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Article Title: Imagining an Indigital Interface: Ara Irititja In

Article Author: Thorner, Sabra
Art Vol/Part: 6
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 Imagining an Indigital Interface
AIaIrititja Indigenizes the Technologies
ofKnowledge Management

D
Sabra Thorner
Ph.D. candidate, Department of Anthropology, New York University,
email: sabra.thornerconyu.edu

Abstract Ara Irititja exemplifies how Indigenous ontologies are reshaping the
technologies of information and cultural heritage management. A
project that began in 1994 with the digital repatriation of photographs,
oral histories, film recordings, and documents to remote communities
in Central Australia, Ara Irititja is transitioning from an object-based
FileMaker Pro database into a multimedia knowledge management
system. In this article, I build on two years of anthropological fieldwork
to interrogate three tools of knowledge preservation and transmission
often taken for granted and/or presumed neutral-databases, ar-
chives, and the Internet-to argue that they can and must be actively
re-worked as contemporary Aboriginal people imagine, produce, and
safeguard their own cultural futures.'

An Introduction to Ara Irititja

Meaning "stories from long ago:' Ara Irititja began as Anangu elders- - increas-
inglyaware of significant cultural artifacts originating from their country' being
heldelsewhere, and concerned about the fragility of their knowledge - enlisted the
help of archival and IT consultants to put new technologies to work in the service
oftraditional protocols of responsibility for information embedded in visual media
(photographs, artworks, designs). Together, Indigenous and non-Indigenous stake-
holders devised a dual mission: maximize Anangu access to objects of their own
cultural heritage and deploy the highest archival standards to best preserve media
and knowledge for future generations.
Working towards these goals is an ongoing, ever-emergent process. The proj-
ectnow serves 31 remote communities across 200,000 square miles; digital solutions
had to accommodate great distances, high desert temperatures, pervasive dust, and

Collections: A !aunIal for AfHSeUtn and Archives Professionals, Volume 6, Number 3,

Summer 2010, pp, 115-146. Copyright © 2010 AltaMira Press.AIl rights reserved. 125
 IMAGINING AN INDIGITAL INTERFACE •
126

unreliable power supplies. Cultural concerns abounded: the nascent archive would
have to not presume English literacy or computer proficiency of its users, yet be
respectful of traditional norms of access to knowledge (for example. many cere-
monies and cosmological narratives are gender-specific) and circulation of objects
(such as mortuary taboos against viewing images of recently deceased persons).
In an age when digital is increasingly foundational to the storage and circula-
tion of knowledge. available tools are diverse in scope and scale, and evermore easy
to use (think of Endnote, Access, FileMaker, K-EMu, E-hive, Flickr).'It is indeed
hard to imagine: in the early 19905, there was no such thing as a multimedia da-
tabase: a digital home for photographic images, films, sound recordings, and text-
based information about these media items. Although a few software programs had
begun to facilitate the digital storage of photographs, FileMaker Pro was the only
program available that could also house audio and video materials; and, impor-
tantly, the program did not delimit text fields.' Finding FileMaker uniquely flexible
enough to accommodate multiple pathways of access to photographs and their as-
sociated stories, a small but dedicated Ara Irititja team began the work of shaping
this digital infrastructure according to very specific Anangu needs,"
While the potential for hyper-connectivity (blogs, woos, Facebook, Twitter,
Skype) in Australia's urban centers is very real, Internet access in the NPY lands has
been inconsistent at best until very recently, and in the past has been unable to sup-
port the bandwidth necessary for smooth operation of a growing multimedia data-
base.' Of paramount importance to Anangu was to keep both media and knowledge
under local control, and even as Internet architecture improved in quality, the public
nature of the worldwide web made it an inappropriate tool on which to build and
operate a digital archive. Instead of relying on an online network, AIa Irititja devel-
oped "niri-l1iri" (Pitjantjatjara for "scarab beetle"): mobile workstations (including
an Apple Mac computer holding the Ara Irititja archive, a printer, scanner, and por-
table power supply), manually synchronized about twice a year (see Figure I).'
Since its roll-out to communities ten years ago, Ara lrititja has been beloved by
Ajjangu: archive computers stop work at arts centers; keep patients in health clinic
waiting rooms; and engage students of all levels in various school programs, as peo-
ple look for photographs, films and audio recordings of themselves, their families
and their home countries, and add and edit stories about them (see Figures 2a and
2b). Young people use the program to look up "right-skin" marriage partners;' and
Aboriginal Education Workers (AEWs) mine its records in the production oflocal
historical exhibitions and student projects. The archive's social role has far over-
flowed its original political intent of digital repatriation. As the collections expand
(Ara Irititja now holds over 100,000 digital records - most acquired through pri-
vate donations, as well as memoranda of understanding with a few public institu-
tions), and more and more communities take on licenses for the program, FUe-
Maker has become clunky and imprecise, especially as faster and more capable tools
proliferate and become available in new ways. to In the last two years, a convergence
 & SABRA THORNER 127

Figure1. One of the original niri-niri (portable workstations facilitating remote community
accessto ALa Irititja's multimedia archive), still operational at the Ernabella AnTEP (the Univer-
sity of South Australia's Anangu Tertiary Education Program). Photo by Sabra Thorner, March
2010.

of circumstances has revolutionized the project's potential: adequate infrastructure

forhigh-speed connections has reached all communities in the NPY lands; Anangu
havegrown up using the Internet (at regional telecenters and/or on visits to Alice
Springsor Adelaide) as a communications tool; and, Aja Irititja received funding to
purpose-build new software to be shared on a network
The new program (browser-based, cross-platform) will enable community
users to communicate in real time via a secure intranet." Organizing principles are
non-linear: profiles for people, places, events, and cosmological narratives comprise
a multimedia mind-map searchable by both visual and textual tools. Access is di-
rected by a user's gender and seniority, and individuals/families can record stories
on their own terms and in their own words, directly into an easy-to-use interface.
Genealogyand geospatial mapping components are currently in development, in-
tendedto reinforce kinship relationships and traditional ecological knowledge.
128 IMAGINING AN INDIGITAL INTERFACE e

Figure 2a. (from left to

right, back row) Roma
Butler, Amanda Ward,
Rosita Ward, and Winnie
Woods; on the keyboard
is Colleen Woods (with
baby Shaun Woods on
her lap), with Joella Butler
leaning in. This photo was
taken at Ngaanyatjarra
Media, Irrunytju, Western
Australia, moments after
a laptop loaded with AIa
\rititja was removed from
its packaging. Photo by
Sabra Thorner, March
2010.

Figure 2b. The archive is

so popular with kids that Ngaanyatjarra Media had to institute a rule
in the telecenter: no one of school-age is permitted to use AIa lrititja until after 3pm, when
the school day is finished. Photo courtesy of Nina Tsernjavski at Ngaanyatjarra Media.

Ara Irititjas inception was grounded in objects: the original mission, to keep
archival items (photographs. films. audio recordings. documents) safe for the future
and make them accessible to Anangu custodians living in remote communities. Yet,
as the project has worked to reshape knowledge management tools according to
 & SABRA THORNER
129

itsconstituents' norms of access to information embedded in things, Indigenous

knowledgeand digital technologies have become interanimated: the database, the
archive,and the network have been re-worked, and traditional knowledge has been
re-invigorated.Elders use AIa lrititja to impart cultural knowledge to young people,
andyoung peoples' easier uptake of digital technologies helps elders increase their
computerliteracy. As I turn my attention below to the ways in which Ara Irltltja re-
imaginesconventional technologies of knowledge collection and access. my think-
ingis informed by three foundational premises: I) the dynamism of culture and
itsframeworks of community cohesion; 2) the resilience of Ajjangu in striving for
culturalcontinuity amidst ever-changing circumstances; and 3) the creative poten-
tialof knowledge management tools. Cultural concerns do not have to be compro-
misedto accommodate the restrictions of databases, archives, and the Internet; but
becausethese are the technologies with which we now organize knowledge - the
waysin which we know- their re-thinking requires patience, persistence, innova-
tion, and an unshakeable commitment to cross-cultural collaboration.

From Database to Mind-Map

Databasesare tools embedded with assumptions; encoded with specific structures

of information management, they are digital scaffolding that direct and enact our
understandings of the world." Ara Irititja has continuously worked to represent
and affirm the intensive interconnectedness of Anangu epistemologies in a discrete
digitalpackage that is searchable as a collection of media and knowledge: first by
stretchinga FileMaker Pro database beyond its intended limits, and now by deploy-
ingspecificsoftware code in the development of the new program. In this section,
I present specific examples of how AIa lrititja is indigenizing the database as a tool
ofknowledge management.
In traditional Aboriginal communities, photography has long had a fraught
status:images of the dead are not commonly circulated, an extension of linguis-
tic taboos against pronouncing the name of a loved one recently deceased." In the
existingobject-based FileMaker Pro system, photographs of persons recently de-
ceasedare locked away in a password-protected "sorrow" category until multiple
familymembers deem them once-again acceptable for viewing (see Figure 3). The
period of an image's restriction is indefinite and unpredictable, depending on the
family'spreferences, and often on the circumstances of the death." For example,
if a person has led a significant, full life that the family feels should be celebrated,
the sorrow restriction might apply for several months. However, in the case of a
traumatic death of a young person, the sorrow restriction might be as long as fif-
teen years. Archive administrators change the status of photographs only with di-
rectinstructions from family and community members. Also, the "sorrow" concern
is actualized differently for each kind of media in the database. Video footage or a
130 IMAGINING AN INDIGITAL INTERFACE •

Figure 3. In the File-

Maker Pro version of
Ara Irititja, searches
for persons recently
deceased show a
record with only the
text visible. Screen-
shot courtesy of the
A[a Irititja Project.

sound recording of a deceased person tends to be more distressing than a photo-

graph, and may remain restricted for a longer period of time: the treatment of these
digital items reflects Anangu cultural practice, in which the speaking of a name is
restricted, while the writing of the name is not. 15
In the development of the new software, "sorrow" is again under discussion.
Many photographs in Ala lrititja's collections have more than one person in them,
yet if one person dies, in the original database, a whole photograph is locked away,
as archivists always err on the side of caution and deep respect for Anangu cultural
protocols (restrictions can be relaxed far more easily than transgressions forgiven/
forgotten). Would it be acceptable to keep such a photograph in open access, butob-
scure the deceased's face? Is it enough to shadow the face or should the entire body
be in shadow? Should the "shadow" be opaque and black, or gray and translucent?
Should the boundaries between the shadow and the rest of the image be clearly
defined or slightly blurred? The new program is being designed to be as flexibleas
users' imaginations are creative - to capitalize on the unprecedented capabilities
offered by open-source software code, and yet best replicate in digital form specific
yet fluid Anangu concerns about the potency of visual images."
Education Professor and longtime collaborator in the building of Yolngu
knowledge management systems in Arnhern Land in Australia's far north, Michael
Christie urges the builders of Indigenous databases to avoid the "tyranny of text";"
indeed, the commercially-available tools of information storage and transmission
(books, articles, software programs) are almost-exclusively reliant on the written-
word" As Ala lrititja works to acknowledge photographs as actants in sociallife,so
too does its approach esteem performance and orality as fundamental to the trans-
mission of knowledge. tsAnangu knowledge is social- and both software and hard-
 & SABRA THORNER 131

warehave been built to allow for multrvocality From the earliest days of the project,
theniri niri included projectors because using Ara Irititja was rarely a solitary event,
andit wasjust not effective for many people to view historical photographs or film
clipsof beloved relatives or places while huddled around a single computer screen.
Nir; niti dimensions were prescribed to fit into the back of the Toyota troop-carriers
common in the NPY lands, and each boasts durable pneumatic tires. These features
weredesigned to maximize units' mobility across desert sand and ensure maximum
community access.
Within the software, FileMaker fields for metadata - the information digi-
taly linked to an original media item - does not have text limits, easily (and often)
accommodating annotations by different people over time." In the new multimedia
archive,community-users will be able to record stories directly into an easy-to-use
interface- using familiar-looking Realf'layer-hke tools, cameras and microphones
builtinto their personal computers (PC or Apple Mac) - and upload audio or video
segmentsin real time. Text-based captions can still be written, but proficiency in
Englishor savvy on an English-language keyboard is no longer necessary to engage
withthe archive, as Anangu can now comment on media items in their own words,
intheir own language(s). AIa lrititja has created a human-digital interface in which
the transmission and preservation of knowledge are performative, haptic" - 21st
centurymodalities ontologically consistent with the social role of traditional cer-
emonies in which Anangu sing and dance in enacting their custodianship of a par-
ticularcountry, Dreaming story, or interpersonal relationship."
Records in the new database are presented in ways that emphasize visual and
auralepistemologies. Pathways of navigation exemplify interconnectedness among
people,land and 1]ukurpa"(see Figure 4). The new AIa Irititja interface maximizes
thesizeof the selected media item (photograph, film clip, document), and displays
a pictorial navigation ribbon across the bottom of the viewing frame, including
thumbnail images of other search results, alongside the most popular annotation
fields(see Figure 5). Search functions in the new archive are "fuzzy:' written to pro-
duceall results that exactly match and that "sound-like" the utterance a user may
havetyped. This flexibility accommodates the variable orthographies of Ngaanyat-
jarra, Pitjantjatjara, and Yankunytjatjara (languages that were transmitted orally
formillennia before they were written down)," and also makes the database more
amenableto people who may be unfamiliar with an English-language keyboard, or
whomay not speak/read English as a first language. Searching for anything (person,
plant,place) will lead a user to entries that include the name as entered as well as
anyother names belonging to that physical thing. For example: a young Anangu
boywas named Murnula when he was born in 1985: when he went to school in
AliceSprings, he gave himself the English name Raymond, which was how he was
primarily known for 12 years: when he returned to life on his traditional lands as
a young adult, he was given a new Pitjantjatjara name, Winmati, in place of Ray-
mond." In the new archive, searching for "Mumula," "Raymond:' or "Winrnati" will
 132 IMAGINING AN INDIGITAL INTERFACE &

Figure 4. These are three designs for the opening interface of the new Aja Irititja, still in de-
velopment. Users will be able to roll a cursor over the terms and select their own pathways of
entry into the archive, without having to type any text into a language-based search. Terms
and photographs are drawn from content in the database. Images courtesy of the ALa Iritit;a
Proiect and Douglas Mann.
 & SABRA THORNER 133

bea viable pathway to the profile of the one individual. Similarly, someone search-
ingfor all photographs including dingoes will find all entries with the term "dingo;'
but also see that the animal's scientific name is Canis familiaris dingo and the Pit-
jantjatjaraterm is "papa:'
These examples index significant changes from the existing FileMaker data-
base,in which a user would have to do an individual search on each of the above
terms.Search and discovery was a linear process that yielded finite results. In con-
trast,in the new program, a search is just an entry-point into an interconnected
mind-map that offers myriad trajectories of further exploration across profiles
(digitalstore-houses of all the labels for and ways of knowing about a physical ob-
ject),Concepts are grouped according to three overlapping themes designed to in-
dexAnangu ways of knowing and being in the world (people, land, Tjukurpa), and
thus,searching in this digital tool more closely approximates learning processes en-
demicin Anangu social life, in which knowledge is revealed according to rigorously
maintained protocols, As the capabilities and tlexibilities of the database have dra-
maticallyincreased, the functions of its components - its digital records ~ now do
infinitely more in contemporary social life: they continue to preserve media items
forremote community access, yet also provide technologically-innovative and cul-
turally-relevant pathways for learning and sharing the knowledge of the old people,
134 IMAGINING AN INDIGITAL INTERFACE •

Figure 5. Compare
screen-shots from the
original FileMaker Pro
system (right) and
the new multimedia
archive (next page).
The new program
maximizes the selected
media-item, pro-
vides more fields for
text-based metadata
without cluttering this
screen, and also ex-
hibits additional search
results in a naviga-
tion ribbon along the
bottom of the viewing
window. Screen-shots
courtesy of the Ara
frititia Proied:

Activating the Archive

There is an increasingly robust literature re-imagining archives as spaces whose

structure and contents are available for resignification." No longer an inert reposi-
tory ofinformation nor simply an instrument of European colonial control, archives
can be active sites of knowledge production in which Indigenous people recuperate
obscured histories and forge new presences in contemporary social life. As Jacques
Derrida forecast, the advent of the digital has profoundly destabilized conventional
understandings of the archive: once it is transformed from physical shelves in the
storage facilities of state-making institutions into units of data managed in a soft-
ware program, the power to produce knowledge is re-distributed in unprecedented
ways." While there is some unease that the advent of new media forms in Indig-
enous communities might further dispossess already marginalized peoples," new
projects are actively destabilizing presumptions of incommensurability between
traditional Indigenous knowledge and innovative technologies." In this section, I
turn my attention to how Ara lrititja is not just indigenizing the database, but also
activating the archive in a holistic approach to keeping cultural artifacts and the
knowledge about them relevant in the present and safe for the future.
Amidst all the labor of (and creativity in) developing state-of-the-art software
to make so many photographs, films, sound recordings, and documents accessible
to small communities in remote Central Australia, it is important to rememberthat
Ara lrititja is not just digitizing media items and discarding originals. The project
is housed in a physical place - a small office space that maintains files and shelves
of donated, acquired, and borrowed objects, as weLl as many electronic tools for
digitizing these: computers, scanners, tape decks, etc. Archival standards of climate
 " SABRA THORNER 135

controland cataloguing are maintained by a staff of dedicated professionals work-

ingto best preserve many different media (photographs, cassette- and video-tapes,
CDs,DVDs, artworks, documents), all bearing content embedded with significant
culturalknowledge. Their work is intensely future-oriented, yet riddled with a cen-
tralparadox: to make the ephemeral timeless. It is a principle that applies equally
10 analogue media-items, new digital storage technologies, and to intangible infor-
mation:audio-visual recordings on magnetic tape decline in quality over time; all
computersoftware and hardware is designed to become obsolete within a few years;
andknowledge is contingent on the finite Iifespans of its custodians.
Technologies are always changing, and not always at the same rate; new so-
lutionsto old problems sometimes create new problems. For example: computers
with faster processors and increased digital storage capacity are no longer cornpat-
iblewith the best available scanners. The most reasonably-priced high-speed Inter-
netserviceprovider (ISP) available in both Adelaide and Alice Springs doesn't sup-
port Macintosh, ALa Irititjas preferred hardware (and the most reliable and capable
systemfor multimedia management); always working to maintain best archival
practiceat the lowest possible cost, Ala Irititja relies on an ISP that cannot provide
technicalsupport or troubleshooting with any glitches in connectivity. The Kodak
"PhotoCDs" that were the very best archival standard of digitized photographic
storagein the 19905 have now become incompatible with modern disk readers; staff
areworking to reformat and transfer these images onto ever-larger capacity external
hard-drives;yet the newest computers in the office don't have the right ports to con-
necteasilyto these drives - and on and on. Original media-objects are always kept,
136 IMAGINING AN INDIGITAL INTERfACE e'

but the processes of keeping the content embedded in them for future generations
is always under revision.
The economy and ethnographic detail of this labor are important: AIa Irititja
is not a state-making institution charged with containing an unquestionable, au-
thoritative Truth, and it has neither the funding nor the infrastructural resources
such traditionally-understood archives have enjoyed. Every purchase is carefully
weighed, and decisions to transfer media content are made considering the fragil-
ity of the original item, the availability of hardware tools, and the affordabilityof
necessary storage devices. 'The project's budget is cobbled together from in-kind do-
nations from the South Australian Museum; small but regular contributions from
Indigenous services organizations such as Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara
Lands and the Pitjantjatjara Council; software licensing fees garnered from partici-
pating school and library systems; and perennial funding applications to relevant
government departments. Significant human resources are devoted to articulating
ALa Irititjas work and mission in the terms of others' agendas and funding schemes.
In the interest of eventually becoming self-sustaining, AI' Irltitja has begun
development of a commercially available product: not just a culturally-responsive
software package (though the new program will be entirely customizable), but alsoa
thoughtful approach to archiving original media items. This process raises interest-
ing questions about the interoperability of systems: How might an Anangu system
be made useful for similar Indigenous organizations in North America!" How can
data be most efficiently extracted from one digital architecture and re-housed in
another?" Can the archive use international standards, such as Dublin Core or Dar-
win Core, and still meet the needs of its Anangu constituents - or will such struc-
turing be irrelevant or even alienating to the project's current users?" Would the
creative potential oflaunching the new software as "open-source" yield any benefits
for Anangu, or would this virtual commons of ideas threaten traditional modes of
knowledge custodianship and transmission?
As an organization, Ara Irititja is committed to delivering the digital archive
fee-free to Anangu, and to protecting the cultural and intellectual property of the
project's Indigenous "bosses:' Digitization processes have activated the archive into
being more inclusive, more dynamic - but this is not the same as egalitarian or
unregulated; reshaping the archive into an Anangu space is a complex process that
requires attention to the material conditions of knowledge preservation, cautious
adherence to very real financial constraints, and care for cultural mandates.

Indigenizing the Internet

As noted above, there are good reasons why Ara lrititja has never before been world-
wide-web-based: great distances among constituent communities, and between re-
mote locales and the administrative hubs of Adelaide and Alice Springs, combined
 e' SABRA THORNER 137

withunreliable power supplies and inconsistent Internet architecture in the NPY

landshave made the Internet an impractical tnol. The public nature of the Internet
hasbeen considered antithetical to the careful norms of custodianship of Anangu
knowledge.Yet. in the sixteen years since the project's beginning. a generation of
youngadults has grown up familiar with online as a media form (though in gen-
eral,access-points have been outside their homes), and more options have become
availablefor shaping the worldwide web into a tool that feels both safe and produc-
tive."The 1990s metaphor of the information superhighway has become a reality:
theInternet is a giant, global network, the digital infrastructure on which informa-
tionmoves around." The imagery is important as new possibilities are imagined:
theinformation superhighway is not a vortex or a vacuum; bits of data travel around
accordingto specific structures and rules. And like its analogue counterpart, some
routesand destinations are safer/more regulated than others. The new Ara Irititja
archivewill operate on an intranet: a private network that uses the Internet as a tool
to transmit knowledge in secure ways. Extending the metaphor of this translation
fromphysical into digital knowledge storage and transmission, imagine a series of
digitalbank vaults connected by toll-roads, serviced by trained professionals driving
armoredvehicles." In this section, I turn to the ways in which the Ara Irititja project
interrogatesthe Internet, staking a claim on a small branch of the worldwide web,
andre-working it into a purpose-built circuit that suits Anangu cultural protocols.
Ara Irititjas engagement with the Internet must continuously balance accessi-
bilityand security. A digital network offers great advantages to this project: all com-
munityworkstations will have access to each other (and new audio, audio-visual,
and text-based files being recorded and stored) in real-time; the time- and labor-
intensive process of manual synchronizing will be eliminated; and regular back-
upsofculturally-significant knowledge are inherent in this structure of information
management. The new Ara Irititja will likely be housed in one master server that
exchangesinformation with a handful of proxy servers; the proxy servers will each
communicate with m.my constituent community workstations. Data flow will be
vertical,and each proxy will synch with the master server on a regular basis, pro-
vidingthe system with automatic, complete, multiple backups." Each computer will
haveapproval from a server in order to gain access to the archive; and each user will
havean individual password.
These multiple levels of security and identification are a significant shift from
theoriginal FileMaker Pro database; they do a lot of work in reshaping perceptions
of the Internet from a generalized space regarded with suspicion into a multifac-
etedtool now capable of providing a culturally-relevant and high-tech forum for
Anangu knowledge communication. In the original archive, administrators could
onlyidentify records according to their community of origin; in the new, browser-
based platform, each entry's author/editor will be identified hy the user's specific
password. The form the new passwords will take is requiring much deliberation
and consultation. Can they be letters- and numbers-based!" Or is a visual selec-
138 IMAGINING AN INDIGITAL INTERFACE &

tion system more appropriate/user-friendly!" The ultimate goal is three-fold: 1)to

have the password system work to improve the integrity of AIa Irititja as a digital
archive (requiring unique identifiers increases both the accountability of users and
the verifiability of records); 2) to have passwords be culturally-relevant enough for
people to remember them and feel able to enter them in using either keyboard or
mouse, and yet not have them be so simple that a person might easily discern an-
other's password and then be at liberty to make mischief using a false avatar," and
3) to enable each community to devise passwords in order to customize useraccess
to fields, screens, and media according to gender, age, seniority, or any other factors
deemed important, replicating and reinforcing Anangu epistemologies.
The potential of the new AIa Irititja (both the software package and its dy-
namic approach to archiving) is embedded in its optimized flexibility, and yet, there
are limits to the ways in which digital technologies can be mobilized in the interests
of Anangu cultural production. Thus far, I've been writing about one AIa Irititja da-
tabase undergoing a transition from FileMaker to a browser-based platform; in fact,
AIa Irititja maintains three distinct archives: one that is open-access, and one each
for men's and women's sacred materials." Media items designated as "men's busi-
ness" are housed in a private room accessed only by men, and digital files are main-
tained in a stand-alone computer that is looked after by a knowledgeable, approved
male staff-member, and not synchronized with the general archive accessible to all
constituent communities. Women's business is treated with an equal level of re-
spect and privacy." In the first trial FileMaker Pro database, if a user's search yield-
ed results that included gender-restricted media-items, the screen would display
a prohibition sign - a red circle with a diagonal backslash through it, on a black
background. In testing with Anangu, this solution was quickly deemed quite inap-
propriate: the graphic suggested a flimsy virtual door to restrict access and made
users uneasy, and further, it called attention to the very thing that must be handled
with greatest discretion. As the project team continues to strive to erect an informa-
tion architecture that respects and reproduces Anangu protocols of differentiated
access to knowledge, these gendered repositories of media/information will 1101 go
on the new intranet, but rather remain in stand-alone computers in controlled-ac-
cess locations. So fundamental and non-negotiable are the privacy and segregation
of these frameworks - also known in English as men's and women's law - that they
powerful1y index the extent of Anangu trust in the Internet (and previous digital
platforms) as a mediation of traditional cultural protocols.

Concluding Thoughts

The tools this article interrogates - the database, the archive, and the online net-
work - are not neutral, and they do not simply reflect structures inherent in the
natural world. As normative (albeit ever-innovating) technologies of information
 o SABRA THORNER
139
r

management,they are undeniably powerful in guiding how we understand social

life.The work of Ara Irititja is to assert that these must be platforms of creativity
andcustomization, too. Responding to the needs of Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara,
andYankunytjatjara speakers in remote Central Australia, this project has spanned
asignificanttransition of collections philosophy: no longer just a culturally-specific
keeping-place of media items and associated metadata, ALa Irititja is becoming a
holisticknowledge center, a dynamic forum for the preservation and production of
Indigenous stories.
As a case study, the history of Ara Irititja also offers insight into the logistics
of collectionsmore broadly: the infrastructure of knowledge management does not
haveto be text-based or structured according to linear paradigms; information and
mediacan be interanimated: archive authorship can be multi vocal and ownership
Widely distributed; the Internet is not a singular or easily contained space, but is
rathera shorthand for a dynamic virtual world home to many kinds of tools that
areincreasingly customizable. These assertions bear implications relevant to Indig-
enouscommunities worldwide, for whom digital repatriation is often a Significant
foundationfor contemporary cultural production. as well as for larger state-based
institutionsseeking to capitalize on the potential of twenty-first century technolo-
giesin strategiesof both collections management and customizing the possibilities
ofaccessto various stakeholders.
In an era of proliferation of digital-media initiatives that are often exciting
andinnovativebut short-lived. and transience of staff in Indigenous projects," Ara
lrititja is remarkablein its longevity. due in no small part to a steadfastness among
stakeholdersand staff-members and a consistency of purpose. Indigenizing digital
architecturesis an ongoing and intercultural process that requires a rethinking of
both representation and time: for Anangu in contemporary Australia, the media of
representationare always emergent, multi vocal, and active in social life; and arti-
factsof the past and wisdom of the present must be looked after in the production
ofcultural futures.

Acknowledgments

I wouldlike to offer heartfelt thanks to Julia Burke, Dora Dallwitz, John Dallwitz,
laneLydon,and Sandra Rozental for providing thoughtful feedback on earlier ver-
sionsof this manuscript; and Fran Edmonds, Angus Frith, Eleanor Jackson, and
Awn Hemingway for providing quiet refuges in which to write. Leonie Wittner-
Ermerand Andrew Ermer, Fiona Steffensen and Emma Hicks warmly adopted me
intotheirhomes. nourishing me with love and laughter. I received generous funding
support for this research from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological
Research,Inc., and the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Studies.My advisors at New York University - Faye Ginsburg, Fred Myers, Sally
140 IMAGINING AN INDIGITAL INTERFACE •

Merry, and Haidy Geismar - have trained me in the rigors of critical anthropologi-
cal thinking and inspired me to relish the joys of fieldwork I have also received
invaluable advising and assistance from Kate Darian-Smith at the University of Mel-
bourne. I am grateful to the Editor and reviewers at Collections for their careful read-
ing and insightful comments. And finally, the members of the AIa lrititja team -in
addition to those mentioned above, especially Douglas Mann, Sally Scales, Ian Baird,
Graham Nudding, and Linda Rive - have shared their knowledge, experience, good
will, and good humor; Iam humbled and honored by their ongoing gifts.

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142 IMAGINING AN INDIGITAL INTERFACE e

Notes

1. The imagination of Aboriginal futures has been explored in depth by Ginsburg and Myers 2006
(and see also Michaels 1994), and is a topic of great debate in contemporary Australia.
2. "AIa Intitja" is a term in the Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara, and Yankunyujatjara languages and is
a term that is meaningful for Anangu: also probably understood by neighboring linguistic/cul-
tural groups, but it was newly coined by Pitjantjatjara elders in the foundational moment of the
project in the early 19905. "Anangu" is a term that means "person" in the languages of Central
Australia; here it is used to encompass the language groups involved with Ara Irititja: Ngaanyar-
jarra, Pitjantjatjara, and Yankunytjatjara (hereafter: NPY).
3. "Country" is a construct used by Central Australian Aboriginal people; it is a term which is
deployed in English to index the lands for which Anangu are custodians as the basis of all social
relations and individual senses of self.
4. Anthropologist Faye Ginsburg argues that the discourse of "the digital age" tends to ignore or
marginalize important differences in the ways in which digital technologies are taken up (Gins-
burg 2008); indeed. this article is an in-depth exploration of culturally-specific Anangu engage-
ment with contemporary tools of knowledge management. In this paragraph. I do not wish to
replicate neocolonialist tendencies of the language of linear progress, but rather seek to illustrate
how the storage mechanisms of culturally-significant items have drastically changed, and so too
have the possibilities of access and protection.
5. Unlimited text fields were important from the inception of Ara Irititja. Words attached to
media-items are far more than captions; they arc repositories of information necessary to any
culturally-relevant meaning-making of a photograph, film, or sound recording. Anangu knowl-
edge production is also multi vocal; the database had to facilitate storytelling by multiple users
seeking to add/edit digital records.
6. The original developers of the project included archivist John Dallwttz, acquisitions consultant
Ron Lister, community liaison Ushma Scales, software developer Martin Hughes. and Anangu
elders Peter Nyanlngu and Colin Tjapiya.
7. The archive began in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in South Australia,
but has now spread to neighboring communities in Western Australia and the Northern Terri-
tory, including predominantly Ngaanyatjarra-speakers. Ngaanyntjarra, Pitjantjatjara, and Yanku-
nytjatjara (NPY) speakers share many cultural and linguistic tics. I usc the term "NPY lands"
here to encompass all the communities in the ever-expanding Aja lrituja family.
8. The choice of Apple Mac computers was (and remains) quite purposeful; software and hardware
tools to manage media are far more capable, stable, and reliable than any PC options.
9. Anangu kinship norms govern all personal relationships; for society to function properly, poten-
tial mates must be of the right subgroups. "Right-skin marriage" is a colloquial way of referring
to a pairing that is considered correct according to traditional law.
10. No longer confined to commercial packages such as Microsoft Office or Adobe Photosbop. data
management software can now be built and customized from open-source codes - free lind
part of an information commons philosophy in which users share intellectual property in un-
precedented ways. For example. Douglas Mann. Aja lrititjas current software developer, is using
open-source code as the skeleton framework for the new program.
11. In this article, I neither celebrate digital technologies as a panacea to heal all Indigenous social
problems, nor bemoan them as a new arena for dispossession. Rather, I interrogate these media
forms as tools that can be put to work in particular ways to meet specific needs. TIle tools them-
selves are more flexible than is often presumed: networks can be structured in a variety of ways,
and security measures are increasingly creative. For example (and very important to Arrangu);it
is now possible to post/store content online without making it available to the public.
12. This section is informed by the work of Michael Christie, Charles Darwin University Education
e SABRA THORNER
143

Professor, and Kimberly Christen, Washington State University Ethnic Studies Professor. See
Christie 2005 and Christen 2005.
13. Traditional grieving practices also include the burning of the deceased's possessions and camp,
moving away from the site of the death, and avoiding hunting grounds frequented with the de-
ceased. Additional rituals have evolved from the belief that the spirit of the deceased can make
mischief on the living in the first year after death; loved Does will sometimes cut their hair and/
or smoke themselves to diminish any visual or olfactory cues that would facilitate a spirit's at-
tempts to locale them.
14. Individual reactions to images of deceased persons arc quite varied. In the women's-only
archive, "sorrow" photos are not restricted at all, a result of a directive from senior advisors.
Cultural Consultant and Women's Archive Manager Julia Burke prefers to show images in small
gatherings, rather than large public settings because reactions to images of deceased people is
very individualized. Some Ajjangu women have advised that when they die, they do not want
photographs, films, or sound recordings including them 10 be restricted in the archive at all,
and recently, one woman made a request for specific photographs to be included on the cover
of her funeral booklet. Individual preferences are not always followed, as the deceased's request
may not be consistent with the wishes of the surviving family. Cultural protocols for sorrow are
handled with care and flexibility, on a case-by-case basis.
[5. Project Manager John Dallwitz and Cultural Consultants Ian Baird, Linda Rive, and Julia Burke
were extraordinarily helpful in clarifying the detail and particularity of Anangu "sorrow" con-
ventions.
16. Anthropologist Jennifer Deger's work on cultural protocols emphasizes a generational shift among
Yolnguin the remote Arnhem Land community of Gapuwiyak: while photographs retain the
essence of the deceased, young people no longer consider these objects dangerous, and family
members increasingly seek out photographs to assuage their grief and feel dose to the person
who'spassed away, when previously, photographs were destroyed or hidden (Deger 2006). Like-
wise,among Anangu, photographs arc considered and handled in myriad ways. Given the easy
replicability of prints from a multimedia database, Ala Irititja has received requests for a special
presentation or a temporary display of images for a funeral or memorial service. After the public
event, these images are generally kept by the family for private viewing. In these circumstances,
the archive restriction remains. Sec Geismar 2009 for more on how photographs act in social life.
17. See Christie 2003.
!8. Radio is an important exception - a non-text-based media form, often deployed with subver-
sive/altemattve intent; museums, too, are trying to find "edutatnment" solutions to participatory
learning. Alternative models to text-based learning are slowing gaining legitimacy- as educa-
tional philosophies embrace differently-abled learners, and academic Interventions interrogate
media- making as a valid, collaborative form of knowledge production - but the written-word is
sul! dominant (nowhere more apparent than in the production of articles such as this one, as a
building block in my junior academic career!).
19. Many in the social sciences are recontextualizing photography's role(s) in sociallife (see Tagg
1988;Pinney 1992; Edwards 2001); and a new generation of anthropologists are interrogating not
what photography is or what photographs meall, but rather, what these technologies might do or
embody (Geismar 2009). Photographs are increasingly appreciated for their "infinite recodabiliry"
(Edwards 2001; see also Pinney 2003), and colonial archives are being rcimagtned as spaccs whose
structure and contents are newly available for restgnlfication (see Aird 2003; Brown and Peers
2006; Dnessens 2003; Edwards 2001; King and Lidchi 1998; Lippard 1992; Lydon 2005; Pinney
2003; Poole 2005; see also Allen 1994; Batty, Allen, and Morton 2005; Poignant and Poignant 1996;
and Wiseman 1996).1 am drawing from these many antecedents, as well as the Actor-Network
Theory of Bruno Latour and Michel Callan (see Calion 1998; Latour 1998; Latour coined "actant")
to assert that photographs are agents productive of emotion, knowledge, and kin relations.
 IMAGINING AN INDIGITAL INTERFACE &
144

20. In Aja Irititja, such text is used to describe. define. or comment upon how something was used,
often relating a memory about a person or a place.
21. I am drawing from Laura Marks' theory of "haptic visualiry" in which viewing content on screen
can powerfully evoke responses in senses other than sig~t (smell, taste, touch). Sec Mar~s 2000.
Users of Ara Irititja engage bodily in the archiving of their knowledge for future generatIOns.
22. Anthropologist Fred Myers argues that acrylic painting among Pintupi people in Australia's
Western Desert is a practice that maintains continuity with earlier visual forms such as body
decoration and cave painting; specific works bear value through objectifying stories and rela-
tionships from the Dreaming, and thus facilitate caring for the country for which the painter
is responsible (see Myers 1989; 2001; 2002). I suggest that Ara Irititja is a new media-form that
likewise enables caring for country and kin relationships important to its users.
23. Tjukurpa is often translated in English as "Dreaming:' a term meant to encapsulate Indigenous
Australian cosmologies, narratives explaining the nature of all things in Ajjangu social life.
24. These Central Australian languages were written down beginning less than 100 years ago; in
contrast, for example, English has been a written language for some 4000 years.
25. This last instance was because of specific sorrow protocols: because someone in the community
named Raymond had recently died, the name had become taboo to pronounce; on this kind of
occasion, people bearing the same name as the deceased are often given alternative monikers for
the duration of the mourning period.
26. I have found the following works helpful to my thinking on photographic archives: Batty, Allen,
and Morton 2005; Brown and Peers 2006; Edwards 2001; King and Lidchi 1998; Lippard 1992;
Lydon 2005; Pinney and Peterson 2003; Poole 2005; and Wiseman 1996. On theorizing and de-
stabilizing archives as agents of colonial control, see Anderson 2004; Dirks 2001; Schwartz 2000;
and Stoler 2002.
27. Derrida 1998.
28. For example, see Ginsburg 1991: 97, 106, and Latukefu 2006. These concerns derive from a
presumption of incommensurability between traditional Indigenous knowledge and innovative
technologies, itself a premise undergirded by a reified notion of culture, in which all knowledge,
objects, or systems originating elsewhere are polluting (Fabian 1tJ8S; Ginsburg 1995).
29. For example, see Brown 2006; Christen 2005; Christie 2005; Ginsburg 2008; Salazar 2005;
Srinivasan 2006 for more on Indigenous communities developing media platforms that digitize
cultural resources and information.
30. Indeed, Ara Irititja has begun discussions with an organization called In Progress, a non-profit
organization based in St Paul, Minnesota, devoted to the preservation of Anishinaabe media
and engagement of youth in media as an exciting form of cultural production.
31. Often, the answer to this has been to use Microsoft Excel as a clearinghouse, a portal through
which users can import data from one system, "clean" it of all impeding formatting, and then
export it into a new system.
32. Aja Irititja has long maintained a partnership with the Northern Territory Library (NTL). In
2005, NTL purchased a "multiple license" for the original File Maker Pro software, and dtstrib-
uted it to constituent Library and Knowledge Centres, rebranded as "Our Story," for communi-
ties to populate with local content. NTL has devised a different model of cultural custodianship
for knowledge to Ara Intitja's centralized set of media and annotations synchronized among
multiple workstations: NTL installs a skeleton archive into constituent centers, and trains local
staff to populate it with community-specific content (photographs, video clips, sound record-
ings, and associated stories). In 2007, NTL was awarded A$! ,24 million by the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation Access to Learning Award, and enlisted Ara Irititja to develop new software
that better capitalized on increasingly flexible and capable browser-based archiving tools. One
of their requirements has been the use of Dublin Core, an internationally-accepted standard of
fields used to describe library resources online to make the physical items easy to locate. Dar",~n
Core is an analogous standard for biological collections.
& SABRA THORNER
145

Debate over these standards continues at AIa Irititja, and is wry much centered on balanc-
ing the needs of various stakeholders. Ajjangu users in remote communities are primarily
concerned that their multimedia database reflect and reinforce their traditional paradigms of
knowledge management. Yet, even as the team of archivists, elders, cultural brokers, and soft-
ware developers create and implement an innovative tool exemplifying Indigenous ontologies,
financial viability lurks as an ongoing struggle. The long-term plan for AIa Irititja includes shap-
ing the new software into a commercial product, available for customizatlon and sale to myriad
kinds of collections, as part of a strategy to become self-sustaining. In this context, the new ar-
chive will be capable of accommodating the fields of Dublin Core, should this be a requirement
of a potential client.
33. Ala Intitjcs cultural consultant, Ian Baird, has provided a wealth of information to this paper.
most especially on the nature of Arjangu interaction with various digital technologies.
34. This has never before been such a significant socio-pollttal issue in Australia. In 2009, Prime
Minister Kevin Rudd announced an initiative to connect 90% of homes with fiber-optic cable by
2017, promising the remaining 10% connections via wireless technologies. The existing copper-
wire network is over 100 years old, and Australia has some of the slowest connectivity and low-
est rates of access in the developed world; a faster, nationwide network was an election promise
that helped propel Rudd to victory in 2007. Although Rudd was ousted from leadership in June
2010,his successor, Prime Minister Julia Gillard. is expected (at time of this writing. in Septem-
ber 2010), to uphold the Labor party's ambitious plans for a high-speed, optical-fiber National
Broadband Network.
35. Forging a culturally-sensitive digitization process from scratch - not just scanning photo-
graphic prints into .jpg files, but creating a digital infrastructure that best represents Indigenous
protocols of knowledge management - is a labor-intensive process. I rely heavily on metaphor
in this section as a strategic device _ objectifying and sharing my own path to knowledge as
an anthropologist ethnographically exploring how AIa lrititja developers take care to build a
new archive that capitalizes on state-of-the-art technologies and protects Aoangu interests and
paradigms. In this example, the bank is not an arbitrary analogy: increasing Arrangu familiarity
with and confidence in the security of online banking has been the most oft-cited reasoning for
conceptualizing an online Ara Irttitja.
36, AD!Irititjas software designer, Douglas Mann, has been indispensable to my understanding of
the issues addressed in this section. Two other models of network are possible: l) a hub-and-
spoke system in which atl65 workstations connect to a single master server; all changes are
live;and information can flow freely between each workstation and the server (but not between
workstations); 2) a networked circuit of workstations in which every computer is also a server,
and each is set to share changes at regular intervals. This latter option is more robust than its
counterparts (if one computer/server crashes or otherwise fails, all the others are backups, and
also pick up the slack in the speed/security of data-transmission), but far more complex and
time-consuming to erect and maintain, and it requires the most bandwidth. The waterfall-like
model of proxy servers Ihave detailed in the body of this article balances safety, reliability, and
feasibility: it has been around a long while, requires the least bandwidth of all three options, is
more secure than the hub-and-spoke model, but not as difficult/expensive to maintain as the
circuit model. Because service provision is changing quite rapidly across Australia, the actual
infrastructure and strategies of a new Ara Irititja network will depend on the status of Internet
architecture in remote communities at the time of the roll-out.
37 For example: each password might begin with the first three letters of the name of a person's
home community, and conclude with 3-4 numbers of the person's choice. Passwords for people
from Mimili could then be: MIM1874; MIM9603; Amata passwords would be: AMA4423;
AMA0326; etc.
146 IMAGINING AN INDIGITAL INTERFACE e

38. For example: a login screen comprised of a table of 12-15 thumbnail photographs of locally
recognizable animals allows a user to click on 3-4 images in a specific order. Passwords, then,
would be visual images of: kangaroo-emu-goanna, or cockatoo-possum-wedge-tailed-eagle, etc.
39. Note, here, that I have thus far avoided direct analogies between Ara Irititja and more main-
stream/commercial online platforms, such as Second Life, Pacebook, or Wikipedia. Yet it is Sec-
ond Life that has popularized this usage of the term "avatar," and it is crucial to acknowledge, in
this context, that any form of online communication requires a re-presentation of self in digital
format.
40. I have been advised by both John Dallwitz and Ian Baird that in an Anangu context, it is often
better not to discuss something at all than to affirm its existence and declare it private. In the in-
terest of maintaining the greatest respect possible for these norms of discretion with and care for
different types of knowledge, Ara Irititja staff have read drafts and approved all the information
presented in the text and images of this article.
41. Dora Dallwitz and Julia Burke have been invaluable informants in elucidating Ara Irititja's ap-
proach to women's materials.
42. See Peter Sutton 2009: 49-53 for more on how the transience of non-Indigenous service provid-
ers can do long-term damage to individual and social well-being of Indigenous people living in
remote communities.