ABSTRACT
The Krowathunkooloong Keeping Place is a self-determined Gunai Kurnai museum and cultural centre, which the Elders fought to establish at the heart of GEGAC, the Gippsland East Gippsland Aboriginal Co-operative. Their wisdom was to ensure that the Keeping Place is on culturally appropriate land owned by the co-op, built beside the medical centre, the Elders’ meeting place, and the kindergarten. The Elders enacted cultural protocol to curate the permanent exhibition, representing all Koori people who have lived on Gunai Kurnai Country within a framework that enables Community members to understand and speak to their own specific family experiences. Through writing this book at the Keeping Place, an interface space between Gunai Kurnai grounded normativity and the colonial world, we distilled important points about the work of the Keeping Place and about methodologies and theoretical ways to understand these points.
