Linda Barwick, Jennifer Green, Petronella Vaarzon-Morel

Place-based cultural knowledge – of ceremonies, songs, stories, language, kinship, and ecology – is the thread that binds Australian Indigenous societies together. Over the last 100 years or so, records of this knowledge in many different formats – audiocassettes, photographs, films, written texts, maps, and, increasingly, digital audiovisual recordings – have been accumulating at an ever-increasing rate. Yet many recognise and lament the fact that this extensive documentary heritage of Australian Indigenous peoples is dispersed. In many cases Indigenous people who participated in the creation of the records, or their descendants, have little idea of where to find such records or how to get access to them. In addition to collections held by lands councils, native title representative bodies, and other Indigenous organisations, collections are found in a variety of university and government institutions and archives, both within Australia and outside of it. Some materials are held precariously in ad hoc collections, and their caretakers may be perplexed as to the best ways to ensure that the records are looked after for perpetuity. The future relevance of these documentation efforts depends on several interrelated factors: how sustainable the collections are, how well documented and described they are, and how accessible they are to the communities who own them or have rights to them. This volume focuses on strategies and practices that enable the return and circulation of documentary records of cultural heritage back to their communities of origin. While archival return may be undertaken to provide measures of social equity and justice to Indigenous Australians, the issues raised in enabling return are complex. There is no one-sizefits-all solution.