Anangu Audience

Accessing Ara Irititja by Anangu

The database project is interactive and participatory at the community and personal level. Cultural and historical information is both distributed and collected through the Ara Irititja system. People of all ages are able to work together at the Ara Irititja workstations. It is a family and community group activity that draws people of several generations together.

Both from within the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) communities and increasingly from the broader Australian perspective, the Ara Irititja Project is seen to offer a valuable contribution as one of the components in the educational delivery and transmission of APY culture and history to their own youth.

In 2007 there are now workstations in Western Australia, Northern Territory and South Australia that give Anangu regular access to the Ara Irititja archive. These include:

• All APY communities in SA (except Kanpi and Nyapari where the computer archive is located at the nearby Murputja Education Centre)
• All APY Schools
• Ernabella Arts, Pukatja
• Pukatja (Ernabella) University of SA Anangu Tertiary Education Program (AnTEP)
• PY Media, Umuwa
• APY Land Management, Umuwa
• Ngaanyatjarra Media centre at Irrunytju WA
• National Parks centre at Mutitjulu NT
• Anangu community centres at Utju (Areyonga) NT and Tjuntjuntjara and Coonana in WA
• Port Augusta Prison SA
• Umoona Aged Care Facility, Coober Pedy SA
• Alice Springs NT, NPY Women’s Council and PY Media
• At secondary student centres at Woodville High School and Wiltja Hostel, Adelaide SA

Families of many generations look together to learn about their family history on the Ara Irititja computer archive, ensuring the transmission of cultural knowledge between age groups. Already Ara Irititja is in strong demand at the community level. Commonly, groups, including up to four generations at one time, use the archive.

Using Ara Irititja provides young people with new skills such as creating a research project and the critical thinking that is a part of that process. Ara Irititja gives children and young people a path into the complex relationships of their culture. To understand where you come from and who you are related to assists individuals to better engage and connect with family, friends, communities and life itself. It is well documented that life expectancy for Aboriginal people is far below mainstream levels and many children and young people lose their parents and other family members well before they are adults themselves.

Some of the tangible outcomes of Ara Irititja expressed by Anangu include:

• An expanded sense of personal history and cultural traditions for all generations.
• An appreciation of the role of Information Technology (IT) in the preservation of personal and community knowledge.
• The opportunity to use IT.
• Enhanced individual and community well-being.
• The transfer of new skills, educational capabilities and resources for the benefit of all levels of the community and organisations.

Employment of community operators

Ara Irititja identifies key people on the community with suitable cultural knowledge and skills to manage the database workstations. This increases general computer literacy, keyboard skills and research experience.

Ara Irititja employs community operators currently at Irrunytju WA (Wingellina), Utju NT (Areyonga), and in SA at Pukatja (Ernabella), Kenmore, Kalka, Pipalyatjara and Murputja (Kanpi / Nyapari). The project aims to employ other community operators in all locations where there is an Ara Irititja community archive.

From quantitative evaluation and observations by the project team, the majority of community members know how to operate the existing database. We provided training using a 'train the trainer' approach and the effectiveness of this is apparent by the large numbers of people, especially younger people, who can now operate the system. In many cases, young Anangu operate it for their older relatives. In many cases, Ara Irititja is the first experience the older people have had with computers and a respect is generated for the growing ability of the young operators.