ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 41 | October 1999
The NLA at work
Bringing them home
Doreen Mellor (right) with George Littlechild and Tina Wirihana at the opening of Interwoven, Flinders Art Museum, Adelaide 1998
Following the report of the Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, the Australian Government allocated funding for the National Library of Australia to run a pilot for a major oral history project that would create a public record of this period in Australias history.
The National Library is pleased to report that the second and most important stage of this initiative, the Bringing Them Home Oral History Project, is now in full swing, with the appointment of a manager to lead the project for three years. The newly-appointed Project Manager, Doreen Mellor, is an Indigenous Australiana descendant of the rainforest people of the Atherton Tableland in Queenslandand an experienced senior manager with a background in the arts and education sector. She was previously Director of Flinders University Art Museum in Adelaide and, prior to her move to Canberra, was a Trustee of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Chair of the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, and Chair of the South Australian Arts Ministrys Festivals, Events and New Commissions Committee.
The activity engendered by the successful implementation and completion of the pilot project, managed by Dr Gwenda Davey with the assistance of Francine George, means that a number of interviewers are already out in the field gathering material. In the Cairns region of North Queensland, a team of three interviewers is presently collecting the stories of Indigenous families affected by separations, and also those of non Indigenous administrators and missionaries involved in separation activity.
Dr Davey, who has returned to Melbourne to live, is to coordinate research and interviews in Victoria. Consultants in other states will also work with the team at the National Library, to collate data and facilitate interviews. This is not the end of the process of coursethe Oral History Unit at the National Library is closely involved in preservation and transcription of the tapes when they are sent in from the field. Oral History staff provide technical support and advice to the project and continue to be closely involved in the generation of this material for the Librarys collection, some of which will be used in the major publication planned as part of the final stage of the project.
Contact details for the team managers are:
Doreen Mellor (Project
Manager), tel. (02) 6262 1141; email dmellor@nla.gov.au
and Francine
George (Assistant Project Manager), tel. (02) 6262 1674; email
fgeorge@nla.gov au
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: lkirwan@nla.gov.au