In this paper, we engage with the Goŋ Gurtha songspiral, shared on/by/with/as Bawaka Country in Yolŋu Northeast Arnhem Land, Australia, to provide a basis for re-thinking responsibility in the context of ongoing Eurocentric colonising processes. Goŋ Gurtha encourages us to consider two key aspects of responsibility – response and ability. We argue that Yolŋu relational ontologies conceive response-abilities as requiring an ability to pay close and careful attention as part of more-than-human worlds, and an imperative to respond as part of these worlds. As such, rather than being responsible to or for others, we seek to respond as, emphasising our emergent co-becoming in more-than-human, situated, ethical ways. Goŋ Gurtha guides the paper through four aspects of these response-abilities: response-abilities as songspirals; response-abilities as continuity; response-abilities as academics and response-abilities beyond Bawaka. In doing so, we understand response-abilities as more-than-human co-becomings enacted in contingent ways that none-the-less need to be grounded in deep obligations of more-than-human kinship.
BattisteM (2008) Research ethics for protecting indigenous knowledge and heritage: institutional and researcher responsibilities. In Denzin NK, Lincoln, YS and Smith LT (eds) Handbook of critical and indigenous methodologies. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Ltd, pp. 219-243.
3.
Blakeman DB (2015) Exploring the role of affect in Yolŋu exchange. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 26(3), 398–413.
4.
Bodkin-Andrews G, Bodkin AF, Andrews UG, et al. (2016) Mudjil’dya’ djurali Dabuwa’ wurrata (How the white waratah became red): D’harawal storytelling and Welcome to Country “controversies”. AlterNative 12: 480–498.
5.
BrayboyBMJ (2013)
Tidemarks and legacies: Building on the past and moving to the future. Anthropology & Education Quarterly44: 1–10.
6.
BriggM (2016)
Engaging indigenous knowledges: From sovereign to relational knowers. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education45: 152–158.
7.
ChiewF (2014)
Posthuman ethics with Cary Wolfe and Karen Barad: Animal compassion as trans-species entanglement. Theory, Culture & Society31: 51–69.
8.
Christie M (1994) Grounded and ex centric knowledges: exploring Aboriginal alternatives to Western thinking. In J. Edwards (Ed.), Thinking: International Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Victoria: Hawker Brownlow Education, pp. 24–34.
9.
Christie M (2005) Aboriginal knowledge traditions in digital environments. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 34, 61–66.
10.
Coddington K (2016) Voice under scrutiny: Feminist methods, anticolonial responses, and new methodologicaltools. The Professional Geographer 69: 314–320.
CountryBLloydKWrightS, et al. (2018) Meeting across ontologies: Grappling with an ethics of care in our human-more-than-human collaborative work. In: Haladay J and Hicks S (eds) Unsustainable Environments. Michigan: Michigan State University Press, pp. 219–243.
13.
CountryBSuchet-PearsonSWrightS, et al. (2013)
Caring as country: Towards an ontology of co-becoming in natural resource management. Asia Pacific Viewpoint54: 185–197.
14.
CountryBWrightSSuchet-PearsonS, et al. (2016)
Co-becoming Bawaka: Towards a relational understanding of place/space. Progress in Human Geography40: 455–475.
15.
CountryBWrightSSuchet-PearsonS, et al. (forthcoming) Everything is love: Mobilising knowledges, identities and places as Bawaka. In: Palomino-Schalscha M and Gombay N (eds) The Politics of Indigenous Spaces. London: Routledge.
16.
De LeeuwS (2017)
Writing as righting: Truth and reconciliation, poetics, and new geo-graphing in colonial Canada. The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe Canadien61: 306–318.
17.
DegerJ (2007)
Seeing the invisible: Yolngu video as revelatory ritual. Visual Anthropology20: 103–121.
18.
Fisher K, Williams M, FitzHerbert S, Instone L, Duffy M, Wright S., . . . Ganambarr R (2015) Writing difference differently. New Zealand Geographer, 71(1), 18–33.
19.
Gruenewald DA (2003) The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place. Educational Researcher, 32(4), 3–12.
20.
Haraway D (2015) A curious practice. Angelaki 20: 5–14.
21.
Howitt R (2011) Knowing/doing. In: Vincent J Del Casino Jr, Mary E Thomas, Paul Cloke,et al. (eds) A Companion to Social Geography. 1st edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., pp. 131–145.
22.
HuntS(2013) Ontologies of indigeneity: The politics of embodying a concept. Cultural Geographies 21(1), 27-32.
23.
JazeelT (2012)
Postcolonialism: Orientalism and the geographical imagination. Geography97: 4–11.
24.
JazeelT (2016)
Between area and discipline: Progress, knowledge production and the geographies of Geography. Progress in Human Geography40: 649–667.
25.
JazeelTMcFarlaneC (2010)
The limits of responsibility: A postcolonial politics of academic knowledge production. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers35: 109–124.
26.
JohnsonJTLarsenSC (2013) A Deeper Sense of Place: Stories and Journeys of Collaboration in Indigenous Research.
Corvallis:
Oregon State University Press.
27.
JohnsonJTLarsenSC (2017) Being Together in Place: Indigenous Coexistence in a More than Human World.
Minnesota:
University of Minnesota Press.
28.
Keen I (1994) Knowledge and Secrecy in an Aboriginal Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
29.
Larsen SC and Johnson JT (2017) Being Together in Place: Indigenous Coexistence in a More Than Human World. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
30.
Lawson V (2007) Geographies of Care and Responsibility. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 97(1), 1–11.
LouisRP (2007)
Can you hear us now? Voices from the margin: Using indigenous methodologies in geographic research. Geographical Research45: 130–139.
33.
MeissnerH (2017)
Politics as encounter and response-ability: Learning to converse with enigmatic others. Revista Estudos Feministas25: 935–944.
34.
Morphy H (1983) ‘Now you understand’ – an analysis of the way Yolngu have used sacred knowledge to retain their autonomy. In: N. Peterson & M. Langton (Eds) Aborigines, Land and Land Rights. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, pp. 110–133.
35.
Morphy H and Morphy F (2006) Tasting the waters - Discriminating identities in the waters of Blue Mud Bay. Journal of Material Culture 11(1-2), 67–85.
36.
MosesAD (2010)
Time, indigeneity, and peoplehood: the postcolony in Australia. Postcolonial Studies13: 9–32.
37.
MosesAD (2011)
Official apologies, reconciliation, and settler colonialism: Australian indigenous alterity and political agency. Citizenship Studies15: 145–159.
38.
NoxoloPRaghuramPMadgeC (2008)
‘Geography is Pregnant’ and ‘Geography’s Milk is Flowing’: Metaphors for a postcolonial discipline?Environment and Planning D: Society and Space26: 146–168.
39.
NxumaloF (2016)
Towards ‘refiguring presences’ as an anti-colonial orientation to research in early childhood studies. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education29: 640–654.
40.
Olsen TA (2018) Privilege, Decentring and the Challenge of Being (Non-) Indigenous in the Study of Indigenous Issues. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education 47(2): 206–215.
41.
Porr M and Bell HR (2011) ‘Rock-art’, ‘Animism’ and two-way thinking: Towards a complementaryepistemology in the understanding of material culture and ‘Rock-art’ of hunting and gatheringpeople. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 19: 161–205.
42.
RadcliffeSA (2017)
Decolonising geographical knowledges. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers42: 329–333.
43.
RoseDB (1996) Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness.
Canberra:
Australian Heritage Commission.
44.
RoseDB (2007) Fiona Magowan, ‘Melodies of mourning: Music & emotion in Northern Australia’. Australian Humanities Review42: 431–445.
45.
RoweACTuckE (2016)
Settler colonialism and cultural studies. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies17: 3–13.
46.
RuddickSM (2017)
Grounding our subjectivity in the semiotic web. Dialogues in Human Geography7: 161–165.
47.
SidawayJDWoonCYJacobsJM (2014)
Planetary postcolonialism. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography35: 4–21.
48.
SnelgroveCDhamoonRKCorntasselJ (2014)
Unsettling settler colonialism: The discourse and politics of settlers, and solidarity with Indigenous nations. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society3: 1–32.
49.
StrakoschEMacounA (2012) The vanishing endpoint of settler colonialism. Arena Journal 37–38: 40–62.
50.
Suchet-PearsonSWrightSLloydK, et al. (2013) A footprint in a rock: Entwining lives and co-constructing ‘the field’ in Australia. In: Johnson JT and Larsen SC (eds) A Deeper Sense of Place: Stories and Journeys of Collaboration in Indigenous Research. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, pp. 21–40.
51.
TallBearK (2014)
Standing with and speaking as faith: A feminist-indigenous approach to inquiry. Journal of Research Practice10: 17.
52.
Tuck E and Yang KW (2012) Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1: 1–40.
53.
Vizenor G (1999) Manifest manners: narratives on postindian survivance. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.
54.
Watson H with the Yolngu Community at Yirrkala, and Chambers DW (1989) Singing the land, signing the land: a portfolio of exhibits. Geelong, Vic: Deakin University Press.
55.
WensingEPorterL (2015)
Unsettling planning’s paradigms: Towards a just accommodation of Indigenous rights and interests in Australian urban planning?Australian Planner53: 91–102.
56.
Williams NM (1986) The Yolngu and their land: a system of land tenure and the fight for its recognition. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.
57.
WilsonS (2008) Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods/Shawn Wilson.
Black Point, NS:
Fernwood Publishing.
58.
YunupinguDMullerS (2009)
Cross-cultural challenges for Indigenous sea country management in Australia. Australasian Journal of Environmental Management16: 158–167.
