WORDS, ONTOLOGIES AND ABORIGINAL DATABASES.

Aboriginal people are increasingly making use of digitising technologies for their cultural and educational work However, databases are not innocent objects. They bear within them Western assumptions about the nature of knowledge, and how it is produced, which may inhibit or undermine the intergenerational transmission of Aboriginal knowledge traditions. Words (or text strings), for example, have a particular constitutive function in Aboriginal epistemology, which implies a rethinking of traditional structures and uses of metadata. Knowledge and truth are understood more in terms of performance than content, which implies something about how digital resources are to be configured and represented. This paper looks at collaborative work done developing a database to support the ongoing work done by Yolngu (northeast Anthem Land Aboriginal) people in keeping their knowledge traditions strong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]