Rethinks the role of Indigenous and nonIndigenous interactions in the production of ethnographic museum collections.Winner of the 2022 W.K. Hancock Prize presented by the Australian Historical Association Shortlisted for the 2021 Prime Ministers Literary Awards in the Australian History Category presented by the Australian Prime Minister and Minister for the Arts Winner of the 2021 Council for Museum Anthropology Book Award presented by the Council for Museum Anthropology CMA a section of the American Anthropological Association By analyzing one of the worlds greatest collections of Indigenous song myth and ceremonythe collections of linguistanthropologist T. G. H. StrehlowCeremony Men demonstrates how inextricably intertwined ethnographic collections can become in complex historical and social relations. In revealing his process to return an anthropological collection to Aboriginal communities in remote central Australia Jason M. Gibson highlights the importance of personal rapport and collaborations in ethnographic exchange both past and present and demonstrates the ongoing importance of sociality relationship and orality when Indigenous peoples encounter museum collections today. Combining forensic historical analysis with contemporary ethnographic research this book challenges the notion that anthropological archives will necessarily become authoritative or dominant statements on a peoples cultural identity. Instead Indigenous peoples will often interrogate and recontextualize this material with great dexterity as they work to reintegrate the documented into their presentday social lives.By theorizing the nature of the documenterdocumented relationships this book makes an important contribution to the simplistic postcolonial generalizations that dominate analyses of colonial interaction. A story of local agency is uncovered that enriches our understanding of the human engagements that took and continue to take place within varying colonial relations of Australia