Volume 47, Issue 3-4 - Special Issue: A Reflection of the Day: Essays in Honour of Joseph Neparrŋa Gumbula / Guest Editors: Aaron Corn, Jessica De Largy Healy, Lyndon Ormond-Parker

This article was adapted by Aaron Corn from a lecture presented by Joe Gumbula at the Koori Centre at the University of Sydney on 5 April 2007. The day before, Joe had been admitted to the degree of Doctor of Music honoris causa at the University, and had only recently started work at the Koori Centre on his first Australian Research Council (ARC) project as an ARC Indigenous Research Fellow. Called “Elder Assessments of Early Material Culture Collections from Arnhem Land and Contemporary Access Needs to them among their Source Communities” (DI0775822) and including Aaron Corn as a nominal Mentor, this was the first ARC project to be led by a Yolŋu Chief Investigator. It enabled Joe to undertake detailed research into the Yolŋu heritage collections held in the University of Sydney’s Archives and Macleay Museum. Eighteen members of Joe’s family from Miliŋinbi (Milingimbi) and Galiwin’ku, who were visiting Sydney to attend his graduation ceremony, were present at this lecture. Joe’s assured and impassioned delivery on this occasion aptly demonstrates his exemplary knowledge of Yolŋu heritage, his mastery in applying Yolŋu law to its interpretation, and his ability to engage others in the process and significance of collections research. All University of Sydney materials that Joe presented in the lecture were later published in his 2011 book, Matjabala Mali’ Buku-ruŋanmaram: Images from Miliŋinbi (Milingimbi) and Surrounds, 1926–1948 , and, in this article, are cross-referenced to this source, which remains available for purchase from Sydney University Press.

Joseph Neparrŋa Gumbula (1954–2015) had an atypical scholarly trajectory. Born into a long line of Yolŋu leaders in the remote town of Milingimbi in the Arnhem Land Aboriginal Reverse, he left school in his mid-teens for the neighbouring town of Galiwin’ku in 1971, where he joined the country and gospel band, Soft Sands, as a singer and guitarist. Through his passion for making music and admission to Yolŋu ritual leadership in 1997, Gumbula discovered a new calling in researching the documented legacy of his family history in ethnographic collections around the world. This pursuit set him on an unprecedented path towards leading national research grants supported by fellowships at various universities. His research would return to Arnhem Land rare and precious ethnographic materials dating back as far as the edge of living memory in 1920s, and exemplify how Indigenous heritage collections can be grown, managed and made accessible with broad benefits. Paralleling the emergence of affordable digital media technologies, his research interests progressed accordingly from isolated local databases to clouded mobile delivery platforms. The interdisciplinary networks that Gumbula built were far reaching and have left lasting impacts. In this article, I expand upon my Gumbula Memorial Lecture for the 2017 Information Technologies and Indigenous Communities (ITIC) Symposium in Melbourne to explore how Gumbula challenged his students and colleagues to think and work beyond the conventions of disciplinary and professional methodologies, thereby transforming our understandings of knowledge itself and encouraging us to act as proactive agents in the world.

This is my account of collaborating with Joseph Neparrŋa Gumbula and, in tribute to him and his teaching and scholarship, a discussion of the methodological considerations for teaching and research-based teaching of Yolŋu culture. By privileging the agency and ontology of exegetes such as Gumbula and working in partnership, Yolŋu knowledge has become a part of the modern academic canon as well as a literary legacy for Yolŋu people. The invariable context of the scholarly encounter with Indigenous knowledge is an intercultural one attended by significant historical problems from experiences of the colonial and postcolonial capture of most indigenous societies in modern nation states. Indigenous exegetes hold knowledge systems that exist in situ, in places held in long traditions of customary land tenure and jural principles that predate colonial and postcolonial systems, and inherited in each generation by a few honoured and remarkable people who take up the arduous responsibility of learning and transmitting knowledge practices and their spoken, sung and performed vehicles of expression.

This article explores the role of legacy recordings of song for a family of Arrarrkpi (Mawng-speaking people), who are contemporary singers and dancers of manyardi , a public ceremonial performance of western Arnhem Land, in their collaborative work with a team of Balanda (Euro-diasporic) researchers. Drawing inspiration from the dialogical approach of the Yolŋu ceremonial leader and scholar Joe Gumbula, the article reflects on various dialogues that inform the research, practice and archival recording of manyardi . We demonstrate how legacy recordings reinvigorate contemporary performance practice in collective settings, rather than serving as canonical or ideal versions of song sets to be replicated by an individual singer. We suggest that maintaining the linking and organisation of enriched song metadata from this community to the archival collection will enable future song inheritors to maintain dialogues with archives that hold recordings of manyardi .

The Yolŋu elder and academic Joseph Neparrŋa Gumbula curated the exhibition, Makarr-garma: Aboriginal Collections from a Yolŋu Perspective (Makarr-garma) , staged at the University of Sydney’s Macleay Museum from 29 November 2009 to 15 May 2010. This article describes this exhibition’s development and curatorial rationale. A product of his 2007 Australian Research Council (ARC) Indigenous Research Fellowship at the University, Makarr-garma reflected Gumbula’s Yolŋu philosophies as applied to collections in the Gallery, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) sector. Employing artworks, cultural objects, historic photographs, natural history specimens and his own manikay (songs), he framed this show as a garma (open) ceremonial performance that spanned an archetypal Yolŋu day. The exhibition was immersive and “culturally resonant” (Gilchrist, Indigenising ), and provides intellectual and practical insights for the GLAM sector’s representation and management of Indigenous collections.

This paper explores the methodology and aspirations of an Indigenous researcher and his work with others working within the Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums and Records (GLAMR) sector. In 2010, Joseph Neparrŋa Gumbula visited four cultural institutions in the USA to examine their Milingimbi collections and, in particular, those from his own Gupapuyŋu clan. Gumbula’s methodology brought new discoveries, and questions the approach of established research in museums.

This article takes it point of departure from conversations with Gumbula that centred on the transmission of tradition and British imperial histories. It focuses on examples from India and its diaspora, discussing the mantra, in particular. This is a traditional genre evoking cultural and spiritual heritages, but it is also connected with cyber technologies. The discussion concludes with observations on post-national thinking and predictions from physicists on the future of humanity as a multi-planet species.

The title of this article was inspired by a filmed interview that I conducted with Joe Gumbula in France in July 2007 during one of his ARC-funded research trips in response to a sceptical European curator who wanted to know why the Yolŋu wanted to have their materials back. Was it because they had lost their culture? Drawing on Joe’s eloquent response, I outline his pioneering perspective on museum collaborations and the digital repatriation of knowledge. Rather than transfixing things on computers, repatriation processes should be seen as modern pathways that link Indigenous peoples to their past, as well as present and future visions, enabling renewed performances of culture. This article has been adapted from my closing plenary address in tribute to Joe Gumbula at the 2017 Information Technologies and Indigenous Communities Symposium in Melbourne.

Joseph Neparrŋa Gumbula was both a senior Yolŋu ceremonial leader and performer— D alkarramirri and Liya-ŋärra’mirri —and a visionary rock musician who was able to enact the Law in multiple media. This short article reflects upon Gumbula’s contribution to the National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia and other intercultural projects, and in particular the author’s experiences of performing wangga songs from the Daly region with Gumbula in a number of intercultural contexts.

As a physicist, I have been privileged to intersect with the world of ethnomusicology through my research on the acoustics of the didjeridu, the highlight of which was to meet and work with Joe Neparrŋa Gumbula. This is a brief account of my perspective on that journey, the research undertaken, and the role that Joe played in it.

Archives are full of emotional connections between records and researchers that can span surprise, delight, anger, indifference and engagement. In this short reflection, I share my stories of the archival and personal photographs that connected me and Joe Gumbula. It was not always easy for Joe to be a conduit between two cultures, to bring people and collections together over time and space, and to balance his fluency in Yolŋu knowledge against the archive’s unfamiliar institutional processes. Through our collaborations, I learned key lessons for professional archivists about building trust, connections, follow-through, presence and listening that support the active management of historical images.

A bibliography of the academic career history and publications of Joseph Neparrŋa Gumbula.