Phil Gordon

Australian Museum CEO and Executive Director Kim McKay in conversation with Phil Gordon, the AM's Aboriginal Heritage Project Officer. Phil coordinates the AM's Repatriation policy to support return of aboriginal remains held in museum collections around the world, and is also investigating potential digital repatriation of secret men’s material. “As part of Aboriginal culture there are materials and knowledge and ceremonies that are controlled by both men and women, that other people can’t participate in. “ “This is what we know as secret women’s business or secret men’s business” “Exactly, and as part of that objects are produced, sometimes those objects were destroyed straight away, but other objects were not and they were continually used. As part of the colonisation process a lot of those objects were taken away or given for safe keeping to missionaries and those sorts of things. And these objects still have power, both of a cultural and political too… As a way of acknowledging that power and sensitivity we actually have separate storage areas for these sorts of objects, and we have been involved over the past 30 years in trying to return some of those objects to communities.”

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