Aboriginal myth meets DNA analysis DNA analysis of the Australian outback's only palm tree, Livistona mariae, indicates that it originated from seeds brought from the north of the country-a finding backed up by a recently unearthed Aboriginal myth. This neatly illustrates how traditional ecological knowledge might inform modern research. Known as the cabbage palm and found only in Palm Creek, L. mariae (pictured) diverged between 7,000 and 31,000 years ago from its relative Livistona rigida, found 1,000 kilometres to the north (see Nature 483, 248; 2012). Because these dates overlap with human occupancy, the study concluded that the seeds could have been transported south and planted in central Australia (T. Kondo et al. Proc. R. Soc. B http://doi.org/2w6; 2012). The Aboriginal myth came to our attention through a 2013 translation of an 1895 text by German anthropologist and missionary Carl Strehlow (see go.nature.com/kxfyvn). He wrote of a visit to Palm Creek: "There are beautiful 40 to 50 feet high palms here surrounded by gum trees and acacias and the herbs and flowers at their base release a sharp smell. How this palm got into the interior of Australia has not been established yet by science. " Strehlow relates that, according to traditional local beliefs, "the gods from the high north brought the seeds to this place a long time ago".
This article provides ethnographic insights into the ways in which museums are being engaged with and positioned by some Aboriginal people in Central Australia. At the centre of this analysis is the stated suggestion of some Anmatyerr and Arrernte men that museums be incorporated into their social-cultural frameworks and thus brought into their systems of relating. Drawing upon endeavours to return and repatriate key central Australian collections, I reveal the complex relationship between these communities, collecting institutions and their staff. This research also highlights the agency of Anmatyerr and Arrernte people in their dealings with the ethnographer and collector, T.G.H. Strehlow, and shows how they now wish to encompass museums and other collecting institutions in a relationship founded upon complementary roles and responsibilities. Their interest in positioning the museum as a kwertengerl, meaning a 'manager' or 'worker' that upholds the interests of traditional owners, presents both a challenge and an opportunity for the relevant institutions.
This paper contains a discussion of an unpublished essay by TGH Strehlow concerning the historic wax cylinder recordings of songs from Central Australia made by Walter Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen in 1901. The manuscript, written by Strehlow in 1968, begins with an explanation of the historical context of the song recordings, and the distribution of song and dance traditions across the Australian inland. Strehlow elucidates the content via information imparted to him by a number of Arrernte and Luritja men, who first heard these recordings over 50 years after they were made, in 1960. Their explanation of these songs reveals further information on the diffusion of song verses across vast regions in Central Australia (including Warumungu, Anmatyerr, Arrernte, and Warlpiri country), and the incorporation of European words and themes within altharte (public) songs in which men sing and dance. I have expanded Strehlow's information on Spencer's recordings further with additional information from other ethno‐historical sources and my own contemporary fieldwork. Combined, this research deepens the anthropological understanding of some of the earliest ethnographic sound recordings ever made in Australia.
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