Mukurtu an Aboriginal word for 'dilly bag' is a digital archive designed for access and use by Indigenous people of their own cultural heritage. It is a collaborative effort between the Warumungu Aboriginal community in the Central Australian town of Tennant Creek with Kim Christen Withey and Craig Dietrich.

1. Presentation on Mukurtu CMS 2.0.0 for Indigenous Museums & Heritage Unit
(MHST6913) for MMHS at The University of Sydney
By Antony Skinner, SID 198446648
Slide 1
Good morning everyone. The title of my presentation is: “Use that Mukurtu that you
use so well.”
Which will look at how digital technology using CMS can change collaboration by
creating the means for Indigenous communities to control their own heritage.

2. Slide 2
But before we begin,
“We acknowledge and pay respect to the traditional owners, the Gadigal
people of the Eora Nation, of the Country on which we meet. It is upon their
ancestral lands that the University of Sydney is built.
As we share our own knowledge, teaching, learning, and research practices
within this University, we also pay respect to local Aboriginal knowledge(s).”
This presentation may contain images of Indigenous people who may have passed
away.

3. Slide 3
What is Mukurtu (Mook-oo-too)?
‘The word “mukurtu” in Warumungu is “dilly bag” which hold sacred items and are
accessible by acting responsibly within the community and gaining the permission of
knowledgeable community leaders.
Like the dilly bag the Mukurtu Content Management System (CMS) 2.0.0 is a “safe
keeping place,” a community repository for cultural materials and knowledge that
grows from continued use, dialogue and negotiations. The Warumungu community
maintains the original archive at the Nynikka Nyunyu Art and Culture Centre where
people access their materials, deposit new content, add knowledge and information to
existing content.’ Warumungu elder, Michael Jampin Jones chose Mukurtu as the
name for the system to remind users that the digital archive, too, was a safe keeping
place where Warumungu people could share stories, knowledge, and cultural
materials properly.

4. Slide 4
How did it begin?
It began as software project in response to the specific archival needs of the
Warumungu Aboriginal community. Development began in 1995 as a joint initiative
of Dr Kim Withey and Dr Michael Ashley at the Center for Digital Archeology
(CoDA), affiliated with the University of California Berkeley. By 2002, the
Warumungu had identified thousands of resources in need of a comprehensive archive
system that was capable of maintaining cultural protocol.
After the Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari archive launched in 2007, communities
worldwide shared their desires to have a similar platform for their own cultural
heritage management. In 2008, the Mukurtu codebase was updatd to create the
Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal, extending the original Mukurtu core features and
functions to include both institutional and tribal catalogue records, different metadata
systems, and multiple communities in an online portal. In 2014, Shepard reviewed the
product stating, ‘Mukurtu is being used around the world. Its platform flexibility
creates opportunities for managing collections of a variety of media.’ In April 2015,
the 2nd
version was launched with mobile application for iOS and Android to follow.

5. Slide 5
What are the features of Mukurtu CMS 2.0.0?
1. TK (Traditional Knowledge) Labels – to ensure users follow and respect
Indigenous material when gathering, creating, or sharing digital cultural
heritage;
2. Cultural Protocols – determine the levels of access based on community needs
and values;
3. Collections – allows users to curate content into formal collections with
infinite viewing and sharing possibilities;
4. Roundtrip – allows material to be imported and exported without losing
meaning or protocols;
5. Community Pages – features: Home pages, theme and sub-themes, core
metadata and metadata extraction and geographical mapping.

6. Slide 6
Why is it important?
Mukurtoo is a tool to help, as Unruh states, ‘indigenous self-representation — the
ability of indigenous peoples to speak for themselves rather than be spoken for by
institutional powers— which is vital to the de-colonization effort.’ And in the words
of Unruh it can also been seen as a dialogical method to challenge ‘the traditionally
imperial nature of museums in colonized countries’. In my view it also helps to divest
museums of their traditional institutional hierarchical authority of knowledge keeping.
As Harrison posits, the history of collaboration between museums and source
communities has been an imbalanced relationship, due to the very nature of the
formation of the museum. I think Mukurtu allows source communities to have
initiative and be contemporary curators of their heritage independently of museums.
This is expressed in Mukurtu’s mission statement: ‘Mukurtu (MOOK-oo-too) is a
grassroots project aiming to empower communities to manage, share, preserve, and
exchange their digital heritage in culturally relevant and ethically-minded ways. We
are committed to maintaining an open, community-driven approach to Mukurtu’s
continued development. Our first priority is to help build a platform that fosters
relationships of respect and trust.’
However, as Museums & Galleries NSW notes, not only can Indigenous communities
share their digital heritage, there is also the potential for major institutions to unlock
their collections and digitally repatriate their Indigenous collections.

7. Slide 7