Community collections: Returning to an (un)imagined future

Abstract

Drawing on fieldwork in an Aboriginal community in Western Australia, this article chronicles the life of a collection of Indigenous art and material culture through archival research, ethnography, observation, and interviews. Moving from a school to community keeping spaces, through a natural disaster, to an art center and a university conservation center, this examination reveals how entanglements between people and the collection play out in the local context. The moving and returning of the collection signifies various trajectories that articulate with different value systems and demonstrates that negotiating differences between groups and individuals is an inevitable and necessary part of maintaining and caring for collections in source communities. The article attests that time is needed at local levels to support Indigenous-led processes which include value creation, cultural protocols, change, continuity, and the (re)valuation of objects.