Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/2440/140561
Type: Thesis
Title: Muda is bigger than the archive: Analysing Adnyamathanha use of archival photographs in communicating and negotiating Adnyamathanha Aboriginal identities
Author: Richards, Rebecca Grace
Issue Date: 2024
School/Discipline: School of Social Sciences : Anthropology and Development Studies
Abstract: This thesis provides an analysis and critique of photography of the Adnyamathanha, focusing on Charles Pearcy Mountford’s photographs, both within the archives and their repatriation to the Adnyamathanha community. Throughout this thesis, I weave a pathway through various Adnyamathanha interpretations of historical photographs of themselves and Country and contrast these understandings to Udnyu (or Western people’s) understandings of these photographs. I am an Adnyamathanha woman collaborating with my community for this research. I have based this thesis on fieldwork, including interviews, workshops, and photo-elicitation. I chose a range of photographs from the Mountford collection in the State Library of South Australia to take back to Adnyamathanha. I conducted interviews with Elders, sometimes alone or with their families. I held workshops in several schools with young people to gain artistic responses to the photographs. I also curated the Minaaka Apinhanga: Through Many Eyes exhibition (Richards, RG 2019f)— hereafter referred to as ‘the Exhibition’— at the South Australian Museum in 2019 of photographs, objects and artworks made in response to photographs. I predicate this thesis on knowledge and understanding of Adnyamathanha epistemology, especially about photographs, rather than an intense analysis of Euro-Western (hereafter referred to by the Adnyamathanha term of Udnyu) anthropological theories of Adnyamathanha society. I explain the notion of Muda as encompassing Adnyamathanha law, history, and Creation accounts. Muda underlies Adnyamathanha vision, interpretation, and discussion of many aspects of relationships. It is an overarching concept I need to address to understand how Adnyamathanha people view photographs. My aspiration herein is to fulfil, in some measure, the first aspect of Tuhiwai Smith’s (1999a: xiii) call for decolonizing methodologies: to ‘open up possibilities for knowing and understanding the world differently’. An Adnyamathanha-grounded theory of Adnyamathanha interpretation and uses of photography goes some way towards fulfilling this goal. These are our stories. Across the generations, perceptions of photographs have a consistency as well as significant differences. The continuity of concepts in Adnyamathanha understandings of photographs shows the strength of the intergenerational transmission of culture. There have been over 180 years of Adnyamathanha contact with Udnyu people. Nevertheless, many aspects of interpretations of the photographs are culturally specific, showing the power of those interpretations for both young and old Adnyamathanha participants regardless of Udnyu pressures to assimilate into Udnyu (Western) culture. This is particularly the case with Adnyamathanha understandings of the spirit in the photograph, as shown throughout this thesis. Analysis of Adnyamathanha understandings of the photograph also reveals historical and colonial misconceptions of the interpretation of Adnyamathanha gender relationships, which research has sometimes erroneously imputed to Adnyamathanha society today. This thesis shows how some of these misunderstandings of gender relationships have shaped contemporary understandings of kinship, relationships (relationality), and gender. The second aspect of Tuhiwai Smith’s (1999a: xiii) call is to seek solutions to problems caused by colonisation. I endeavoured to suggest ways such efforts, already begun in many areas, can be further advanced in managing archives and representing Indigenous people. To avoid misconceptions arising from some earlier representations of Adnyamathanha, and of Aboriginal people in general, I suggest a way to manage more adequate representations in conjunction with the contemporary subjects and owners of that representation.
Advisor: Herner, Susan
Carty, John
Dissertation Note: Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences : Anthropology and Development Studies, 2024
Keywords: Adnyamathanha
photography
repatriation
Muda
Aboriginal
exhibition
anthropology
gender
Provenance: This electronic version is made publicly available by the University of Adelaide in accordance with its open access policy for student theses. Copyright in this thesis remains with the author. This thesis may incorporate third party material which has been used by the author pursuant to Fair Dealing exceptions. If you are the owner of any included third party copyright material you wish to be removed from this electronic version, please complete the take down form located at: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/legals
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