Keeping Place for Indigenous Intellectual and Cultural Property

Gnibi College of Indigenous Australian Peoples is currently establishing a Keeping Place for the safe protection of Indigenous Intellectual and Cultural Property and the advancement of shared scholarship with Bundjalung Elders.

The College has been very fortunate in obtaining the custodian responsibility of a library/resources which came from what was formally known as the North Coast Institute for Aboriginal Community Education (NCIACE). The Institute existed for a number of years before it closed and the collection was then donated to the College. Almost all the collection is based on Indigenous life: black literature, arts, history, politics, government, health, sport as well as a shared history of multiculturalism in Australia. Since the time of its donation, many other items have been added to it from the necessary resource collection purchased within the College activities. Further items have been added to it from the personal collection of Professor Atkinson (approximately 100 videos and a number of postgraduate thesis).

The resources within the Keeping Place collection are considered by the Bundjalung community to be of high value to the community and the College is therefore working towards cataloguing the collection to get the library up and running.

Our strategic plan over the next few years will see the Keeping Place represented by much more than a package of material resources. We envisage that the concept for the Keeping Place will be based on a 'living culture', represented by the valuable teachings, support and direction we could receive from Bundjalung Elders within our region.

For this reason, the responsibility we felt towards our community in the safe keeping of the library became incorporated into a broader concern for safe protection of Intellectual and Cultural Property. Furthermore we understood our responsibility to ensure the appropriate progression of scholarship and have articulated our intent as follows:

'To recognise and progress Eldership guidance through active participation with Elders in scholarship and research for the progression of a Keeping Place for the safe protection of Indigenous Intellectual and Cultural Property, the maintenance, revival and reclamation of Bundjalung languages and cultural protocols and practices for ethical scholarship and research'.

Updated: 09 February 2012