'The culture of the Tiwi Islands, northern Australia, has been the subject of much anthropological literature but none focuses on music. Since 2007 I have been working with senior Tiwi song-men and -women and studying contemporary Tiwi song culture in the context of the maintenance of traditions in the development of new music forms. In 2009 I was closely involved in the return to the Tiwi community of a large amount of ethnographic song material housed at the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) in Canberra. In this chapter I give an account of the process undertaken by a group of Tiwi people to reclaim that song material, including the emotional, socio-political, legal and ethical issues that my Tiwi colleagues and I encountered, as well as the effect that the material is now having on Tiwi song tradition itself. Documenting the experience of the group of Indigenous owners of the material is essential to an understanding of how their journey to Canberra has informed the reception of the recordings in the context of the four areas listed above. Importantly, the pro-active nature of the Tiwi group’s involvement with the repatriation has added an extra level to their understanding of the procedure and therefore resulted in a personal investment and heightened sense of ownership of the recordings.' (Introduction)
