The SHARP 25^th-Anniversary Fellowship supported the research of a case study in my doctoral thesis at The University of Queensland, which is examining minority-language publishing in Australia. The  case study was with my partner organisation, Muurrbay Aboriginal Language & Culture Co-operative. Muurrbay is a language centre which publishes materials in seven Aboriginal Languages in the state  of New South Wales, Australia, and it is based in the small oceanside town of Nambucca Heads. (Now is the moment to Google how beautiful it is!) To conduct my research – ethnography,  documentation and interviews – I relocated from Ipswich, QLD, to Nambucca Heads, NSW, between  February and July 2025. I wanted to learn how, in practice, a small community organisation had  chosen to make books to reawaken sleeping Indigenous Languages – not just once, but through 40  years of publishing. This fellowship funded 10 weeks of accommodation at tourist-town rates so I could share the same office as Muurrbay staff, publications and Aboriginal Community. 

I didn’t want to be in Nambucca Heads just for the views (gorgeous!) or to hold in-person interviews with Muurrbay’s authors, linguists, designers and readers – although of course those recordings made better “data” because I had built friendships and working relationships on-site. Nor was it for the calibre of documentary evidence that I amassed, far more abundant and fascinating than any I could have gathered via the internet or interlibrary loans. My image and document files expanded as I made countless trips to visit bookshops, libraries, museums, cultural centres and national parks, searching out Muurrbay’s materials where they were archived, held, displayed, used and sold. 

The main reason for completing my research in Nambucca Heads was to meet a parallel aim of my research: to contribute more to my partner organisation than I “took” in research data. Drawing on my 20+ years of experience in the book trades, I proposed to Muurrbay that I would like to volunteer my publishing skills while doing my research. I figured my broad-based professional know-how  (writing, translating, editing, production management, rights sales, bookselling, library studies…) might prove helpful to a small NGO – and I was right.

Over the nearly five months I worked with Muurrbay, I went from learning how Muurrbay’s  publishing worked to providing specific documentation, training and mentoring to staff so they could  keep making beautiful, relevant Language materials for their Communities. I took stock of the books, audio, DVDs, posters and other materials the organisation had published in its four decades of work, and collated this information into a dataset for Muurrbay to keep and update. (With permission, a copy has since been provided to AustLit [the national literary database] for greater dissemination to readers, researchers and Aboriginal Communities.) I did small brainstorming activities with various staff to understand how Muurrbay coordinated its publishing processes, then reworked this  information into an interactive, step-by-step training process of what needs to be done to create a  book or video or… anything. I compiled manuals on metadata and legal-deposit requirements,  provided guidance on what to look for when contracting an illustrator, editor or designer, and helped  the office staff spruce up the mail-order process and the little bookshop near the front door. 

As you can tell, I love the nitty-gritty, practical side of making books – and it doesn’t hurt when the people you’re sharing your knowledge with are just dying to learn more. Plus, another PhD goal was to make sure that I got to make books while I was researching them; collaborating with Muurrbay was clearly a win on all fronts.

One of the most important contributions I made to Muurrbay was to help the board and staff gain clarity on how making books and publishing materials fits into their organisation – now, today, in  2025. I facilitated a participatory workshop which let the team consider, together, what materials they wanted to make (language-teaching materials), who they were making them for (Community!), who could author them (those with Community support), and for what reason (“to keep the Language alive”). These results were all held tacitly by Muurrbay’s workers, but the workshop allowed them to explore their views with peers, and come to a shared, positive understanding of  how important publishing was for the organisation’s core work. It was an exhausting day of sticky note activities, shared brainstorming, and group prioritisation – but immensely satisfying for all  concerned.

As for the small matter of my PhD research per se… well, that happened too, all in the same time period. There were, of course, the standard research processes: interviews, ethnographic notes,  unending photos of books, detailed searches for Muurrbay titles in local library holdings. But by far the strongest findings came from being on Gumbaynggirr Country in the company of Muurrbay  colleagues. The training and mentoring processes gave me a nuanced understanding of how different  Muurrbay workers saw the entangled relationship between publishing materials, revitalising  Languages, strengthening Community and living (on) Country. An outing to locked-up areas of the national park, where the Aboriginal ranger said that certain forest places were so old he could only  speak his Language there, not English. Visits to local writers’ festivals and Indigenous events that showed how Muurrbay was synonymous with its local Communities – Muurrbay’s name popped up  at each event, regardless of whether it was officially part of the day’s activities. Seeing Gumbaynggirr  Language on signs at lookouts and waterfalls and headlands taught me how Muurrbay was using the “linguistic landscape” to publish its Languages on Country, where they belonged. And learning how Muurrbay’s decades of book-making had slowly but surely created an ecosystem of books in and about Gumbaynggirr Language, showing that the committed, loving work of creating materials in Aboriginal Languages can bear fruit in people, skills and publications. 

I have not yet fully processed my research “data”, but as a research experience I suspect this one will remain unparalleled. And I offer SHARP my deep gratitude for helping enable it. Thank you. 

---

Jodie Lea Martire BA, CELTA, Grad Dip Sci(Info Serv), MCommun(CSC) 

PhD candidate at UQ’s Centre for Communication and Social Change 

ORCiD ID: 0000-0002-8997-8755 

j.martire@student.uq.edu.au | www.jodiemartire.net 

With gratitude and respect for the Jagera and Turrbal peoples of Ipswich and Brisbane