Australian Society of Archivists (ASA) Conference 2023: Loris Williams Memorial Lecture

Maree Clarke (Mutti Mutti/Wamba Wamba/Yorta Yorta/Boonwurrung) and Dr Fran Edmonds gave the Loris Williams Memorial Lecture at the ASA Conference on Tuesday 5 September 2023. During their lecture, titled What is a Living Archive? A conversation, Fran and Maree explained the concept of the ‘living archive’ and gave an overview of the activities of the project to date, including the digitisation of Maree’s significant collection of early 1990s photographs, the work undertaken in Maree’s backyard, the courses at Mt. Holyoke College, Massachussets, and the work on the possum-skin cloak in both Newcastle and Ngukurr. Fran and Maree also highlighted the difficulties the project team have had in creating a database and website, which will conserve and make accessible the material in the Maree Clarke Collection (MACL) and the Ngukurr Collection (NKCL) to both communities – ie Ngukurr and south-east Australia – and ensure their knowledge and stories can be added to the archive.

A Q and A with colleagues, following the talk, revealed similar stories and challenges in other archival projects. Discussions focused on ongoing issues to achieving sustainable relational digital databases, that consider Indigenous knowledge systems and support First Nations communities to control and manage their data in culturally safe ways.

With the aim of on-going discussions between these groups, our hope is that together we can create a tool that is useful, accessible, and allows communities to have control over their knowledge, culture and stories.