The Western archive is characterised by two types of knowledge organisation that are foreign to Indigenous knowledges: Firstly it is based on a strong sense of dualism; the use of oppositional categories such as man/woman; man (human)/nature; mind/matter; spirit/materiality, which again is expressed in time differentiated into past/present/future. Secondly knowledge is objectified; it is knowledge about, not with, and it is highly segmented into different areas of knowledge speciality that are in turn reflected in the education system and the professions and areas of government responsibility.

Margo Neale (featured at right) suggests that the Songlines project can be conceived as a Third Archive, a bridge between the First Archive of Indigenous knowledges, kept alive in the songlines that crisscross Australia, and the Second Archive, that of the Western Knowledge system, imported into Australia through colonisation and settlement and transmitted through our education systems and institutions of government, business and civil society.