{"id":21,"date":"2021-01-25T20:36:32","date_gmt":"2021-01-25T20:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/indigenousaustralia\/?page_id=21"},"modified":"2025-12-04T21:49:53","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T21:49:53","slug":"pitt-rivers-museum","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/indigenousaustralia\/museum-research\/pitt-rivers-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Pitt Rivers Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Editor’s Note: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of what we found among Pitt Rivers<\/strong>\u2019 online collections ended up either being unclear as to whether it was actually technically from Ngukurr– as can be the case with unclear labelling and categorizing of items– or from the work and legacy of figures like Walter Baldwin Spencer, James George Frazer, Elsie Masson, and Henry Balfour. 
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We want to be honest: in many ways, it\u2019s disappointing that our research ended up circling around the work and direct narratives of these white scholars and anthropologists who spent time in the region with various tribes as opposed to Aboriginal people in Ngukurr asserting their own stories, cultural beliefs, memories, wisdom and livelihoods. We think it speaks to the nature of institutions like Pitt Rivers<\/strong>\u2019 that we were unable to find documents from Ngukurr Aboriginal Australians or even Northern Territory Aboriginal people, and moreover, it certainly speaks to a legacy of how deeply embedded colonialism is in these institutions and beyond. 
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We don\u2019t want to romanticize or uplift the at-times exotifying lens that layers over the way that Baldwin Spencer talked about totemic systems, or the way that Masson depicts and frames the people she photographed. We wish we knew more of the names of the people Masson photographed; we wish that Spencer had said specifically what tribes he spent time with. 
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We want to say upfront that Aboriginal people from Ngukurr (elders and youth alike) are still living, reviving their traditions and languages and that this kind of colonial legacy will always be very complicated and tough to sift through. That doesn\u2019t mean that Aboriginal Ngukurr residents and communities don\u2019t deserve our full attention, respect and more; in fact, it means the opposite. 
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For those of you who are interested, we recommend starting here: 
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Ngukurr News – Home | Facebook<\/a>
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Welkam la Ngukurr \u2013 Welcome to Ngukurr on Vimeo<\/a>
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Welcome to the Ngukurr Language Centre (ngukurrlc.org.au)<\/a>
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Objects<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While searching the Pitt Rivers Museum Database of Object Collections<\/strong>, we were able to surface 13 objects by searching “Roper River” in the Geographical Region search bar. At first, we found searching difficult because none of the objects we were discovering were explicitly labeled as objects from Ngukurr; these 13 objects are the closest to Ngukurr that we could find. They include weapons, tools, and ornaments, and their donation dates range from 1900 to 1997. Nearly half of the objects were donated to the museum by Robert Francis Wilkins in 1900, though little information was available about Wilkins himself. Below, a few of the items from the Pitt Rivers collection are spotlighted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Note: In November 2025, Senior Law Men from Ngukurr participated in a virtual tour in the Pitt Rivers Museum collections.  These knowledge holders identified the object previously represented here (in a photograph from online collections) as ‘high culture,’ and requested that we take it down from view. We were delighted that this website continues to be relevant \/ useful (now more than 4 years on from its making), and obliged as quickly as possible!<\/em>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Original Spring 2020 caption, for reference: “a red and white swan-necked boomerang”<\/p>\n\n\n\n