In 2018, Wik-Wikway artist, writer, performer, and scholar, Fiona Wirrer-George Oochunyung, stood at a lectern in front of a packed lecture theatre at the Australian Anthropological Society annual conference. To her right a series of her paintings leant against the wall bringing Country into the room through colour, texture, and pattern. The sound of a heartbeat pulsed into the softly lit space as everyone settled into their seats. Oochunyung’s daughter, Ebony Awumpan Doyle, began to move slowly and purposefully through the crowd carrying a paperbark bowl of ochre. Then, with images of their ancestors gazing out from overhead projections, Oochunyung opened a dialogue with the anthropologist Donald Thompson. She spoke directly to him through the photographs he’d made when cataloguing her family in the 1930s. ‘I thought I would hate you…’, she began. She went on to enlist his voice and images and entangle them with hers; as a Wik and Wikway woman, she recalibrated his research by performing her own. By her side, Ebony Awumpan danced intergenerational relationships and connections to Country
in synch with her mother’s voice and the scratchy sounds and images of an old ethnographic film, a choreography Oochunyung calls ‘movement vocabulary’.1
in synch with her mother’s voice and the scratchy sounds and images of an old ethnographic film, a choreography Oochunyung calls ‘movement vocabulary’.1
‘What happens when the researched becomes the researcher?’ Oochunyung asked the room in the closing moments of her formidable performance. She had already offered
an answer. Oochunyung’s strange, long-distance rapport with this long-dead man of European decent had begun with an invitation from Museums Victoria to oversee the return of human remains that Thompson had collected all those decades earlier. Even as she worked with family to make this happen, she theorised her response to the enormity of this request with her paintbrush, her body, and her words. This became ‘Wik Cha’prah - Cha tru chath: Wik blood speaks to you’. In that Cairns lecture theatre, speaking with a chorus of scholars summoned through citation, speaking to her ancestors, speaking to
the museum that still holds their remains, speaking to the traces of lives and histories made present through sound and image, speaking to Thompson and to all the other anthropologists in that room, Oochunyung did more than document a process of repatriation. Her performance called forth a ‘living epistemology’, thereby
summoning a renewed future for her family, her old people, and anthropology.2
an answer. Oochunyung’s strange, long-distance rapport with this long-dead man of European decent had begun with an invitation from Museums Victoria to oversee the return of human remains that Thompson had collected all those decades earlier. Even as she worked with family to make this happen, she theorised her response to the enormity of this request with her paintbrush, her body, and her words. This became ‘Wik Cha’prah - Cha tru chath: Wik blood speaks to you’. In that Cairns lecture theatre, speaking with a chorus of scholars summoned through citation, speaking to her ancestors, speaking to
the museum that still holds their remains, speaking to the traces of lives and histories made present through sound and image, speaking to Thompson and to all the other anthropologists in that room, Oochunyung did more than document a process of repatriation. Her performance called forth a ‘living epistemology’, thereby
summoning a renewed future for her family, her old people, and anthropology.2
For this special issue of TAJA, Oochunyung has created a digital remix of her 2018 performance which takes the form of an experimental Zoom lecture made in collaboration with our editorial collective, inspired by memories of her grandmother, the dreams and readings that fuelled her PhD, and Laurie Anderson’s 2021 Norton Lectures which we watched during Covid lockdowns.3 In this iteration of ‘Wik Cha’prah’, Oochunyung reaches back into a past that now includes the potent presences that filled that lecture hall in Cairns in 2018. ‘This is a spirit journey’, she says several times, gazing out from the screen to the unknown audiences of the Internet. ‘[A] journey of traveling back and forth, back and forth, to meet my ancestors in a new way, each day.’
Oochunyung’s insistent back-and-forth creative movements inspires the curation
of this issue. The work we feature here is quite unlike the kind of ‘reach’ attempted by anthropology when it goes ‘public’, or when institutions explicitly invest in corporate research collaborations, public intellectual labour, policy reform, and impact factors, concerned to tally shares, likes, comments, and column inches of public influence. The contributors in this collection allow us into a more nuanced discussion about the reach
of anthropology, one that is not so wholly enamoured with new publics or with the kind
of reach and influence that the digital affords. Rather, they are concerned with how anthropology might return to its core commitments to expand and embrace the unique forms and epistemologies that already exist within the different histories and lifeworlds from which ethnographies have always been composed.4
of this issue. The work we feature here is quite unlike the kind of ‘reach’ attempted by anthropology when it goes ‘public’, or when institutions explicitly invest in corporate research collaborations, public intellectual labour, policy reform, and impact factors, concerned to tally shares, likes, comments, and column inches of public influence. The contributors in this collection allow us into a more nuanced discussion about the reach
of anthropology, one that is not so wholly enamoured with new publics or with the kind
of reach and influence that the digital affords. Rather, they are concerned with how anthropology might return to its core commitments to expand and embrace the unique forms and epistemologies that already exist within the different histories and lifeworlds from which ethnographies have always been composed.4
REACH explores what happens when anthropology and its interlocutors come
together to cultivate shared grounds of epistemic care and concern. In doing so it asks, what happens when multiple histories are allowed to show up in the process? The often-tense relationships between such histories—and the generations who have lived and inherited them—provide the generative friction that animates this collection. In REACH, divergent histories come together as a compositional force of analysis.
together to cultivate shared grounds of epistemic care and concern. In doing so it asks, what happens when multiple histories are allowed to show up in the process? The often-tense relationships between such histories—and the generations who have lived and inherited them—provide the generative friction that animates this collection. In REACH, divergent histories come together as a compositional force of analysis.
Each of the articles that we have co-designed for REACH talks back to the academy, back to the anthropologist, back to history, while reaching forwards towards new histories, new kinds of participation, toward the recognition of different ways of knowing and different processes of becoming knowledgeable together. All gain critical traction through back-and-forth movements between and across institutions, categories, histories, generations, and cultures. As they do so they demonstrate how intermedial composition, a practice concerned with the activation and amplification of inter-zones, particularly lends itself
to the dynamic work of ‘making worlds otherwise’.5
to the dynamic work of ‘making worlds otherwise’.5
Given our attention to works that speak back to the academy and forwards into a renewed sense of future, including that of anthropology, it is perhaps not surprising that the sparks that ignite REACH so often come from a new generation of First Nations researchers and artists, many of whom are working, thinking, and making in concert with non-Indigenous friends and colleagues. Māori anthropologist, Lily George gives voice to the ethos at the heart of this issue when she calls for an anthropology ‘constructed from the ashes of historical follies, an intellectual environment that meets the needs of researcher and researched, “western” and “other,” and indeed all those involved in the production of knowledge’.6 The articles in REACH variously show not only what this can look, feel,
and sound like, but what is at stake in such processes. Brought together, these works provocatively reach beyond the common figuring of anthropology as a discipline caught
in the statis of perpetual crisis.7 Collectively, though differently each time, they claim
the possibilities of research as regenerative praxis.
and sound like, but what is at stake in such processes. Brought together, these works provocatively reach beyond the common figuring of anthropology as a discipline caught
in the statis of perpetual crisis.7 Collectively, though differently each time, they claim
the possibilities of research as regenerative praxis.
In ‘Cool burning the collection: Museum research as regenerative act’, Yuwaalaraay cultural practitioner Jilda Andrews conceptualises what this means. Seeking to free museum objects from the ‘overgrowth’ of institutional values that pre-determine the stories they can tell, Andrews metaphorically enacts a First Nations practice of regeneration to clear space for the emergence of fresh ideas and new spaces of shared concern in response to the mounting ecological threats faced by her Country, now home to Cubbie Station, the largest irrigation property in the southern hemisphere.8 Reaching beyond the colonial history generally used to frame this object, Andrews uses it to bring the deep time of Country into relationship with emerging Anthropocene histories unleashed by industrial agriculture.9 She does so through stories of her ancestor Bernie Hippie and the breastplate he once wore. In co-creating this work, Curatorium responded to Andrew’s interest in using sound and images to let Country claim a space to speak into the intercultural histories that the breastplate guides us through.10
At a different register, Nimi’ipuu (Nez Perce) Native American anthropologist, Gretchen Stolte approaches the bibliography as a cultural landscape. Stolte demonstrates how asking new questions of traditional ways of categorising and tagging collections and bibliographies opens new pathways toward questions that demand new responses. For Stolte, the bibliography is an object to be fashioned and ‘on-goingly re-fashioned’ as a means by which to get hold of ‘the oft-neglected power that these appendices to scholarship hold’. She does so with an animated bibliography that sorts references in accordance with four cardinal directions of Nimi’ipuu values: kitkińike of self, kitkińike
of community, kitkińike of care and kitkińike of reclamation.11 In co-creating this piece
with Stolte, we sought to ignite curiosity by crafting a bibliography that comes alive in
the screen as ‘field site’ for exploration. In redefining the bibliography as a cultural landscape, Stolte platforms different voices and accumulates a library of resources
and references that guide us, as she would say, in the direction of a regenerative anthropology.
of community, kitkińike of care and kitkińike of reclamation.11 In co-creating this piece
with Stolte, we sought to ignite curiosity by crafting a bibliography that comes alive in
the screen as ‘field site’ for exploration. In redefining the bibliography as a cultural landscape, Stolte platforms different voices and accumulates a library of resources
and references that guide us, as she would say, in the direction of a regenerative anthropology.
Boko et al. pursue their project of (re)enlivenment through ‘an intermedial holding-together of painted and oral history’. Theirs is a polyvocal work in multiple languages, conceived and composed as a family archive made available for access by Anangu and other ‘visitors’, perhaps the first TAJA article to be authored with this kind of epistemic reach in mind. As they describe, the form performs a quickening of more-than-linear histories. ‘This performative instantiation of memory stories of abundant life, and their telling in and through abundant colour, encourages a reconsideration of the agentive force of painted story image-making as practice; a mixamilani—we might say—of memory, story and colour play’.12 In co-designing this article with Rosalyn Boko and Lisa Stefanoff, we, in turn, spent time with these images, attuning to the vibrant directive force of the late Margaret Nampitjinpa Boko’s palette and paintings.
Although while not explicitly figuring his research in regenerative terms,
Steven Feld offers his own generative remix of history with an eye to how it might
enliven anthropological futures and counter what he identifies as a growing epistemic conservatism within the discipline. ‘Hearing Heat’ offers a mediation on the ‘the climate
of history’, presenting a history of ‘histories of listening’ that connects songs of the Bosavi rainforest recorded in the 1980s, with the cicadas of Hiroshima in 1945, to contemporary Greece, in his own effort to ignite ‘a new research imaginary that explores and connects the interplays and interactions of senses, arts, aesthetics, and politics’.13
Steven Feld offers his own generative remix of history with an eye to how it might
enliven anthropological futures and counter what he identifies as a growing epistemic conservatism within the discipline. ‘Hearing Heat’ offers a mediation on the ‘the climate
of history’, presenting a history of ‘histories of listening’ that connects songs of the Bosavi rainforest recorded in the 1980s, with the cicadas of Hiroshima in 1945, to contemporary Greece, in his own effort to ignite ‘a new research imaginary that explores and connects the interplays and interactions of senses, arts, aesthetics, and politics’.13
Sebastian J. Lowe crafts his composition in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand
where he was born and lives as a Pākehā anthropologist and musician. For Lowe, his
work as a researcher extends his commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi), as a ‘living shared idea’.14 Lowe writes that ‘as a Pākehā researcher working
with taonga puoro (traditional Māori musical instruments), I have learned to nurture a commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a home-grown blueprint for how to do research ethically and as a way of being in Aotearoa New Zealand’.15 This necessitates that his research reaches beyond the pre-figured ethics forms and statements demanded by his universities. His work demonstrates that within regenerative anthropology relationships are not presumed to be steady or stable but are constantly in transformation, which entails an ongoing renewal of commitment to risks undertaken with the deepest respect. Indeed, Oochunyung, Andrews and Lowe all differently demonstrate a willingness
to take risks within their work that requires audacity and commitment.
where he was born and lives as a Pākehā anthropologist and musician. For Lowe, his
work as a researcher extends his commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi), as a ‘living shared idea’.14 Lowe writes that ‘as a Pākehā researcher working
with taonga puoro (traditional Māori musical instruments), I have learned to nurture a commitment to Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a home-grown blueprint for how to do research ethically and as a way of being in Aotearoa New Zealand’.15 This necessitates that his research reaches beyond the pre-figured ethics forms and statements demanded by his universities. His work demonstrates that within regenerative anthropology relationships are not presumed to be steady or stable but are constantly in transformation, which entails an ongoing renewal of commitment to risks undertaken with the deepest respect. Indeed, Oochunyung, Andrews and Lowe all differently demonstrate a willingness
to take risks within their work that requires audacity and commitment.
Reflecting on her own practice, Andrews describes these constitutive dynamics of
risk and reward in words that ring true across our experience of co-designing the entire double issue.
risk and reward in words that ring true across our experience of co-designing the entire double issue.
This way of working, and the green shoots it seeks to enable, engages directly
with the deep emotive power in collections. There has certainly been tears, anger
and exasperation, but this practice has also brought about joy and led to new
insights and ideas.16
with the deep emotive power in collections. There has certainly been tears, anger
and exasperation, but this practice has also brought about joy and led to new
insights and ideas.16
We are enormously grateful to all our contributors, across both issues, for their willingness to paddle into unknown waters and navigate back-and-forth inter-zones
of creative co-attunement with us.
of creative co-attunement with us.
Yuwaalaraay Country, image by Jilda Andrews and Lucy Simpson
