http://www.duckdigital.net/FOD/FOD0781.html

Blinding the Duck is an online essay by an Australian academic, Simon Pockley, that “explores some of the complex issues arising from the use of digital images of Aboriginal people and material in The Flight of Ducks (a participatory online documentary built around a collection of objects from a camel expedition into Central Australia in 1933).”

The Flight of the Ducks was the author’s online PhD “documentary”. Images from the expedition, such as those of people who have since died, are displayed online, and have provoked shock and anger amongst Aboriginal people in Australia. Pockley tells the detailed story of this controversy – how some see the project as evil cultural appropriation, and how the University removed the project from its web servers.

Pockley says “This paper is a description of the methods used in The Flight of Ducks to accommodate Aboriginal cultural sensitivities…. It seeks to work towards the development of a protocol by which Australian historical material with Aboriginal references can be used online without…cultural conflict…”