For millennia the physical and spirit lives of marine turtles and Torres Strait Islanders have intertwined. Our oral histories and stories of turtle and turtling privilege relational ontologies that predate western science ways of knowing our world. A turtles all the way up hunting story will be shared as a prompt for thinking about how we listen to and what we can learn from stories and beliefs that live outside the nature/culture binary.

Turtles play a role in the foundation of knowledge systems in various cultures and societies, particularly in conveying important protocols and values about how to interact with others in the world. This premise illuminates how problems and challenges that are often associated with indigeneity are similarly mapped onto the Singapore Live Turtle and Tortoise Museum (LTTM). This presentation discusses the findings of a documentation project initiated when the LTTM faced closure associated with state and city planning. Established in 2001 by the father-daughter team Danny and Connie Tan, and prompted by a need to house their numerous companion turtles and tortoises, the LTTM today consists of a private collection of over 2000 artifacts and objects in the form of (but not made of) turtles, and approximately 600 individual turtles and tortoises (many as a result of having been surrendered by members of the public anticipating the punitive regulation of the CITES treaty through the Singapore Animal and Birds Act of 2002). The LTTM occupies a liminal space within the Singaporean tabula rasa due to its geographic location between its former location and anticipated “final” location, and its boundary work to negotiate institutional legitimacy as a museum and educational facility distinct from zoos or sanctuaries. Its persistence over time raises questions about the right of stewardship of the combined biological and cultural practices of knowledge – in this case, about “turtle knowledge”—and how that knowledge is practiced, distributed, and passed down to the next generation.