By analyzing one of the world’s greatest collections of Indigenous song, myth, and ceremony—the collections of linguist/anthropologist T. G. H. Strehlow—Ceremony Men demonstrates how inextricably intertwined ethnographic collections can become in complex historical and social relations. In revealing his process to return an anthropological collection to Aboriginal communities in remote central Australia, Jason M. Gibson highlights the importance of personal rapport and collaborations in ethnographic exchange, both past and present, and demonstrates the ongoing importance of sociality, relationship, and orality when Indigenous peoples encounter museum collections today.

Jason Gibson

State University of New York Press