Linda Barwick is a musicologist and professor at the University of Sydney’s Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.Jennifer Green is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Melbourne. She has worked for over four decades with Indigenous people in Central Australia documenting languages, cultural history, art, social organisation and connections to country.Petronella Vaarzon-Morel is an anthropologist with long-term experience working with Warlpiri and other Indigenous peoples in Central Australia. She is an honorary research associate at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the University of Sydney.

"The book is a successful attempt to move beyond arguments for the rights of indigenous communities into the more logistical arenas of how these rights, principles and cultural practices can be upheld in record-keeping and archival contexts."

• List of figuresList of tablesForewordEditors' prefaceThe contributorsList of abbreviations1. Conundrums and consequences: doing digital archival returns in Australia by Linda Barwick, Jennifer Green, Petronella Vaarzon-Morel & Katya Zissermann2. Deciphering Arrernte archives: the intermingling of textual and living knowledge by Jason Gibson, Shaun Angeles & Joel Liddle3. Reflections on the preparation and delivery of Carl Strehlow’s heritage dictionary (1909) to the Western Aranda people by Anna Kenny 4. Returning recordings of songs that persist: the Anmatyerr traditions of akiw and anmanty by Jason Gibson 5. Incorporating archival cultural heritage materials into contemporary Warlpiri women’s yawulyu spaces by Georgia Curran6. Enlivening people and country: the Lander Warlpiri cultural mapping project by Petronella Vaarzon-Morel & Luke Kelly7. (Re)turning research into pedagogical practice: a case study of translational language research in Warlpiri by Carmel O’Shannessy, Samantha Disbray, Barbara Martin & Gretel Macdonald8. ‘The songline is alive in Mukurtu’: return, reuse, and respect by Kimberly Christen9. ‘For the children ...’: Aboriginal Australia, cultural access, and archival obligation by Brenda Croft, Sandy Toussaint, Felicity Meakins & Patrick McConvell10. Working at the interface: the Daly Languages Project by Rachel Nordlinger, Ian Green & Peter Hurst11. ‘We never had any photos of my family’: archival return, film, and a personal history by Fred Myers & Lisa Stefanoff12. Return of a travelling song: wanji-wanji in the Pintupi region of Central Australia by Myfany Turpin13. Never giving up: negotiating, culture-making, and the infinity of the archive by Sabra Thorner, Linda Rive, John Dallwitz & Janet Inyika14. Nura’s vision: Nura’s voice by Suzanne Bryce, Julia Burke & Linda Rive15. i-Tjuma: the journey of a collection – from documentation to delivery by Elizabeth Marrkilyi Ellis, Jennifer Green & Inge Kral16. Ever-widening circles: consolidating and enhancing Wirlomin Noongar archival material in the community by Clint Bracknell & Kim ScottIndex