TY  - JOUR
TI  - Dukarr lakarama: Listening to Guwak, talking back to space colonization
AU  - Bawaka Country
AU  - Mitchell, A.
AU  - Wright, S.
AU  - Suchet-Pearson, S.
AU  - Lloyd, K.
AU  - Burarrwanga, L.
AU  - Ganambarr, R.
AU  - Ganambarr-Stubbs, M.
AU  - Ganambarr, B.
AU  - Maymuru, D.
AU  - Maymuru, R.
T2  - Political Geography
AB  - Guided by the Yolŋu songspiral of Guwak, in this collaboratively written paper we argue that the extension of earth-based colonization into space disrupts and colonises the plural lifeworlds of many Indigenous people who have ongoing connections with and beyond the sky. Listening to Guwak, we speak back to promoters of space colonization who frame their projects as harmless according to four core understandings. First, they assume that there are no people or other beings Indigenous to what they think of as ‘outer space’, and that none of the Indigenous people or beings who also live on earth have travelled to or inhabited this space. Second, they assume that space is dead or non-sentient in itself, and that it is incapable of fostering life. Third, they understand that space is cleanly separated from earth, meaning that what happens in space has no effect on earth, or vice versa. Fourth, because of these three assumptions, they do not identify any ethical objections to occupying and exploiting space. We follow Guwak as she undermines each of these assumptions, by moving through and as Sky Country. These learnings emphasize the presence and role of Law, order and negotiation in Sky Country; the active, animate, agential presence of beings in Sky Country; the connectivity and co-becoming-ness of earth and sky; and the ethical obligations to attend to and care for and as Sky Country. We contend that the argument applies to many worlds that intimately connect with, extend into (or beyond) what Western sciences call ‘outer space’. Indeed, we hope that in sharing Guwak we encourage broader conversations about Sky Country and its relations with other Indigenous worlds.
DA  - 2020/08/01/
PY  - 2020
DO  - 10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102218
DP  - ScienceDirect
VL  - 81
SP  - 102218
J2  - Political Geography
LA  - N230: Yolngu Matha; dhg Dhangu-Djangu
SN  - 0962-6298
ST  - Dukarr lakarama
UR  - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629818304086
Y2  - 2020/10/28/06:23:44
KW  - Indigenous geographies
ER  - 

TY  - JOUR
TI  - Gathering of the Clouds: Attending to Indigenous understandings of time and climate through songspirals
AU  - Bawaka Country
AU  - Wright, S.
AU  - Suchet-Pearson, S.
AU  - Lloyd, K.
AU  - Burarrwanga, L.
AU  - Ganambarr, R.
AU  - Ganambarr-Stubbs, M.
AU  - Ganambarr, B.
AU  - Maymuru, D.
T2  - Geoforum
AB  - New engagements between humans and with the environment are vitally necessary in this perilous period of intensified environmental change. Climate change policy interventions and public discourses persistently frame climate as outside human experience, something to be controlled and understood within a strict, linear, universalist and ultimately colonising understanding of time. Yet constructions that suggest that humans are separate from, act upon or may manage or control a passive environment may be offensive to a sentient world, while relegation of the past to ‘the past’ ignores the many enduring violences of colonialism and multiple sustained efforts to nurture multi-temporal relationships of belonging and care. In this paper, our more-than-human Indigenous and non-Indigenous research collective share understandings of time led by the Yolŋu songspiral, Wukun or Gathering of the Clouds, from northern Australia. Wukun challenges many orders and disciplines of colonial structures, including those associated with time and climate change. In place of an abstract, distant and unbound climate, locked into a linear, passive timescape, Wukun suggests time as multiple, agential, and a manifestation of co-becoming. Rather than being responsible to or responsible for climate as something passive and separate from humans, Wukun signals a need to cultivate abilities to attend deeply to place’s agency and act through co-becoming. In this way, we may understand and respond to climate change as relational and patterned, embodied and affective, and co-constituted through more-than-human placed and multi-temporal relationships.
DA  - 2020/01/01/
PY  - 2020
DO  - 10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.05.017
DP  - ScienceDirect
VL  - 108
SP  - 295
EP  - 304
J2  - Geoforum
LA  - N230: Yolngu Matha; dhg Dhangu-Djangu
SN  - 0016-7185
ST  - Gathering of the Clouds
UR  - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718519301642
Y2  - 2020/10/28/06:34:04
KW  - Aboriginal songlines
KW  - Climate change
KW  - Indigenous geographies
KW  - Time and temporality
KW  - Weather
ER  -