New Encounters: communities, collections and museums

Métis artist and academic David Garneau on the importance of First Nation peoples working in museums to influence how they are understood and represented.

Zuni tribal member and museum director Jim Enote on his life working in cultural heritage in terms of seasons, and the current flowering of ideas and practices planted many years ago.

Wergaia woman Eleanor Bourke and Dja Dja Wurrung man Rodney Carter on the rights and responsibilities of traditional owners in Victoria, and the fight for the return of cultural materials, including a bark etching on show in Encounters.

Curator Jennifer Kramer on how museums and First Nations peoples work together to share custodianship of cultural materials.

Bunuba woman and Indigenous leader June Oscar on the new relationship between Indigenous people and museums, and the spirit of reconciliation reawakened by equal partnerships.

Wiradjuri academic Sandy O’Sullivan on her research into effective representation and engagement of First Peoples in national museums and the difficulties that some museums have with ideas about identity.

Distinguished First Nations people from Canada, the United States, New Zealand and Australia discuss the negotiation between their traditions and their place in the modern world. What role do museums and artefacts have in this negotiation?

Cheyenne Arapaho citizen and museum director Richard West Jr on the impact of repatriation legislation on museums and Native communities in the United States, and what that experience suggests for museums in the 21st century.

Museum director Mathew Trinca on the strength and potency of objects in the Encounters exhibition, their impact on Indigenous and non-Indigenous people today, and how museums can empower Indigenous communities to manage collections.

Dharawal man Shayne Williams on Indigenous peoples and museums working together to advance cultural education for all, and overcoming tensions around ownership of cultural artefacts in museums.

Artist, writer and Aboriginal elder Patsy Cameron grew up on Flinders Island and traces her Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage through her mother’s line to four ancestral grandmothers. She examines JS Prout’s portraits of Aboriginal people at Wybalenna, Flinders Island, in 1845.

A descendant of the Trawulwuy people of Tasmania, Greg P Lehman gives a history of the visual representation of Tasmanian Aboriginal people by colonial artists and examines JS Prout’s portraits of Aboriginal people at Wybalenna, Flinders Island.