Galiwin'ku Knowledge Centre

Richard Garrawurra's building design. The circles represent storage areas

Imagine having a whole world of Aboriginal language and culture on-line, there to be accessed by Aboriginal people in a culturally appropriate way. Aboriginal knowledge controlled by Aboriginal people, just a finger click away.

And eventually, this same world living cheek-by-jowl with a Western library in a single building containing living, study and ceremonial areas.

Within the next month there will be no more need to imagine. After a two-year study involving a number of remote Aboriginal communities in the Top End, Galiwin'ku (Elcho Island) has been chosen as the site for the first Indigenous Knowledge Centre.

In July the Northern Territory Government announced $172,000 in funding to allow stage one of the project to go ahead, which will see the creation of a 'virtual' Knowledge Centre based on an integrated database and website.

A successful outcome to the Knowledge Centre experiment could eventually see libraries servicing remote areas of the NT move away from the print-based Western concept towards an Indigenous model based on oral/visual traditions.

Community Development Consultant Tom Redston, from the NT Library and Information Service's Project Management Team, said the database would contain images, text, film and sound originating from the whole Miwatj area of north-east Arnhem Land.

Access via the website will be strictly controlled to ensure sacred business is not accessed by the uninitiated. However, much of the material will continue to be available to outsiders.

What we're saying to museums and libraries and other places where many of these Yolngu resources are currently housed is, you keep the object or the tape or the roll of film, you keep looking after it, but we want to access it in the virtual world. It will be a virtual repatriation.

All the Yolngu will have easy access to the database and website because we are putting workstations in all of the Galiwin'ku Community Council's buildings. There are many levels of access so certain areas of the database will be out of bounds for certain people.

Community Development Consultant Tom Redston

One of the key forces behind the establishment of the Galiwin'ku Centre is GaliwinÕku elder Richard Gundhuwuy Garrawurra, who described the Centre as a breeding ground for Aboriginal culture.

The Galiwin'ku Knowledge Centre is a place that what is past, today and future can be learned. This thing has to make Aboriginal people come alive.

Galiwin'ku elder Richard Gundhuwuy Garrawurra

Mr Garrawurra likened the Centre to a breathing space.

This is what I remember the old people talking about. When people are homeless for their land, their culture and their language . . . they will have it here..

Galiwin'ku elder Richard Gundhuwuy Garrawurra

Mr Garrawurra has already painted a design for the next stage of the project, which will see the construction of a building incorporating accommodation areas, a dance ground, various restricted areas, a Western-style library and a learning area.

On the outside the building will be surrounded by pools containing water, representing the Yolngu people's all-important sea country. Other community leaders are also sharing their vision of knowledge management, Yolngu way, through paintings.

There will be a virtual exhibition of these artworks when the website is launched in late October.

Already the Galiwin'ku community has identified a building site close to other education and administrative precincts, and the hunt for funding sources has begun.

In the meantime a number of other communities, including Ti Tree and the Tiwi Islands, are developing their own plans for Knowledge Centres.

Clearly, much hangs on the outcome of the Galiwin'ku experiment. When it goes online in October the Galiwin'ku Knowledge Centre will be located at www.galiwinku.com.