Kitkińike
Kitkińike is a Nimiputímpt word which can be interpreted literally or symbolically. Kitkińike is commonly found in the phrases that orientate speakers towards what can be described in English as the cardinal directions. The root word kińike means ‘one of two choices’ and when paired with another suffix means ‘from’.1 The prefix ki means ‘by means of’.2 An example of the word together can be found in the word for west: tińéyne∙kitkińike leyle’∙k.3 This can be defined as ‘by means of the west’ or ‘from the direction of west’. In the context of this web project, kitkińike is being interpreted as a direction which can provide a means of both conceptually and formally orientating towards, and within, bibliographies as cultural landscapes. This is done by cutting through academic epistemologies and attuning expectations in new directions. The interest here is in the ways that bibliographic sources can be used to re-direct researchers across landscapes of Indigenous knowledges, so re-shaping approaches to research itself. 
Thinking with the gestural orientations of kitkińike allows us to nurture an appreciation of the transformative potential of bibliographic work as a dynamic and ongoing anticolonial practice. Rejecting the presumption that the so-called ‘secondary literature’ is of lesser significance than face-to-face knowledge creation ‘in the field’, this work offers a series of kitkińike as organising principles for those seeking to orientate towards social research with First Nations people, places, and communities.
In what follows I invite you to dwell with the four kitkińike that conceptually move an Indigenous bibliography towards new attunements. The aim is to identify and foreground the threads of connection, voice and anti-colonial critique that arise from the materials themselves, rather than enacting a merely algorithmic re-shuffling of categories. My intention in this work is to insist that fieldwork begins in bibliographies. Understanding bibliographies as cultural landscapes means that they enable us to undertake a foundational form of fieldwork as we read, sort, and create our sources of information. This kitkińike does not replace fieldwork nor does it seek to create new hierarchies of epistemic importance. Rather, this kitkińike proposes a dynamic and intertextual approach to locating, assembling, and critically attending to constellations of Indigenous voice.
Attuning with the organising principles that I offer here, it becomes possible to curate an existing bibliography anew. This formation of bibliography as object orients attuners in four directions: kitkińike of self, kitkińike of care, kitkińike of community and kitkińike reclamation.
Self
Kitkińike of self is key. This direction opens researchers to attunements of self through Indigenous epistemologies and voices. This kitkińike emerged from a recognition of foundational assumptions and limitations amongst social science colleagues regarding where Indigenous voices can be located. Research practices risk becoming an extension of colonial power relations when researchers presume field sites as the only site in which to encounter First Nations voices and perspectives. It could even be argued that researchers are practicing a form of ‘cultural mining’ when we see our traditional practices of participant observation as the primary vehicle through which knowledge is created. These approaches are very researcher centric. Moving in the direction of voice and self in a cultural landscape that already exists in writing rather than solely ‘in the field’ is a key in considering an anticolonial anthropology kitkińike.
Care
At its core kitkińike of care entails a kind of timeless thinking that preserves past traditions and looks to the future and continuation. It takes as its foundational orientation a response to ongoing processes of the colonial project and its many impacts across all aspects of Indigenous daily life. This includes addressing disparate health outcomes, speaking and researching in First Nations languages, growing and collecting native foods and caring for country. Kitkińike of care reorients that which is taken for granted and attunes researchers to new understandings of gender, family, and tradition. It is important to recognise that care comes in many forms and that includes cultivating spaces of Black joy. By showcasing and sharing joy (via social media, exhibitions, publications, etc) Black creatives are debunking stereotypes and shaking up expectations. This is another important form of care.
Kitkíńke of reclamation embraces decolonizing as a major theme and encompasses research into archives, museums, Indigenous sovereignty, Indigenous knowledges, mapping of landscapes, and Native Title. This kitkińike doesn’t just describe how to do Indigenous research, it demonstrates it as well with its approach to processes of editing and selecting contributors. Kitkíńike of reclamation is an acknowledgement of the ongoing colonial project with a focus on giving new form and revarious orms of sovereignty. Kitkíńke of reclamation manifests in textual form writing the kind of change that activists and change makers have been calling for in policy and community development for generations, but which governments have either ignored or failed to respond to. Kitkíńke of reclamation is the model for the futures First Nations peoples want and deserve. 
Reclamation
Community
In kitkińike of community, authors step away from solely personal stories and narratives and turn their focus to wider considerations of inclusivity and togetherness. Works explore themes of group representation but also the preservation of the uniqueness of the group identity. Contested histories are explored through giving voice to those lost in the archive and challenges to colonial representations enacted through acts of curation and education. Community also moves in the direction of collaborations—both within communities and across communities and cultures. Co-design and co-production are hallmarks of this dynamic space. In thinking about, with, and for community, Indigenous scholars engage and re-energize major debates in research and arts, creating new ways considering relationships, boundaries, and forms of inclusion. 
Kitkińike

KitkiŃike:

In the direction of bibliographies
as cultural landscapes
Gretchen Stolte
To further explore this research and its motivations visit the Wiley TAJA platform to read the AUTHOR’S COMMENTARY.
Acknowledgements
References
FORM
REACH
Project
Prologue
Journal
People
The Sessions
Terms of Use
The Curatorium Collective ©2024
Self
Kitkińike of self is key. This direction opens researchers to attunements of self through Indigenous epistemologies and voices. This kitkińike emerged from a recognition of foundational assumptions and limitations amongst social science colleagues regarding where Indigenous voices can be located. Research practices risk becoming an extension of colonial power relations when researchers presume field sites as the only site in which to encounter First Nations voices and perspectives. It could even be argued that researchers are practising a form of ‘cultural mining’ when we see our traditional practices of participant observation as the primary vehicle through which knowledge is created. These approaches are very researcher centric. One can move in the direction of voice and self in a cultural landscape that already exists in writing, rather than solely 'in the field’. This is key in considering an anticolonial and anthropological kitkińike.
Identity
Identity
What's in a name?
Material culture
Material Culture
Why is an object always also a story?
History
History
What histories demand telling, showing and sharing?
Gender and Queer Studies
music
Torres Straight Islander
Studies
Colonialism
Tasmania
How do First Nations of Tasmania upend, disrupt and erase colonial narratives?
Tasmania
73
73. O’Sullivan, Sandy (2021) The colonial project of gender (and everything else), Genealogy, 5(3), 1-9.
Gender and Queer Studies
40
40. Heiss, Anita (Ed.) (2018) Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia. Carlton: Black, Inc.
Identity
16
16. Bell, Marshall (2010) Why You Paint Like That? Brisbane: Woolloongabba Art Gallery.
Material Culture
47
47. Hutchings, Suzi (2021) Decolonise this space, centering Indigenous peoples in music therapy practice, Voices: a Forum for World Music, 21(3).
Music
82
82. Rimmer, Zoe and Sainty, Theresa (2020) Palawa Kani: Expressing the power of language in art and the museum context, Artlink, 40(2), 32-35.
Tasmania
84
84. Roberts, Zac, Carlson, Bronwyn, O’Sullivan, Sandy, Day, Madi, Rey, Jo, Kennedy, Tristan, Bakic, Tetei, and Farrell, Andrew (2021) A guide to writing and speaking about Indigenous People in Australia. Available from: https://research-management.mq.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/161911416/Publisher_version.pdf [Accessed 27 October 2023].
Gender and Queer Studies, Identity
29
29. Davis-Hurst, Patricia AO, AM (1996) Station Revisited. Taree: New South Wales Heritage Council and New South Wales Department of Planning.
Identity
102
102. Nakhid, Camille, Margaret Nakhid-Chatoor, Anaebel Fernández Santana, and Shakeisha Wilson-Scott (2023). Affirming Methodologies: Research and Education in the Caribbean. Routledgeanille
Identity
33
33. Faulkner, Samantha with Ali Drummond (2007) Life B’long Ali Drummond: A Life in the Torres Strait. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Identity, Torres straight Islander Studies
18
18. Boigu Island Community Council (1991) Boigu: Our History and Culture. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
Identity
49
49. Hutchings, Suzi and Rodger, Dianne (2020) A.B. original, reclaim Australia (2016). In: Stratton, Jon, Dale, Jon and Mitchel, Tony (Eds.) An Anthology of Australian Albums, Critical Engagements. New York: Bloomsbury.
Music
20
20. Cameron, Patsy (2016) Grease and Ochre: the Blending of Two Cultures at the Colonial Sea Frontier. Hobart: Fullers Bookshop.
Tasmania
46
46. Hutchings, Suzi and Rodger, Dianne (2018) Reclaiming Australia: Indigenous hip-hop group A.B. original’s use of Twitter, Media International Australia, 169(1), 84-93. 
Music
98
98. Watego, Chelsea (2021) Another Day in the Colony. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press.
Colonialism
17
17. Bell, Marshall (2012) You Can Do That or What? Brisbane: Woolloongabba Art Gallery.
Material Culture
87
87. Sculthorpe, Gaye (2021) Exile and punishment in Van Diemen’s Land. In: Sculthorpe, Gaye, Nuget, Maria, and Morphy, Howard (Eds.) Ancestors, Artefacts, Empire: Indigenous Australia in British and Irish Museums. London: British Museum Press, pp. 144-152.
Tasmania
3
3. Aird, Michael (2001) Brisbane Blacks. Southport, QLD, Australia: Keeaira Press.
HISTORY
48
48. Hutchings, Suzi (2020) Indigenous hip-hop speaking truth to power, Overland, 240, 43-48.
Music
96
96. Tjitayi, Katrina and Lewis, Sandra (2011) Envisioning lives at Ernabella. In: Eickelkamp, Ute (Ed.) Growing up in Central Australia: New Anthropological Studies of Aboriginal Childhood and Adolescence. London: Berghahn Books, Incorporated, pp. 49-62.
Identity
85
85. Sanders, Nina (2020) Apsáalooke Women and Warriors. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Material Culture
27
27. Coulthard, Glenn Sean (2014) Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Identity
89
89. Skeene, George (2008) Two Cultures: Children from the Aboriginal Camps and Reserves in Cairns City. Cairns: The Rams Skull Press.
Identity
51
51. Hutchings, Suzi (2018) Beyond post-colonial paradigms: Incorporating Indigenous knowledges theory into music therapy practice. In: Hadley, Susan and Crooke, Alexander (Eds.) (Post)Colonial Music Therapy. EBarcelona Publishers.
Music
22
22. Carlson, Bronwyn, Harris, Michelle, and Nakata, Martin (Eds.) (2013) The Politics of Identity: Emerging Indigeneity. Sydney: University of Technology Sydney.
Identity
39
39. Heiss, Anita (2012) Am I Black Enough for You? Sydney: Bantam Press.
Identity
53
53. Hutchings, Suzi and Crooke, Alexander (2017) Indigenous Australian hip-hop for increasing social awareness and celebrating contemporary Indigenous identity. Paper presented at MUSICULT '17 / IV. International Music and Cultural Studies Conference, Istanbul, June 2017.
Identity, Music
94
94. Stolte, Gretchen M., Flinders, Lynelle, Creed, Cheryl, and Tommy Pau, Robert  (2015) An Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander approach to intellectual property: Industry insight into the development of Indigenous cultural protocols, International Journal of Cultural and Creative Industries, 2(3), 64-75.
Material Culture, Torres Straight Islander Studies