Mura Maarni: Chasing Mob through the Archives

Mura Maarni is a cultural methodology which provides a mechanism to repatriate cultural knowledge stolen from Aboriginal communities and retained in archives. Since the colonial invasion, white researchers have taken Aboriginal cultural knowledge away from traditional custodians. Aboriginal communities have no means to access these repositories, so Mura remains locked away from Community and Country. Mura Maarni proposes to use digital technologies to live-stream archival sessions with objects and artefacts, linking back to Communities, who are supported to be online.

Aboriginal Community researchers, under the guidance of Cultural Knowledge Holders, online and On Country, using Go-Pro cameras to examine cultural materials, reconnecting remote Aboriginal communities with their cultural knowledge. The project proposes four stages. The first would be to identify the cultural material through catalogues and onsite visits, to assess what can be looked at, and by whom. The next stage would be to livestream culturally appropriate material back to the Community. The third stage would be to work with the Community to develop Maarni or new knowledge, gained by returning cultural knowledge back to Country. The final stage, would be for Community to provide archives with the appropriate protocols for managing access to these materials.

The researchers will use ‘chasing our mob’ (Rigney, 2018), a research method used to engage with archival materials, and use multimedia to transform our Mura into Maarni – new forms of Song, Dance and Ceremony.  This project will also assist collecting institutions to reduce their footprint of Aboriginal cultural materials, and facilitate those to be identified and returned to Country. There is an urgent need to reclaim Cultural Knowledge Holders’ stories, memories and experiences, as well as their knowledge of Mura, from the archives.

Mura Maarni results in culturally appropriate processes, protocols and methods in the archives to repatriate Cultural Knowledge to our Communities. This restorative methodology will reconnect cultural knowledge with/back to Country. Mura Maarni is an archival intervention which reanimates the Mura as it is recorded in collections. Researchers with Cultural Knowledge Holders will locate the Mura of the Corner Country in the archives. Cultural Knowledge Holders will determine which cultural materials can be transformed from Mura into Maarni.

This is a critical method of cultural revitalisation: passing on cultural practices through new work and between generations at On Country gatherings, a cultural space where stories can be shared in yarning circles. Recorded and documented again, but this time by Aboriginal people in culturally appropriate ways.

Where objects and artefacts must remain in collections, the development of Maarni, will help address the trauma and sickness in humans, Country and ancestral beings, in the natural and spiritual worlds, that removal of objects has caused. By listening to the archival Mura, we can hear our Knowledge Holders, and receive from them knowledge and practices that they wanted us to know. Maarni is the transference of history, Cultural Knowledge and language back to Country and Community.

For more information visit: https://taragara.org/