Digital Archives Connect Indigenous Communities to Their Past

Most of us take the family photo album for granted - a record, sometimes going back for generations, of births and weddings and the memorable events in between.

Not for most impoverished Aboriginal communities.

For them, either there were no photos, or they were taken by missionaries or white bureaucrats who took any photos with them when they left.

Now a project in Tennant Creek is helping to return a lifetime of photographs, movies and songs that the local Warumungu people thought they had lost forever.

It is all the brainchild of American researcher Kimberly Christen, a researcher into Indigenous issues at Washington State University.

"The Warumungu community there has done so much outreach themselves just to find these people who have boxes underneath their beds of old photos that really belong to the community, because it's their personal history, but know it's just been taken away," she said.

All Warumungu people can use the computer archive, but there are cultural protocols to protect sensitive or sacred information.

The Warumungu people have contacted missionaries, museums, individuals - even cattle stations - for copies of any photos or recordings that document their history.

By Anne Barker. Full story on the ABC here.