Jason M Gibson
Biographic Data
| ID | 453482 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jason M Gibson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jason M |
| FAMILY NAME | Gibson |
| SIGNATURE | GIBSON J M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Deakin University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8254-587X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Counting on kin and Country, not just calories: Beyond subsistence thinking in GunaiKurnai zooarchaeology, southeastern Australia
Decolonisation doesn’t disentangle: Anthropological archives and Arrernte knowledge regeneration
Grounded in collaborative research with Arrernte and Anmatyerr people in central Australia who critically interrogate the archives of late nineteenth and early twentieth century anthropologists, this paper demonstrates how complex historical and social relationships are inherently intrinsic to the future uses of these collections. Through an examination of the ways that Arrernte/Anmatyerr people now use these archives, it is shown that emergent, …
Clever Men: How Worlds Collided on the Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land of 1948
Sacred but Undocumented: Meeting the Challenges of Repatriating Poorly Documented Objects
What happens when sacred Indigenous objects held in international museums have no clear path home? This paper explores the challenges of repatriating poorly documented Aboriginal secret‐sacred objects—known as tywerrenge —to central Australia. Despite limited provenance, these objects remain spiritually potent to Aboriginal custodians. Drawing on a multi‐year, Indigenous‐led project by AIATSIS, Deakin University, and senior central Australian men…
The New Protectionism: Risk Aversion and Access to Indigenous Heritage Records
This article discusses the problems encountered in accessing archival Indigenous language records, both by Indigenous people looking for information on their own languages and by non-Indigenous researchers supporting language work. It is motivated by Indigenous people not being able to access materials in archives, libraries, and museums that they need for heritage reasons, for personal reasons, or for revitalisation of language or cultural perfo…
Connecting Collections: Transforming Access to Museum Collections at Scale for Knowledge Generation in Australia
Australia's vast collections of biological, natural history, ethnographic, and social-historical materials remain largely disconnected from each other and from the public. Connecting these distributed collections, currently dispersed in local, state, national, and global locales, is critically important to generate new knowledge for national and global benefit. The vision of making these collections accessible at scale, alongside innovative metho…
Memory-lines: Ethnographies of colonial violence in Central Australia
Memory-lines: Ethnographies of colonial violence in Central Australia
Repatriation of aboriginal sacred objects: Prospects for the Return of the Poorly Provenanced
This paper explores the challenges of repatriating poorly documented Aboriginal sacred religious objects from Central Australia. The authors present an overview of historical endeavours to repatriate these objects from Australian domestic museums and the progress of recent returns from international collections. Detailed documentation, including reference to an object’s specific relationship to places, people or ancestral stories is critical to e…
Repatriation of Indigenous Cultural Heritage: Experiences of Return in Central Australia
Repatriation of Indigenous Cultural Heritage examines how returned materials - objects, photographs, audio and manuscripts - are being received and reintegrated into the ongoing social and cultural lives of Aboriginal Australians. Combining a critical examination of the making of these collections with an assessment of their contemporary significance, the book exposes the opportunities and challenges involved in returning cultural heritage for th…
‘Factotum and friend’: Anthropologists, informants and ethnographic exchange in central Australia
In this paper I discuss the ethnographic encounter between two Aboriginal men and various Australian anthropologists during the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century. These men, Mickey Dow Dow and Jim Kite, played a critical role in the development of a body of knowledge associated with Australian Aboriginal people. The important role that these men played in shaping an understanding of Aboriginal relationships to place, personhood and myth…
Special Section: Leading Thinkers in the Field - Howard Morphy
Anthropology, Art, and Ethnographic Collections: A Conversation with Howard Morphy Jason M. Gibson (JG): In your book Museums, Infinity and the Culture of Protocols: Ethnographic Collections and Source Communities (Morphy 2020), you begin with an anecdote of visiting the Pitt Rivers Museum as a young child. Did museums play a part in sparking an interest in humanity, and its diversity, or were you fascinated by the Other? Book Review: Museums, So…
The Last Jeraeil of Gippsland: Rediscovering an Aboriginal Ceremonial Site
The Jeraeil, a young men’s initiation ceremony of the GunaiKurnai people of Gippsland, Australia, ceased to be performed toward the end of the nineteenth century. Eager to witness and document the ceremony, anthropologist A. W. Howitt arranged for a performance of the Jeraeil in 1884. His published accounts of the Jeraeil have since been used as evidence of a distinctive type of ceremonial practice in southeastern Australia that was readily embra…
Crowdsourcing Downunder
In this paper we report on the experience of two research projects that intended to experiment with crowdsourcing models for opening up their scholarly materials to the wider public. Both the Howitt & Fison project, and Mapping Print; Charting Enlightenment were designed to take into consideration particularities of the Australian academic environment: in the former case, sensitivities around materials relating to First Peoples; in both cases, ge…
You're my kwertengerl: Transforming models of care for central Australian aboriginal museum collections
This article provides ethnographic insights into the ways in which museums are being engaged with and positioned by some Aboriginal people in Central Australia. At the centre of this analysis is the stated suggestion of some Anmatyerr and Arrernte men that museums be incorporated into their social-cultural frameworks and thus brought into their systems of relating. Drawing upon endeavours to return and repatriate key central Australian collection…
Ethnographic sound collections and Australian Aboriginal Heritage: Kaytetye song traditions remembered
Song was one of the principal methods of transmitting knowledge in the fundamentally oral societies of Indigenous Australia. As the breadth of song traditions has greatly diminished over the past 200 years, archival recordings of song now form a significant resource of intangible cultural heritage for Australia’s Indigenous people. The song performances recorded in the past are now being rediscovered, remembered and in some cases revived. This pa…
Conversations on the Frontier: Finding the Dialogic in Nineteenth-century Anthropological Archives
While anthropological archives tend to be named after the collector of the material, they are often the product of conversations and long-term engagements with informants. Focusing on the concept of the dialogic, this article contends that these materials ought to be equally conceived as co-productions, often made via complex, asymmetrical researcher/researched engagements. We specifically home in on the dialogic traces left in the archive of the…
‘Only the best is good enough for eternity’: Revisiting the ethnography of T. G. H. Strehlow
Preserving' information T. G. H. Strehlow's approach to ethnographic record-taking was very much like that of his father, Carl, in that it was humanistic and emphasised mythology, song and language
Gardner, Helen, and Patrick McConvell: Southern Anthropology - A History of Fison and Howitt's Kamilaroi and Kurnai
Anthropos , Seite 668 - 669
Central A ustralian Songs: A History and Reinterpretation of their Distribution through the Earliest Recordings
This paper contains a discussion of an unpublished essay by TGH S trehlow concerning the historic wax cylinder recordings of songs from C entral A ustralia made by W alter B aldwin S pencer and F rank G illen in 1901. The manuscript, written by S trehlow in 1968, begins with an explanation of the historical context of the song recordings, and the distribution of song and dance traditions across the A ustralian inland. S trehlow elucidates the con…
Kenny, Anna: The Aranda’s Pepa. An Introduction to Carl Streh low’s Masterpiece. Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien (1907–1920)
Anthropos , Seite 635 - 637
Two Orcadian cist burials: Excavations at Midskaill, Egilsay, and Linga Fiold, Sandwick
Two cists representing common forms of Bronze Age burial monument were excavated in 1992 in Orkney.A short flat cist at Midskaill, on the island of Egilsay, was previously unrecorded and it contained coarse pottery sherds and 'cramp' (vitrified cremation slag).No human bone was found.The second cist, located within a mound at Linga Fiold, Sandwick, on Mainland Orkney, contained human bone and cramp.The Linga Fiold mound is one of a recorded and p…
Repatriation of Indigenous Cultural Heritage: Experiences of Return in Central Australia
Repatriation of Indigenous Cultural Heritage examines how returned materials - objects, photographs, audio and manuscripts - are being received and reintegrated into the ongoing social and cultural lives of Aboriginal Australians. Combining a critical examination of the making of these collections with an assessment of their contemporary significance, the book exposes the opportunities and challenges involved in returning cultural heritage for th…
Conversations on the Frontier: Finding the Dialogic in Nineteenth-century Anthropological Archives
While anthropological archives tend to be named after the collector of the material, they are often the product of conversations and long-term engagements with informants. Focusing on the concept of the dialogic, this article contends that these materials ought to be equally conceived as co-productions, often made via complex, asymmetrical researcher/researched engagements. We specifically home in on the dialogic traces left in the archive of the…
You're my kwertengerl: Transforming models of care for central Australian aboriginal museum collections
This article provides ethnographic insights into the ways in which museums are being engaged with and positioned by some Aboriginal people in Central Australia. At the centre of this analysis is the stated suggestion of some Anmatyerr and Arrernte men that museums be incorporated into their social-cultural frameworks and thus brought into their systems of relating. Drawing upon endeavours to return and repatriate key central Australian collection…
Ethnographic sound collections and Australian Aboriginal Heritage: Kaytetye song traditions remembered
Song was one of the principal methods of transmitting knowledge in the fundamentally oral societies of Indigenous Australia. As the breadth of song traditions has greatly diminished over the past 200 years, archival recordings of song now form a significant resource of intangible cultural heritage for Australia’s Indigenous people. The song performances recorded in the past are now being rediscovered, remembered and in some cases revived. This pa…
Two Orcadian cist burials: Excavations at Midskaill, Egilsay, and Linga Fiold, Sandwick
Two cists representing common forms of Bronze Age burial monument were excavated in 1992 in Orkney.A short flat cist at Midskaill, on the island of Egilsay, was previously unrecorded and it contained coarse pottery sherds and 'cramp' (vitrified cremation slag).No human bone was found.The second cist, located within a mound at Linga Fiold, Sandwick, on Mainland Orkney, contained human bone and cramp.The Linga Fiold mound is one of a recorded and p…
Two Orcadian cist burials: Excavations at Midskaill, Egilsay, and Linga Fiold, Sandwick
Two cists representing common forms of Bronze Age burial monument were excavated in 1992 in Orkney.A short flat cist at Midskaill, on the island of Egilsay, was previously unrecorded and it contained coarse pottery sherds and 'cramp' (vitrified cremation slag).No human bone was found.The second cist, located within a mound at Linga Fiold, Sandwick, on Mainland Orkney, contained human bone and cramp.The Linga Fiold mound is one of a recorded and p…
Central A ustralian Songs: A History and Reinterpretation of their Distribution through the Earliest Recordings
This paper contains a discussion of an unpublished essay by TGH S trehlow concerning the historic wax cylinder recordings of songs from C entral A ustralia made by W alter B aldwin S pencer and F rank G illen in 1901. The manuscript, written by S trehlow in 1968, begins with an explanation of the historical context of the song recordings, and the distribution of song and dance traditions across the A ustralian inland. S trehlow elucidates the con…
Kenny, Anna: The Aranda’s Pepa. An Introduction to Carl Streh low’s Masterpiece. Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien (1907–1920)
Anthropos , Seite 635 - 637
‘Only the best is good enough for eternity’: Revisiting the ethnography of T. G. H. Strehlow
Preserving' information T. G. H. Strehlow's approach to ethnographic record-taking was very much like that of his father, Carl, in that it was humanistic and emphasised mythology, song and language
Gardner, Helen, and Patrick McConvell: Southern Anthropology - A History of Fison and Howitt's Kamilaroi and Kurnai
Anthropos , Seite 668 - 669
Crowdsourcing Downunder
In this paper we report on the experience of two research projects that intended to experiment with crowdsourcing models for opening up their scholarly materials to the wider public. Both the Howitt & Fison project, and Mapping Print; Charting Enlightenment were designed to take into consideration particularities of the Australian academic environment: in the former case, sensitivities around materials relating to First Peoples; in both cases, ge…
You're my kwertengerl: Transforming models of care for central Australian aboriginal museum collections
This article provides ethnographic insights into the ways in which museums are being engaged with and positioned by some Aboriginal people in Central Australia. At the centre of this analysis is the stated suggestion of some Anmatyerr and Arrernte men that museums be incorporated into their social-cultural frameworks and thus brought into their systems of relating. Drawing upon endeavours to return and repatriate key central Australian collection…
Ethnographic sound collections and Australian Aboriginal Heritage: Kaytetye song traditions remembered
Song was one of the principal methods of transmitting knowledge in the fundamentally oral societies of Indigenous Australia. As the breadth of song traditions has greatly diminished over the past 200 years, archival recordings of song now form a significant resource of intangible cultural heritage for Australia’s Indigenous people. The song performances recorded in the past are now being rediscovered, remembered and in some cases revived. This pa…
Conversations on the Frontier: Finding the Dialogic in Nineteenth-century Anthropological Archives
While anthropological archives tend to be named after the collector of the material, they are often the product of conversations and long-term engagements with informants. Focusing on the concept of the dialogic, this article contends that these materials ought to be equally conceived as co-productions, often made via complex, asymmetrical researcher/researched engagements. We specifically home in on the dialogic traces left in the archive of the…
The Last Jeraeil of Gippsland: Rediscovering an Aboriginal Ceremonial Site
The Jeraeil, a young men’s initiation ceremony of the GunaiKurnai people of Gippsland, Australia, ceased to be performed toward the end of the nineteenth century. Eager to witness and document the ceremony, anthropologist A. W. Howitt arranged for a performance of the Jeraeil in 1884. His published accounts of the Jeraeil have since been used as evidence of a distinctive type of ceremonial practice in southeastern Australia that was readily embra…
‘Factotum and friend’: Anthropologists, informants and ethnographic exchange in central Australia
In this paper I discuss the ethnographic encounter between two Aboriginal men and various Australian anthropologists during the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century. These men, Mickey Dow Dow and Jim Kite, played a critical role in the development of a body of knowledge associated with Australian Aboriginal people. The important role that these men played in shaping an understanding of Aboriginal relationships to place, personhood and myth…
Special Section: Leading Thinkers in the Field - Howard Morphy
Anthropology, Art, and Ethnographic Collections: A Conversation with Howard Morphy Jason M. Gibson (JG): In your book Museums, Infinity and the Culture of Protocols: Ethnographic Collections and Source Communities (Morphy 2020), you begin with an anecdote of visiting the Pitt Rivers Museum as a young child. Did museums play a part in sparking an interest in humanity, and its diversity, or were you fascinated by the Other? Book Review: Museums, So…
Memory-lines: Ethnographies of colonial violence in Central Australia
Memory-lines: Ethnographies of colonial violence in Central Australia
Repatriation of aboriginal sacred objects: Prospects for the Return of the Poorly Provenanced
This paper explores the challenges of repatriating poorly documented Aboriginal sacred religious objects from Central Australia. The authors present an overview of historical endeavours to repatriate these objects from Australian domestic museums and the progress of recent returns from international collections. Detailed documentation, including reference to an object’s specific relationship to places, people or ancestral stories is critical to e…
Repatriation of Indigenous Cultural Heritage: Experiences of Return in Central Australia
Repatriation of Indigenous Cultural Heritage examines how returned materials - objects, photographs, audio and manuscripts - are being received and reintegrated into the ongoing social and cultural lives of Aboriginal Australians. Combining a critical examination of the making of these collections with an assessment of their contemporary significance, the book exposes the opportunities and challenges involved in returning cultural heritage for th…
The New Protectionism: Risk Aversion and Access to Indigenous Heritage Records
This article discusses the problems encountered in accessing archival Indigenous language records, both by Indigenous people looking for information on their own languages and by non-Indigenous researchers supporting language work. It is motivated by Indigenous people not being able to access materials in archives, libraries, and museums that they need for heritage reasons, for personal reasons, or for revitalisation of language or cultural perfo…
Connecting Collections: Transforming Access to Museum Collections at Scale for Knowledge Generation in Australia
Australia's vast collections of biological, natural history, ethnographic, and social-historical materials remain largely disconnected from each other and from the public. Connecting these distributed collections, currently dispersed in local, state, national, and global locales, is critically important to generate new knowledge for national and global benefit. The vision of making these collections accessible at scale, alongside innovative metho…
Decolonisation doesn’t disentangle: Anthropological archives and Arrernte knowledge regeneration
Grounded in collaborative research with Arrernte and Anmatyerr people in central Australia who critically interrogate the archives of late nineteenth and early twentieth century anthropologists, this paper demonstrates how complex historical and social relationships are inherently intrinsic to the future uses of these collections. Through an examination of the ways that Arrernte/Anmatyerr people now use these archives, it is shown that emergent, …
Clever Men: How Worlds Collided on the Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land of 1948
Sacred but Undocumented: Meeting the Challenges of Repatriating Poorly Documented Objects
What happens when sacred Indigenous objects held in international museums have no clear path home? This paper explores the challenges of repatriating poorly documented Aboriginal secret‐sacred objects—known as tywerrenge —to central Australia. Despite limited provenance, these objects remain spiritually potent to Aboriginal custodians. Drawing on a multi‐year, Indigenous‐led project by AIATSIS, Deakin University, and senior central Australian men…
Counting on kin and Country, not just calories: Beyond subsistence thinking in GunaiKurnai zooarchaeology, southeastern Australia
History (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Anthropology (10 works) · Archaeology (9 works) · Ethnography (8 works) · Art (6 works) · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Australian Indigenous Culture and History (5 works) · Indigenous (5 works)