science’ was carving up the various academic disciplines, breaking down and categorising the world in a very individualised way. For a culture (European) where an understanding of the world was broken down in this way, the complex way in which Aboriginal communities understood the interrelationships of plants, people and animals in ecosystems, was just too advanced for European thinking. And James notes that how we value Aboriginal knowledge continues to be influenced by historic European scientific thinking but ‘there are 3000 generations of observations of the land in Indigenous communities, but only 300 years of European scientific understanding’. Adding to this, Nancy noted that it is not just eco-systems, but biocultural systems of accumulated knowledge across the generations.

For the last part of the workshop, the floor was opened to questions. The first asked whether indigenous knowledge was, and could be, retained down the generations, or whether there was a risk of loss in the present day. Both James and Nancy felt positive about the future. James also reflected on the fact that living culture is something continuous and active, that would continue to grow and expand. By collecting plants or cultural objects from indigenous peoples, museums have removed these from use. James argued that museums run the risk of becoming stagnant and that it is important for museums to reflect this living culture to avoid presenting cultures as static

The next question was for James, asking what the role of his artistic practice is within the concept of the ‘living museum’. James responded by noting that Aboriginal people practice culture in the broadest sense, not as ‘art’, rather, taking a holistic view.

The final question looked to the future, and asked if the speakers thought, given the discussion on complex and fragile local-ecosystems, museum collecting practices could be adapted to better reflect that holistic view, to make them more relevant and useful outside of the museum, particularly to indigenous communities. Nancy responded by sharing an example of a digging implement, which she had to hand and could share on screen. She discussed the contextualisation of the crop it was associated with and the importance of tools, recordings, photographs and references to writing that pointed people to where they could see these cultural activities in action.

To finish the event, James set us – as museum professionals – a challenge. He noted that living cultures continue to evolve and that museums contain static collections that could become less and less relevant to the communities they represent. He challenged museums to work more with communities, to provide that context and keep that relevance going forward.

For more information on the People and Plants project please visit:

People and Plants: investigating natural history and ethnography collections in museums (nms.ac.uk)

The project is supported by the Museum Ethnographers Group and the Natural Sciences Collections Association.

Inbal Livne

Curator, Diversifying Collections

John Rylands Library, University of Manchester