Accessing state records on aboriginal people.

Over the last decade, archives and records offices in Australia have been developing initiatives to provide Indigenous Australians access to records that relate to them. These records are also of interest to researchers of Aboriginal history and cultures and other related areas. The challenge Marcia Langton refers to in the quote above has been taken up generally in a climate of goodwill, though progress overall is slow. This chapter outlines a number of issues that are important in meeting these challenges, from my perspective as the Senior Aboriginal Project Officer, State Records, South Australia. These include: the importance of indexing, including Aboriginal people in advisory capacities, outreach activities, and the production of useful resources.

The Value of Indexing

There is no issue more important than the indexing of records relating to Aboriginal people. The importance of indexing has been highlighted over the last decade and a half following a number of national inquiries which recommended facilitating Indigenous access to government records relating to the administration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. (2) Christopher Anderson, a former director of the South Australian Museum, speaking in relation to the increased use of the Norman Tindale Aboriginal family history records, which are of Australia-wide importance to Aboriginal people, once stated that restricting access can actually increase access. As well as increasing access, indexing importantly also provides more appropriate access by helping to maintain the privacy of Aboriginal people mentioned in records, particularly with reference to personally sensitive information about them.

As an example of how restricting access to increase it works in practice, and at the same time looking at how this increases privacy, I refer to one of the more significant record series of the former Department of Aboriginal Affairs, South Australia--the Aborigines Protection Board minutes, 1940-1963.

Before indexing of the minutes began, once researchers had received approval from the Department of State Aboriginal Affairs to access these records, there was no alternative other than to allow them to handle the minutes to search them. This was difficult to avoid because the four volume Aborigines Protection Board minutes consisted of hundreds of pages and this meant that there was too much material for an archivist to…