ABSTRACT
Manuel DeLanda's assemblage theory provides a conceptual framework for understanding contemporary Indigeneity as an ever-evolving phenomenon, shaped by its entanglements with settler culture and the multiplicity of Indigenous culture. The protocol in Indigenous oral traditions, as Stephen Muecke explains, is that storytelling must begin with the teller positioning him or herself in relation to clan and place. Before embarking on the story, the storyteller must first describe their journey to the place where the story begins. And so before gathering together the voices that will interleave with our text, and before re-telling the narratives that define place in the Australian landscape. In many parts of Australia, particularly in the southeast, maintenance of Stories was abruptly severed by colonisation. In their place, new narratives were told to codify settler identity and simultaneously de-territorialise Indigenous socialities. Ulur-u-Kata Tjut-a Cultural Centre and Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa represent vastly different approaches to the making of architecture for Indigenous cultural centres.
