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Interlocutors in the archive: Aboriginal women and the collection of anthropological data
Co-presented with Sydney University Museums
Join Ngarigu woman Professor Jakelin Troy as she discusses intimate details of the lives, language and knowledge of the individuals she has discovered among a rich trove of anthropological archives.
Archives are rich with historic detail – and anthropological archives are no exception.
Because of the way that anthropological knowledge is recorded, these archives also contain intimate details of the lives, language and knowledge of named individuals: ‘interlocutors’ worked to help translate their cultural and social world for the anthropologist.
Professor Jakelin Troy will talk about the women she has met in the archive and the continued importance of the detail for communities and individuals today.
This event was held at the University of Sydney on Thursday 15 March 2018.
Professor Jakelin Troy
Professor Jakelin Troy is a Ngarigu woman whose country is the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales. She is currently Director, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research at the University of Sydney. Throughout her life she has worked on issues of language loss and regeneration – work which has frequently taken her into the archive to search out words, people and ideas.
This talk coincides with the UNESCO memory of the world exhibition in Fisher Library which features the Anthropology archive through the work of Phyllis Kaberry, the first professionally trained Australian Anthropologist, and the first to publish on Aboriginal women’s knowledge.
Image (at top): Guwalpuy (feather string detail) by Barbara Bunguyarri Burarwanga in 1976. Photo: Copyright Michael Myers 2009.