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Cultural institutions have long employed a range of copying technologies to safeguard and improve access to archival materials. This paper moves discussion beyond debates about institutional copying focused on a specific technology and raises questions about the trustworthiness of copies of archival photographs. This study uses differences between a source photograph and four copies to show that copying practices shape how copies of archival photographs can be used. It is situated within the Australian legal context of native title to sharpen the interrogation of the trustworthiness of copies; and, to demonstrate one implication of how copying shapes the evidential value of photographs. It considers how a witness may respond if asked to testify that one or all of these copies are trustworthy or to outline their shortcomings as evidence. It explains that while standards for microfilm copying documents valued creating trustworthy copies, the transition to digital copying was a missed opportunity to re-establish those standards for creating digital surrogates of photographs. While questions raised have yet to be tested in legal native title procedures, this paper argues that the promise of photographs for native title outcomes will come to rest with the trustworthiness of institutionally created copies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting on several decades of my applied research, expert witness roles and a forensic methodology, this article addresses the application of anthropological studies in Australian legal cases concerned with various aspects of Indigenous customary law. In the context of traditional land claims, cultural heritage assessments and native title, both the achievements and challenges for anthropological inquiries are canvassed. Against arguments from some academics that applied work is intellectually inferior and politically compromised, the article reports my experiences in an arena of complex and enriching social science inquiry. The article engages with Indigenous land aspirations in a settler society while considering the implications of cultural change and adaptation, strategies of recuperation of customary knowledge, and the robustness required for successful anthropological studies of this kind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spiritual significance of forests is explored, based on interviews with people involved in disputes that led to the signing of the Western Australian Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) in 1999. Included are reflections from individuals involved in forestry, tourism, fanning, and in the environmental conservation movement. Although the conflict between these groups has been emphasised in previous accounts of the RFA process, this analysis focuses on points of similarity, namely, ideas about Australian attachments to land. A significant proportion of interviewees compared their own feelings of spiritual or sentimental connection to the forests with the kind of attachments they thought Aboriginal Australians might have to their homelands. This leads us to consider feelings of belonging and attachment to place in relation to controversial debates about nature, culture and identity in settler-descendant societies such as Australia. An understanding of such deeply held beliefs and values about land and identity provides insights into disputes over natural resource management., Public debates surrounding the Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) process (1) in Western Australia were characterised by division, primarily between anti-logging campaigners, who wanted to preserve as much old-growth forest as [...]

Michael F. Brown. Who Owns Native Culture? Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2003. Pp.xiii + 315, photos, notes, references, index. US$29.95 (Hc.), ISBN 0-67401-171-6; US$11.53 (Pb), ISBN 0-67401-633-5. [...]

Can native title, across remote, rural and urban settings, complement and overlap with current and future Australian senses of belonging? This is to explore a form of cultural coexistence that is potentially in tension with a sharp and mutually exclusive categorical distinction between those who embrace Indigenous identity and others. Can such cultural coexistence reinforce legal and economic achievements of land justice for the Indigenous minority yet also contribute to rich senses of place and belonging across the broader Australian society? While anthropology as a social science has a substantial and important practical research role in negotiations for, and outcomes of, particular native title claims, a further challenge is understanding the extent to which post‐claim coexisting identities and interests might enrich Australia's trajectory in resolving legacies of colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]