 I'll introduce the next panel shortly. Just flying on from the previous two panel conversations, things like recognising that a lot of good things have been done in the past, but just that last presentation started to highlight things around power and resource disparity and the imbalances that has on advancing Indigenous language and so forth, but also to recognise that the predominant conversation has been about Indigenous languages and there's ongoing conversations as you proceed that will take in other language groups, multi-cultural language groups which includes Indian, Italian, Greek, Chinese, all different groups that are all part of this country. Going back to your question about language, we're still in this country live and a fragile state of mind. We're still trying to assert certain things historically what was the plan here was to dilute the culture, the language and the story and that stuff we still have to grapple with. The other thing I'll say in terms of language is the wording which comes in around settler. For the first hundred years it wasn't about settlement, it was about invasion. So we need to own that and get beyond our own fragility and own this because you'll be a part of a history moving forward in the next hundred years. That's what we've got to recognise collectively. The only other thing I want to say coming from the conversation, language is in song, ceremony, story, art. There's a whole lot of dimensions of language and also to acknowledge that there'll be reverse racism and psychological trauma that comes back. When I listen to Nick he's obviously spent a long time and invested a lot of time and effort into this space but he could very well be confronted by Aboriginal people who will judge him because of his skin colour and that's important. So we've got to work together on this together, come together and stand united because it's an important transition into the next hundred years. That said I'll introduce the panel members for the next conversation which is about oral histories and the co-design process and we have Alistair, Alistair Thompson from Monash, Jackie Oldman, National Film Sound Archive, Vanessa Russ, Indigenous Data Network, University of Melbourne and Sophia Sembon, Queensland Art Gallery. Thanks. I'm Al Thompson. I'm from Wurundjeri Country. I'm from Wurundjeri Country. I'm past present and emerging when we use that as a step. I've been doing oral history since I was only with my grandmother in 1979 and I fell in love with oral history and asked a few of them to tell us some of their stories and then ensuring that their stories are rich to historical outcome. A historian of Monash University and the President of Australia and previously the President of the International Oral History Association and delighted to be here and delighted to be invited partly because oral history collections in Australia are facing a desperately urgent problem. All of you will know that people have been collecting and recording people's voices, languages and life stories in Australia for many, many years whether it was it linguists and anthropologists for example this recording with Fanny Cochran Smith in the late 1890s Palawa Woman in Tasmania. Then folklorists and folk music collectors in the mid-20th century. The wonderful Hazard of Berg collecting interviews with elite Australians, particularly the cultural and political elite in the 1950s and 60s and 70s. But then from about the 1960s an extraordinary flowering of oral history work in community, professional and academic context partly because of the coincidence of the invention of the portable cassette tape recorder which made it possible. But partly also, up closer sorry, I sort of forgot that I can't use this. But partly also because of the development of social history and the so-called people's history and a recognition that our archives traditionally have held the records of people who have been powerful enough to create those records and get them preserved and therefore it's an impoverished archive. And so oral history was really well how do we transform the archive and ensure that the stories of people who haven't recorded them or they've been recorded by other people about them. How do we get their stories of their own lives, whether it's working class Australians, Indigenous Australians, Australian women, queer Australians, migrants and so on. So a massive flowering of oral history projects all over Australia from the 1960s and 1970s. And our problem is that you can see here many of those collections are still whether they're old CDs, cassettes, reel-to-reel. They may not have been digitised, they're sitting in academic studies in local history society, dusty cupboards, under people's beds and even the stuff that has been digitised and those are some digital records of a project I'm involved in. They're going to be saved because the National Library did the project on Holden with us, but there's a lot of digital recordings that are not going to survive either because they're not future-proofed unless they're linked to a significant, unless they're ingested and preserved by one of the state or national institutions that has the resources to ensure that they'll be future-proofed. So we've got a real problem because there's just multitudes of collections out there for historians of historical worth but for linguists of linguistic worth that are going to die, that are going to disappear. And our whole archival aim of oral history to enrich the archive, we might actually, that aim is basically potentially dying unless we do something about it. So we've got some challenges. One of our challenges is about locating those collections. You can see, sorry, one of them is locating collections. You can see on the right there about 25 years ago, the National Library of Australia did a survey of existing oral history collections all over the country and produced this book. That was 25 years ago. It's not been done since when I asked the National Library a couple of years ago. They sort of said, ah, maybe not. You could Google it. You could find it on Trove. Actually, you can't. You can't find a lot of this stuff. So actually just finding stuff. So for example, Yarra Council in Melbourne did a survey a couple of years ago and discovered dozens of collections just in Inner Melbourne that were basically dying because they weren't being looked after properly. A student colleague of mine last week contacted Andrew Jacobits who made this extraordinary website on making multicultural Australia in the late 20th century and there are snippets of interviews on that and she contacted him and he's retired. Where are the interviews? Well, actually, they're in his study at home. He's retired. They're going to die. They're interviews with extraordinary multicultural activists in the 1970s and 80s of Australia. We've got issues, even if we find and locate these collections, we've got issues about documenting them. Any of you will know that an audio or a video recording without documentation is almost useless because it's so hard to know what's there. It's so hard to make use of it. So creating decent documentation to enable access is really crucial and that involves significance assessments, whether it's for its linguistic or its historical significance. Permissions is critical. Our historians started thinking about ethics and permissions long before universities had ethics committees and have a principle of shared authority that's evolved in the oral history world around the world for many years but basically, and a lot of our collections, our old collections, do have good permissions where people have had informed consent and have thought about where they want the material to go and want it to be preserved. And indeed, that's a significant thing. Mostly people are telling us their stories because they want those stories to be on the record. But if those permissions aren't clear and if the copyright's not clear, then there are significant issues there. Digitisation is obviously necessary. Ironically, the most robust form record for many of our interviews is the written transcript because paper will survive in the way that a whole load of other things won't. We need to digitise, but we also need to future-proof because most academics, most local history collections, most community projects don't have the resources to do that. And so the really key issue is about preservation and future-proofing. And as I suggested, I think only the large national and state institutions have the statutory responsibility, the resources, the skills to future-proof these collections forever. If they stay in a local history society or in an academic study, they'll be around in 50 years' time. And lastly, it is possible. Quality data is probably less relevant here. It's a bit more like the research data commons here. Quality data in the UK is a thing that's been going for about 25 years, collecting academic recordings. But more important, Save Our Stories, a British library got about 20 million pounds from the Heritage Lottery Fund in the UK a few years ago to create eight hubs all over the UK to locate, document, digitise and preserve recordings, voice recordings from all over the country. They're halfway through that project and it has been transformative. And we really need something like that in Australia. Thank you. Is that working? There we are. My name is Jackie. I've come to you today from where I live and work on the lands of the Ngunnawal people in what is Canberra, a very cold country, and it's beautiful to be here. I pay my respects to Elders Past and Present and to all Torres Strait and Aboriginal... sorry, Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people. I was hoping I could go last to say what they said, but five minutes goes fast, so I'll talk fast. I'm head of collection at the National Film and Sound Archive. We are the National Audio-Visual Repository, the archive. We obviously work very closely with our other National Collecting Institution partners on what is sort of loosely termed the Distributed National Collection. We all hold different parts of our national memory, but as lots of people have highlighted, there are gaps, there's a lot to be done. We're really excited about the concept of the Data Commons. We are excited about what we can learn, but also what we have to contribute. But I just wanted to flag some of the work we're doing, some of the challenges we have and the many gaps that we have. So in terms of our history itself, the NFSA, and I pay respect to Sophia, who was a previous curator at the NFSA and knows this collection very well, we have a dedicated oral history program not on the scale of institutions like the National Library. Around 5,000 oral histories that are labelled and have been created as such. Very limited focus on First Nations people, and I can quite confidently say I think none of those oral histories are in language, and I'm looking at Sophia just to say I think that's right. That is a gap for us. We know that we need to focus on that. We have just launched a new collection policy, and in that we have said that we want to focus on First Nations collection material and partnerships. So firstly, better understanding what we have, making sure it's described properly and that we are managing it appropriately with the individuals, communities or organisations who actually hold the cultural interest in that material. There's a lot of work for us to do. On the Oral History Front, one of the things we're embarking on this year is a pilot project on Western New South Wales Community Radio, so a First Nations Community Radio project, and we really want to start to take our oral history program in the direction of First Nations creators and audiovisual industry stakeholders. So I think there's a long way for us to go there, but we're starting that journey. But as a lot of people I know have already said, in relation to First Nations languages, for us it's not necessarily the oral history collection, which is where the information is. We have material in our collection that is recorded in language. Much of it has been recorded over the last century for various reasons. We have collections such as the Strello Collection from Strello Research Centre, which is around recorded language and vision from our under men. We've just been working with the Strello Research Centre and our under men on digitising and managing that material and developing an access centre in Alice Springs for community. I won't have time to talk about that, but if anyone would like to know more about the partnership that was developed to make sure we were handling that material appropriately and working with the traditional custodians, I'd be happy to talk about that. We also have, for example, the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association Collection. Some of that is in the language. We're working on digitising that at the moment, but we know that there's a project there. We need to work a lot more on understanding, describing and discovering that material. I'll just quickly go through, I know, time-wise. I'm probably getting close to the end. Some of the challenges, and these aren't unique to us. I know many other archives, libraries, museums and galleries face them. The question of what is defined as oral history will be one that we will need to resolve. That ties into the question about data and how we describe, how we bring our collections together and how we discover that material. I also wanted to note the question about access. Particularly in the AV world, there is an assumption that what we have should be shared and uniformly available. We know that that is absolutely not the case in relation to First Nations material in particular. We have the copyright framework but also the ICIP and cultural rights framework that we work within. It's really important to us that we partner and make sure that accessibility is not always assumed and it has to be managed appropriately. I've mentioned metadata and finally I think the data portal is a wonderful idea. I think discoverability for us is one of the key challenges. While our catalogue is available online, that's only at title level and I think we have a lot of work to do on actually properly describing our collection, making sure that the language used is appropriate and enables discovery and I think that's where this discussion is really important for us. Thank you. Vanessa Russ, I'm a Noreenian Gidja girl from the Kimberley region. I live on the wonderful Wajikbuja and I'm really grateful to be here. I love coming to Queensland because it just reminds me of my family. I'm here not necessarily talking about oral histories although I feel like I can speak to all of them. I actually work with Professor Marcia Langton and Kristin Smith and a whole range of wonderful people on an ARDC project linked to the Eldaka project and we're looking at Indigenous capabilities. Our aim is to try and set up and basically we're dealing with green fields. Everything that you have all spoken about today are all to me green fields because when we look at Indigenous data we don't know what we don't know and I recommend we all remain students of the game not experts in the field and I include this in in terms of Indigenous people as well. It's really easy to say we need an Aboriginal person to do this thing but we set them up to fail if they don't know what that thing is and we help them more when they get access to things that they're not prepared to. So just kind of one of our challenges I'll quickly explain our project and you can ask me his questions later. So our project was really okay so what do we do with Indigenous data what is Indigenous data and how do we actually make it functional so that researchers like Client and others can actually research them and not necessarily be Indigenous to research them because there are some people like Nick who've been working in this field forever actually sucking the life out of them and bringing that over to and you know I mean I'm in a very loving way but I think that I think we need to be a lot more open to it so our project was really okay what is the whole ecosystem of data where do we start from and so we started with governance we've got three parts to this one what is Indigenous governance and this is taking the sovereignty narrative and actually applying it in a functional way so it is not stopping anyone access caution and I think I would love to speak to censorship because I think we see censorship in every single approach there is censorship to Indigenous people getting access and there is censorship to non-Indigenous people who are working on behalf of communities getting access and so on so I think so governance is one of the key parts of our sort of three streams and they all come together at the end you know we're looking at building a catalogue of where all the Indigenous data sits so that as a researcher I can go well I'm really interested in these things who has that and not to kind of say well you mobile have data and we want it now well actually no I don't want to take the responsibility of having the repository work that you guys have to do no no but can we get it up into some sort of federated system where I can look at it and then see if that fits within the research that parameters of my project you know and in that there's things like looking at you know traditional knowledge labels and so on we're also looking at the complexities of data and how right up to geospatial types of data can you map country and then on top of that add collections and then on top of that add oral histories and can an Indigenous person then go on and click on a thing or can we actually start to provide places, hubs for people to find access if they can't afford access so really looking at the whole range of things which is always really hard to talk about in schools so our first project which we did in June on the 9th and 10th was to look at this this idea of what is governance governance is one of the biggest challenges because if you look at state and federal data they won't give you access unless you very special and so what if we had access to some of that data right now in terms of those Indigenous kids in WA who are being incarcerated I mean we call it detention but it's just incarceration and then what happens to them when they come out I mean you know we want to talk about evil kids, the systems creating evil kids so how does data improve our mob without actually adding more limitations to the access of data so it's how do we do it in a way that's really ethical, respectful gives time for pause as lovely Sandra said this morning and allows us to actually get outcomes that are community based or research based that then improve the lives of mob would be really great but it's very ambitious of course thank you okay good afternoon my name is Sophia Nampo-Jimpas-Sambrono and I'm a descendant of the Gingli people of the northern central desert of the northern territory I also pay my respects to the first peoples and ongoing custodians of this land that we're meeting on everywhere we walk in this continent is Aboriginal land and it's our responsibility to respect the lands that we live in. So apologies for my pun I'm a huge fan and I hope there's like a dad joke section and any data comments or system coming up so I guess I'm going to interject with a bit of a perspective on the glam sector and just that not all collections are created equally or accessed equally so I'll just switch forward to something more interesting so for over 15 years I've worked across glam institutions currently at Kugoma which I forgot to put on the first slide which is the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art previously I've worked at the NGA the State Library of Queensland National Film and Sound Archive National Museum and a little bit at the Old Parliament house before it was Moad and in all of these I've worked with the City with Indigenous collections except for OPH and only two of these institutions were actually in the business of creating oral histories or dealing specifically with oral histories but I've found within each of these places that other sorts of content is equally valuable significant to community especially with language as much as oral history so I'll just kind of talk about that sort of thing. This slide here is of some exhibition content we made for the International Year of Indigenous Languages at State Library of Queensland for the Coral Dargon exhibition which is Coral Dargon is the I guess dedicated space at the State Library of Queensland for Indigenous stories and sharing and culture. So as part of that we created audio-visual content and it's talking about current projects in language, speaking language and creating new sets of data about data sometimes as well but also about what's happening in community and a lot of this doesn't go into collections and that's the same as I guess in a gallery world that I'm in at the moment that will create audio-visual content that is about education, it's about interpretation for online audiences sometimes in gallery audiences so these aren't collections or the data sets that we think of if we're trying to design interoperable database systems so if we're trying to connect these resources like how maybe that's something to include how do we include these resources because it's something that people spend a lot of time on and the people involved in the projects invest their intellectual and cultural property in this as well I don't have a slide for a bit recently at Quagoma there's a sculpture outside the front entrance of Quagoma that Judy Watson created so she made that in response to archival collections and museum collections and then we've created a digital experience that that we created more content and audio-visual content to contextualize and create I guess a new experience around that so organizations in the glam sector are doing this all the time whether or not it's within their actual collections this is a talk series that we used to do at the State Library of Queensland I hope that's still happening there's a beautiful fireplace outside of Quirrell-Dargon where we hold a talk series to talk about I guess projects that are happening at the library and exhibitions that are on at the library oops I've run out of time really quickly but that is to say again that these aren't necessarily included in collections but often are the most interesting part of some of the projects that we're doing we're talking about collections we're talking about experiences like contemporary experiences talking about lifetime of experiences in particular these ladies in the top right they're Sherbag marching girls it was the last I guess the ladies that were healthy enough and present to be there and they actually did a march to the space it was like a reunion conversation outside but then we also worked with the collection area to record some long form interviews as well so there in the collection but the kind of I guess the spirit of the group isn't captured in that either I'll try and wrap up quickly and we can keep talking in the panel part the next project I'll just quickly touch on also at State Library of Queensland it's about the other side accessing collections for First Nations creatives who are in the business of taking that data they've experienced in this case it was language focused and then creating new exciting things to experience so but yeah that process brought up lots of frustration and lots of like with discoverability with needing to I guess prep some of the First Nations creatives before we dive into these collections and how their family and culture is going to be talked about and I guess the need to have like not just Indigenous staff but appropriately briefed staff or people that understand and are able to bridge those gaps and prepare groups to be in the presence of these collections okay I'll stop now but we can keep talking thank you Sophie you didn't have to rush to finish because we've still got a little bit of time are there any questions to the panel from the floor microphone to the thanks so much panellists that's fantastic and Sophia thank you for agreeing to be part of the day I think listening to you that you are probably one of the most experienced people in the room in terms of bringing data to life through those coordinated activities taking a longitudinal real-life approach to objects in collections and bringing people whose lives and communities or histories that the collections encapsulates together that's just an amazing example that you provided you spoke briefly then at the end about the complexities of bringing people in that in that example First Nations creatives into an institution of the glam sector into close contact with the collections and you obviously it's difficult to speak when we're speaking in the present and with real-life examples but you did indicate there were some challenges there do you feel able to perhaps give an example or two so that example well that picture series that we had was I guess creatives who had never been in the business of looking at materials and archives and I guess that some of that came down to the I guess the responses were about the language and how they've been spoken about or the family's been spoken about in those archives I guess derogatory language mostly but also yeah I guess the feeling of walking into an archive is very different and very confronting if you're an original Torres Strait Islander person but also a creative like it's a very imposing situation and it's nice to walk in there with people who are supporting you I have worked in this kind of space before at Film and Sound Archive where we were trying really hard to figure out I guess older collections which hadn't been looked at by anyone with the authority from communities for a very long time so we brought ten senior men from I think it was eight different Arnhemline communities to Canberra of all places to have a look at those recordings that we had take a step forward in I guess resolving some issues about those and that was I guess my first time ever doing that but I guess the most difficult because it involved so many moving parts and I guess I hope that that has made a difference to the NFSA collection but there is a lot to be said about having Indigenous staff in these institutions and support for them and also networks of people and what Sandra said before about I wrote it down because I thought it was very apt that First Nations mob within these institutions form their own communities across these glam institutions and I guess across academia as well and what you said before about when you call someone up you want to know that they're on the other end and they're going to let someone in and have that friendly face when you do bring someone into a collection and the respectful response and that's important is that someone can be referred by you to me and I just nah, I've done more about it so I've damaged your credibility for sending that person in the first place the other thing Sophie mentioned conversation around how do we make this whole process culturally safe and dignified because as you talked about cultural safety and the institutional elements attached to that that's an important conversation to continue to have as well are there other questions that you would like to ask Nick you hogging that microphone all day before I get everything sucked out of me I'm just thinking that typically you know when somebody approaches any kind of holding institution you get a catalogue and it's like this is the truth and that's what's given to you and we've been thinking a bit about dialogic archives so that where the people receiving the information can feed back into it and if it's made clear to them and so we have a lot of recordings in our collection for instance which come from you know the Pacific but we have no metadata we've got what's written on the outside of the tape and that's all so if somebody comes in and says well this is actually my grandparents and this is what they're saying they can go back into the catalogue so we need to encourage people to think of these things as not being fixed and static but being there for them to enrich and like you say it's an intimidating environment to come into but somehow we need to get that through one of the challenges that we have in terms of our AIDC project is how do you actually get the reuse of data happening so and data can be anything right so how do you actually get the reuse but how do you get all the stuff that's been done already to come together as well so we've got all this old you know some communities have had so much research done on them they have no idea what happened to that research and so I mean I know that you know in the Kimberley is now trying to set up sort of this hub where all health data health research is captured so they can see what's come before but then also the new research should go in there too and I think that that's the same thing this is that green fields, well you've probably seen it for a long time but I feel like we're in that even with museums I know at the Burnt Museum when we were going through and doing all that work to rehouse and digitise my biggest worry was we were using in new so Axial and what's the relationship with them but also then we were looking at things like how many names do you put on a thing I mean some communities have so many names so we built it into the system so that you can put in whatever spelling and it'll pull up that same thing anyway because the Burnts weren't great I mean they were writing things down as they saw they weren't linguistics you know experts so so yeah so there's that whole trouble around the same thing identifying things and taking the time to put it into your data making your data clean and then actually making sure that everything else then can sort of be magnetised to it I think right the magic stuff but that goes into that governance stuff right if we don't get how we capture data clean and nice and ready to go it won't sit in a system and it won't be able to be findable and all those sorts of things but there's also gaps in the care and fair principles as well that we're not thinking about and I think this reuse reuse of data and continuation longevity is just not thought about at the moment Jackie you also I'm sorry Vanessa I'll come to you shortly Jackie but Vanessa you mentioned the issues around governance and the importance of that as well when we talk about ethics we've got to precede all these terms governance ethics with culture cultural what does it mean governance to me would be about our law, our culture our custom governance in the western world is about performance and accountability and quality assurance and all that sort of stuff that goes in there as well so how do communities yet a sense of knowing that the governance that's applied is responding to their need I suppose to think about it is there's two points to this this is just data itself right we lose knowledge by not purely not caring for it in any kind of way so there's stuff that old people have done and contributed to in the past that I think is probably sitting around in most collections and I would include iatis in that I mean I think you know iatis is it's either really underfunded or like they're just overwhelmed with material so something like that I think you're right in terms of cultural material for sure that it needs to be looked at from that cultural space but we're kind of looking at all of it so in terms of the type of governance I'm talking about it's literally what do you do with the data that you've got on somebody else this is that idea that we could if we get it right for Aboriginal mob we might actually get it right for all Australians and so that includes your health data what is your you know what if you could I mean I think some of the work we want to do is with exprisement here looking at how they use data they create a lot of data how can they do better with that data to help the mob that come into clinic you know so there's that side of it so it is very big but yes when it comes to the cultural material there would have to be an element of that it goes back knowledge of language knowledge of culture who is the owner of that material really who is the community those things I don't think we're there yet I think we have some idea but we really don't know and that's probably through stolen generations but it could also be through loss of old people right passing away to young and stuff so it could be because of past policy deliberately designed to dilute a culture language in a story yeah and I think that that censorship thing you know when I was at school I was told I would get the cane if I spoke language so I have it in memory but I don't have it as a verbal so I think that that is really true old but also that like you know that old idea of I'm really cautious right around the don't become the person that you don't like so you know how do we as Indigenous mob come into this without becoming the oppressor because we've been oppressed how do we stay open enough to not lose our minds but open and kind enough to go well actually what's better for culture and knowledge right now what's better for that particular community right now what are we going to do that's going to make it better for everybody right now so yeah that's the challenge we have is we you know it's easy to go down that path where you want to just kill the snake right like but how do we get there without and bring everybody with us is a really big challenge I think and especially as culture shifts and changes I was saying to someone earlier I think we still don't even we haven't even grasped that our Aboriginal culture has changed from like 20 years ago in as human beings change right and in the next 20 years young kids are looking at the world in a totally different space to how we're looking at the world so how do we keep that old conservative knowledge going is kind of be a challenge for all of us so the sooner we get this data stuff right in terms of culture I think the answer lies in some famous words I heard were students in the field not experts in the game sorry students in the game not experts in the field to carry that theme and come back to your comments Jackie we had talked about you know shared accessible proper descriptions authority what is defined and who defines and that's in a cultural context very simply answered is right people right country but then there's sociological gaps which you've touched on just then where I'll point to that old grey head fellow with a hat on he taught me how to make spear and he still to this day doesn't believe well at this big but sitting beside him is my nephew but my nephew has had that more access to language and archives and material than what I had and what this old fellow had but he carries cultural knowledge above and beyond so there's all these different dynamics that have got to be considered in the process of capturing data that is authentic and it's done in the right way in a simplified respectful way so we need to act with honour cultural honour and integrity and we need to act and behave with cultural dignity and humility in all of your engagement processes in around this and every engagement process is all about established build nurture sustain and value the relationships in this one space yep right don't just get to the end and go well we did that consulting and never come back you should have a relationship with the people you work with for the rest of your life until they die watch whoever dies first I mean it's not a race sorry don't start bringing you know what I mean don't tell me I remember somebody else saying about not a race um Michael just for your little bit of homework I'll come to you shortly Sophia where to from here I hope shared governance is implanted firmly in your head and your heart um before I go to Sophia just to give you a wrap too sir you gave a framework of which we could go forward too in terms of that UK example locate digitise preserve there's basic framework that we've got to develop to make this happen but part of this is today is coming together at least sharing what you have in a commitment to work together collaboratively Sophia you had a point that I it's great to when you create a new data to make sure that it's done the right way but I guess new recordings and things that you're creating a new having worked a lot with historical collections there's needs to be more work done revisiting those collections we have fantastic computer generated captions now which will help maybe make oral histories and audio visual works more discoverable but they don't work very well with indigenous languages or non-English languages or hybridised languages like Creole or Pigeon or anything like that it's like you want to make these things discoverable for people to know that they're there and how do you do that within a system that's only capturing search words in a written form there's a lot of work to be done and I guess one of the takeaways from the last 15 years is that once something's in a collection there was rarely anybody revisiting to tidy up data to make things pretty to make it easier for everyone else even having experienced multiple collection system changes you think well this is the point where we make it better for everybody but really as data sets are being migrated under new categories that make it more complicated to get to like there's a lot of things My response to actually fund identification work and we all all institutions fail to do that we just get more more more more but we don't have the right people sitting in the right space going right this chunk of information I'm going to go share with that mob because it's got their reference to them and then when we bring it back into the system we know for sure that that mob has a relationship to that material we don't fund it we don't even think about it we go digitisation it's important to save it there's a thousand photographs but we're never going to find out who those people are we're supposed to remember who they are Vanessa I want to put this to you if you want to go and get your motor car service who are you going to go to to ensure you get the best quality service I'm talking about quality assurance company I bought it from not probably you'll go to someone that's got the accreditation certification to do it if you wanted to build a house who would you go to registered builder who's got all the certifications you're not going to go to a builder who tinkers with your motor car on the weekends to fix your car are you because the quality assurance is questionable I'm going to go to the caranara and talk about indigenous language data in your part of the world who have I got to go and talk to there's a really great language centre and they've been doing work with mob and they've been teaching school kids and they teach everybody language and stuff yeah and they've been collecting it for a really long time and they're still but they are running off a shoestring and relying on the goodwill of people to keep them going yeah and to recognise that you probably got a better knowledge of that place and you'll understand the factions and the clan situations so you're the expert in that space but that's where this whole process of language is if you don't know I need to ask you and that's how I come in and when I talk to you you'll give me that picture that's the sort of stuff we've got to embrace or it's now I'm going to put a question to this young lady here in the maroon top I'll come to you shortly you've been sitting there quietly have these people been making sense nobody's safe here have these people been making sense this morning from your point of view yeah definitely it's super interesting so I'm an applied linguist so I don't do the things you were talking about before I look at how language is in action I'm really interested in this question around how do we have a data place that actually can provide for all of these types of languages so we talked about sound we talked about video we've talked about words written down being digitalised but how do we, is there a way is there a machine big enough to actually put all of that to be able to see it in action because I don't think we can understand language with just a dictionary definition that's my personal perspective of language so yeah that's the sort of things I've been thinking about while I'm listening to everyone talking thank you, it's really awesome this panel I think sort of gave a foundation and a framework moving forward there but it comes back to that UK example Alastair who had located it digitised it, preserved it but understand the cultural governance dynamics and around it, do you want to respond to that and you've also got to connect it I mean, in my sense it's the state and national libraries and the big museums, IATSIS the War Memorial and National Film and Sound Archive they're the only institutions that really got the resources and robustness to be able to do that linking connecting work into which all the little collections out there that don't have those resources need to basically somehow connect into to give them credit the big national collections have been working really hard over the last two decades digitising and making their own material more accessible and occasionally they ingest other materials and that's great but there's a limit to how much they can do but finding a way to actually enable all those little collections sitting out there to be preserved, to be documented and digitised and to be then accessible and findable subject to whatever rights and conditions there are that's really crucial and that strikes that's a real national coordination thing and the British Library in the UK did that but they had a lot of money to do that but the National and State Library Associations for example which brings together the state libraries and the other big collections and national, it's that sort of macro-institutional basis that's going to enable what you're asking, I think but it's expensive, it's going to take either a big mob of philanthropic money or something like heritage money which is basing people gambling and then a little bit of that going into good things which I'm not sure is a good model or state funding research funding I'll just go into that and we'll I think that's important because it's complex I mean we are big and well resourced and I think we have to be doing this there is work already underway and digitisation has forced us to come together and work on getting our systems more integrated we need to get our data sort of matching up and the libraries are a great example of how they've worked together with a well-formed framework for describing collections and discovering them the other question then is resolving things like storage just and particularly with audio visual storage needs a huge but it's that technical joining up but they're not in cementable problems, I think we just have to have the will to do it, it's going to take us time but that's yeah we're starting that's actually what we're going to do we are going to look at what is a federated system we don't think that we need to take people's data off them we just want to figure out how can we like tap in so if I'm going oh well I want to look at a group of photos from the South Australian Library and from your archive can I actually do that at the same time and how would that work so we're looking at big data lakes that compress we're looking at all of that we don't think that that's the way to go we think that whoever has the data is responsible but it's actually getting that data put together so that it can talk to other data and that's some of the challenge but yes this is the ARDC project that we've taken on so yeah and the idea is to work with what is already in existence so IAXIS is already involved in this we're also working with ANU so we've got these really big kind of aims it's really complicated and lots of things that we just actually don't know but the technology seems to be ready for it so we're kind of just getting the right build set so that it all starts to do kind of bigger versions of it so yeah we'll be coming to people and asking how we can make your data talk to this system and basically it will have to be some sort of formatted approach then this goes back into can we apply different levels of controls around your data so that you can have to be an authenticated person but you can then shut them off from access in the data because you've found out that they're not using it well so we're going to give the sort of controls to the owners or carers of the data but also to community as well so there's lots of different fingers in the pies but we're working on it we the federal governments we the federal government and our state and territory counterparts in collaboration with the glam sector would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of these lands in which we live pay our respects to our elders past present and future you've all heard that and here's a question I'll put back how are we the government authentically doing what we say for you the glam sector and why are you having to rely on philanthropic dollars why is this not a national focus to talk authentically about the world's oldest culture that's the problem Clint you've got a question thank you everyone for everything you're saying it's all really resonating it's all valuable stuff and that last point you made is exactly what I wanted to try and articulate and I think it's a world view thing it's like in this nation state of Australia this very new nation state bolted on to this you know such rich and ancient ways of being and doing people love building buildings it's like most arts funding in Australia goes towards building buildings even iatsis yes iatsis is underfunded government just said we want to spend over 300 million on building a building more people know you can have a building and I worry now now we're in the digital realm we're talking about building something else building some infrastructure and again we don't want to get sucked into that thing of we're building something else and we're not investing in people we're not investing in relationships because that is a story and a world view that's much older in this place and that's what's kept it going for so long that's all I wanted to share and thank you again a part of our project is also how do we get Indigenous mob trained up to run these things to make them happen right now we can't really find Indigenous data scientists who are just starting out and want an opportunity to do a thing to learn a thing to find and I don't know if that's because right now mob are just like go be a doctor go get into hospital somewhere you could be a lawyer or if it's just data science is so new in itself I don't know so yeah 100% and that's why we think it's a really ambitious thing that we're asking for that's why we don't want to take people's data off them we think it should remain where it is we just want to figure out how you as a researcher can get access to all the things you need to actually come up with your findings and then maybe build with the community new stuff and then how does that get maintained for perpetuity I mean it's a big big interesting and it probably will include some of the big giants of tech maybe but who knows but the thing is that I think right now we all know we've got this stuff somewhere we just don't know how to get it out and get it back in you know like it's like that singing culture back to life you know the one thing I found with the Burnt Museum I loved old men coming into the Burnt Museum they always knew somebody who knew somebody who could sing and they'd just start singing a song that's his song I'm just singing it for him and so I think that's the same with the starter we have to just start singing it back to life and so I think the aim is to try and solve our problems and make our community stronger through this practice and we just keep that there and keep building Vanessa what's the word can I just add something on it's a really good question and it's a I mean I agree with you about buildings you look at how much money has just been put into the Australian War Memorial to build this massive building and how many other cultural institutions haven't got that money etc but building structures of preservation is about people because you can't do the location you can't do the documentation you can't work on the permissions and the access you can't do the digitalization etc etc without training people both in institutions and in communities so you know creating a really effective structure for preservation at a national and community level is first and foremost about people it's about will and it's about money but it's also a lot of people doing a lot of really good work a lot of them are doing it now but it's about connecting them one of the things I think we're grappling with is there's an assumption that when a project is funded so we had some money recently for digitalization the people will come that will be able to find the staff and that's a real challenge at the moment that we need to be more proactive yeah yeah and really targeted proactive work to you know bring people in and train them up and make it a safe workplace and I think we've really fallen down there and we've started to talk to IACIS and some of the other collect institutions but it's a long it's going to be a long time patience is a virtue a little bit more to that Vanessa I want you to think of a word that rhymes with language but I'm going to hand to Sandra on the question of where are the indigenous data scientists it made a series of thoughts pop up in my mind in the 80s we were all going to be teachers and social workers and then doctors and lawyers and perhaps next phase is the technologists and data scientists but in order to get there we need people who are chairing or heading up professional associations like Julian you're on some oral history association every leadership don't mention of professional associations should get their action plans happening how are you going to and how is everyone else who's got some governance authority going to ensure indigenous participation excellence and achievement through your particular domains so there is a question in there too so Julian how does the oral history association do business in a way that broadens the base for indigenous participation for example Julian first sorry Alastair you're the one calling everyone the wrong name so I'm just following suit we're all wondering who your Julian is now that's okay I mean the oral history Australia is really a federation of state oral history and territory associations and they're comprised of lots and lots of different people and doing different local projects so but the coordinating the coordinating things we do are develop ethical guidelines we just run a whole lot of recent indigenous oral history training events with indigenous oral historians teaching us about their protocols, procedures etc etc yeah but absolutely all of the different sort of peak organizations can contribute to this so Sandra you and Julian can have that conversation that big lunch now the word I wanted to find Vanessa with language was sandwich and it's big lunch and we're going into big lunch but thank you Sophia Vanessa, Jackie and Alastair Julian for your presentation