Aren ritual and ceremony important parts of Aboriginal knowledge? How can you recognise the role of ritual when knowledge is stored in databases?
At a meeting at Garma 2004, some of us were meeting with Galarrwuy and Mandawuy talking about research. With reference to a particular project for making audio recordings of traditional song for the current generation of old people Galarrwuy commented: It is easy to get carried away researching manikay (ancestral song) but it means nothing without bunggul (traditional ceremonial performance including dance). One will die without the other. (MC) In ritual and ceremony Aboriginal knowledge authorities use many diverse sources of information. In ceremony, dance, painting, song, and story need to be performed correctly and under the right auspices to become knowledge making. Often people see databases as ‘archives’. But we are not seeing them as tiny digitised museums. We are asking if databasing can become a useful additional experience? Can digitised information feed into, complement and extend the already well developed ways that information is handled and managed in Aboriginal communit
