Dr Jason Gibson, a senior research fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University, works at the forefront of collaborative projects with Aboriginal custodians throughout Australia.

Throughout his career, he has worked as a consultant for various government and nongovernment agencies, as well as a repatriation curator with the Melbourne Museum’s First Peoples Department.

Repatriation of Indigenous cultural heritage offers a timely critique of current museum practices and their role in cultural production and transmission. By challenging the often oversimplified rhetoric of museum repatriation, Dr Gibson provides a nuanced perspective that resonates in international contexts where Indigenous reengagement and decolonisation strategies are actively debated.

His journey into this field was inspired early on by conversations with Arabana and Adnyamathanha peoples in northern SA about their visions for a cultural future.

“The message that resonated with me was that we needed to find ways of bolstering local Indigenous knowledges, stories and perspectives,” he said. For the past 20 years, he has worked with communities in the Northern Territory and beyond to tell their own stories, reveal their own histories and have greater access to, and control over, cultural collections.

Dr Gibson has been instrumental in numerous projects that bridge anthropology, Indigenous studies and cultural heritage preservation. 

His work spans a variety of initiatives, including the repatriation of poorly provenanced international Indigenous collections from international museums and collaborative explorations of Aboriginal art history with Warlayirti Artists and the  Berndt Museum.

These projects highlight Dr Gibson’s commitment to using Indigenous frameworks and collaborative methods to ensure the preservation and celebration of cultural heritage. In addition, Dr Gibson has led projects that document Anmatyerr song and ceremonial traditions, investigate the impacts of repatriation on Aboriginal communities and explore the intersections of anthropology, art and cultural change.

In his book, Repatriation of Indigenous Cultural Heritage, Dr Gibson explores the complex processes of returning cultural materials, such as objects, photographs, audio recordings and manuscripts, to Aboriginal Australians. The book critically examines the creation of these collections and their contemporary significance, highlighting both the opportunities and challenges involved in repatriation. Dr Gibson reveals new insights into how these materials are being reintegrated into the social and cultural lives of Indigenous communities, emphasising the importance of technological advances and decolonising methodologies.

“Repatriation is more complex than most people realise,” Dr Gibson said.

“It can be incredibly powerful, and I have seen it result in the revival of song or dance traditions, the rediscovery of important cultural sites, the renaming of places with local First Nations place names and much, much more. “But it can also raise significant internal debates within communities, and if handled carelessly. can be damaging. “It is delicate and often complex work.”

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