Laklak Burarrwanga
Biographic Data
| ID | 87832 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Laklak Burarrwanga |
| GIVEN NAMES | Laklak |
| FAMILY NAME | Burarrwanga |
| SIGNATURE | BURARRWANGA L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Macquarie University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 752 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Songspirals as care infrastructure: Binding human and more-than-human worlds in and as sky Country
Bala ga' lili: Communicating, Relating and Co-Creating Balance Through Relationships of Reciprocity
Intercultural communication at Bawaka often brings ŋäpaki, non-Indigenous visitors, into a series of new relationships–with Yolŋu people, with each other, with place, and with themselves. From a Bawaka Yolŋu ontology, this is part of bala ga’ lili, giving and taking, co-creating balance through relationships of reciprocity and responsibility. This paper is a collaboratively written piece by Yolŋu hosts and non-Yolŋu academics as part of Bawaka Co…
Songspirals Bring Country Into Existence: Singing More-Than-Human and Relational Creativity
Songspirals bring Country into existence. Co-authored by a more-than-human, Yolŋu-led collaboration, this article centers Yolŋu understandings of time and place and elaborates on our work together through a spiral-based framework. Our Indigenous and Country-led Collective nourishes and shares some Yolŋu understandings of songspirals to enable, enrich, and awaken Country; to challenge and expand Western academic frameworks; and to contribute towar…
The Creatures Collective: Manifestings
This piece explores the work and entanglements of our research collective, formed in 2016. First, we collectively articulate the ethos and the motivations that inform the ways in which we labor to engage with complex, plural, multi-vocal experiences of extinction, "the Anthropocene," and earth violence as they are felt and known across the diverse communities we represent. Then, drawing on more than three years of work across relations that tie u…
Bunbum ga dhä-yutagum: To Make It Right Again, to Remake
We say it becomes dhawaḏatj. This is muddled up; the process is not right. In songspirals and ceremonies, when things become dhawaḏatj everyone says ‘errgh’ and claps to erase the mistake and start again. Songspirals have been here forever. They are Rom, Law. They continually bring us and everything in our Country into being. They must not be muddled. We are still singing and keening these songspirals. As Bawaka Country, we say ‘errgh’. Too much …
Goŋ Gurtha: Enacting response-abilities as situated co-becoming
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 an…
Meaningful tourist transformations with Country at Bawaka, North East Arnhem Land, northern Australia
In this article, we discuss how human and more-than-human agencies, experienced and interpreted through emotions and sensory experiences, actively shape and enable transformative learning for tourists. We examine the narratives of two visitors to Bawaka Cultural Enterprises, an Indigenous-run tourism venture in North East Arnhem Land, northern Australia. We attend particularly to the more-than-human place of Bawaka and the ways the visitors are d…
The politics of ontology and ontological politics
There is a politics to what ontologies are recognized as existing; what pasts, presents and futures are made real; what configurations of place, time and being are validated; and what ethics underpin the reality of our connections with and as the world. And there is a powerful violence associated with their dismissal. In responding to Simon and Randalls’ discussion of the ontological politics of resilience, we consider ontological politics in an …
Morrku Mangawu-Knowledge on the Land: Mobilising Yolŋu Mathematics from Bawaka, North East Arnhem Land, to Reveal the Situatedness of All Knowledges
Yolŋu mathematics refers to the complex matrix of patterns, relationships, shapes, motions and rhythms of time and space that underpin the ways that Yolŋu people, Indigenous people of North East Arnhem Land in northern Australia, nourish and are nourished by their environments. Through its fundamental reliance on human and more-than-human connectivity and situatedness, Yolŋu people mobilise the concept of Yolŋu mathematics to challenge Western kn…
Transforming Tourists and "Culturalising Commerce": Indigenous Tourism at Bawaka in Northern Australia
There is currently an increasing interest in Indigenous tourism in Australia. Policies in Australia often use the rhetoric of sustainability, but position Indigenous tourism as a means for economic growth and development (Whitford & Ruhanen, 2010). This study shows that interpersonal relationships, cultural and social interactions, and learning are key to achieving the goals of Indigenous tourism providers or “hosts,” and to the experiences of to…
Writing difference differently
This paper investigates the writing of situated knowledge and explores the possibilities of enacting difference by writing differently. We present a selection of research stories in which carrier bags, sounds, baskets, gardens and potatoes are interpreted less as objects of research or metaphors to aid in analysing phenomena, than as mediators of the stories. Our stories emphasise the ontological politics of engaging with and representing the rel…
Co-becoming Bawaka: Towards a relational understanding of place/space
We invite readers to dig for ganguri (yams) at and with Bawaka, an Indigenous Homeland in northern Australia, and, in doing so, consider an Indigenous-led understanding of relational space/place. We draw on the concept of gurrutu to illustrate the limits of western ontologies, open up possibilities for other ways of thinking and theorizing, and give detail and depth to the notion of space/place as emergent co-becoming. With Bawaka as lead author,…
Working with and learning from Country: Decentring Human Author-Ity
In this paper, we invite you night fishing for wäkun at Bawaka, an Indigenous homeland in North East Arnhem Land, Australia. As we hunt wäkun, we discuss our work as an Indigenous and non-Indigenous, human and more-than-human research collective trying to attend deeply to the messages we send and receive from, with and as a part of Country. The wäkun, and all the animals, plants, winds, processes, things, dreams and people that emerge together in…
C aring as C ountry: Towards an ontology of co‐becoming in natural resource management
This collaboratively written paper takes the reader on a journey to B awaka, in N orth E ast A rnhem L and, northern A ustralia, to explore how a Y olŋu ontology of co‐becoming can inform natural resource management ( NRM ) theory and practice. By focusing on the process of gathering and sharing miyapunu mapu (turtle eggs) and the foundational Y olŋu concept of wetj , we challenge NRM to take seriously Indigenous ways of knowing and becoming, and…
Telling stories in, through and with Country: Engaging with Indigenous and more-than-human methodologies at Bawaka, NE Australia
Recent work in ethnographic and qualitative methods highlights the limitations of academic accounts of research interactions that aim for total objectivity and authority. Efforts to move beyond totalizing accounts of both the research experience and the investigator raise questions of how to engage with, make sense of, and (re)present embodied, sensual, visceral, and the ultimately placed qualities of collaborative research interactions. Our resp…
Reframing Development through Collaboration: Towards a relational ontology of connection in Bawaka, North East Arnhem Land
This paper draws on the collaborative experiences of three female academics and three generations of Yolŋu women from an Aboriginal family from Bawaka, North East Arnhem Land to contribute to debates in development around participation, power and justice. Through a reflection on the process of collaboratively co-authoring two books and associated outputs, the paper discusses the way the collaboration is guided by collective priorities that are he…
Co-becoming Bawaka: Towards a relational understanding of place/space
We invite readers to dig for ganguri (yams) at and with Bawaka, an Indigenous Homeland in northern Australia, and, in doing so, consider an Indigenous-led understanding of relational space/place. We draw on the concept of gurrutu to illustrate the limits of western ontologies, open up possibilities for other ways of thinking and theorizing, and give detail and depth to the notion of space/place as emergent co-becoming. With Bawaka as lead author,…
Working with and learning from Country: Decentring Human Author-Ity
In this paper, we invite you night fishing for wäkun at Bawaka, an Indigenous homeland in North East Arnhem Land, Australia. As we hunt wäkun, we discuss our work as an Indigenous and non-Indigenous, human and more-than-human research collective trying to attend deeply to the messages we send and receive from, with and as a part of Country. The wäkun, and all the animals, plants, winds, processes, things, dreams and people that emerge together in…
C aring as C ountry: Towards an ontology of co‐becoming in natural resource management
This collaboratively written paper takes the reader on a journey to B awaka, in N orth E ast A rnhem L and, northern A ustralia, to explore how a Y olŋu ontology of co‐becoming can inform natural resource management ( NRM ) theory and practice. By focusing on the process of gathering and sharing miyapunu mapu (turtle eggs) and the foundational Y olŋu concept of wetj , we challenge NRM to take seriously Indigenous ways of knowing and becoming, and…
Telling stories in, through and with Country: Engaging with Indigenous and more-than-human methodologies at Bawaka, NE Australia
Recent work in ethnographic and qualitative methods highlights the limitations of academic accounts of research interactions that aim for total objectivity and authority. Efforts to move beyond totalizing accounts of both the research experience and the investigator raise questions of how to engage with, make sense of, and (re)present embodied, sensual, visceral, and the ultimately placed qualities of collaborative research interactions. Our resp…
Goŋ Gurtha: Enacting response-abilities as situated co-becoming
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 an…
Reframing Development through Collaboration: Towards a relational ontology of connection in Bawaka, North East Arnhem Land
This paper draws on the collaborative experiences of three female academics and three generations of Yolŋu women from an Aboriginal family from Bawaka, North East Arnhem Land to contribute to debates in development around participation, power and justice. Through a reflection on the process of collaboratively co-authoring two books and associated outputs, the paper discusses the way the collaboration is guided by collective priorities that are he…
The Creatures Collective: Manifestings
This piece explores the work and entanglements of our research collective, formed in 2016. First, we collectively articulate the ethos and the motivations that inform the ways in which we labor to engage with complex, plural, multi-vocal experiences of extinction, "the Anthropocene," and earth violence as they are felt and known across the diverse communities we represent. Then, drawing on more than three years of work across relations that tie u…
Writing difference differently
This paper investigates the writing of situated knowledge and explores the possibilities of enacting difference by writing differently. We present a selection of research stories in which carrier bags, sounds, baskets, gardens and potatoes are interpreted less as objects of research or metaphors to aid in analysing phenomena, than as mediators of the stories. Our stories emphasise the ontological politics of engaging with and representing the rel…
The politics of ontology and ontological politics
There is a politics to what ontologies are recognized as existing; what pasts, presents and futures are made real; what configurations of place, time and being are validated; and what ethics underpin the reality of our connections with and as the world. And there is a powerful violence associated with their dismissal. In responding to Simon and Randalls’ discussion of the ontological politics of resilience, we consider ontological politics in an …
Bunbum ga dhä-yutagum: To Make It Right Again, to Remake
We say it becomes dhawaḏatj. This is muddled up; the process is not right. In songspirals and ceremonies, when things become dhawaḏatj everyone says ‘errgh’ and claps to erase the mistake and start again. Songspirals have been here forever. They are Rom, Law. They continually bring us and everything in our Country into being. They must not be muddled. We are still singing and keening these songspirals. As Bawaka Country, we say ‘errgh’. Too much …
Meaningful tourist transformations with Country at Bawaka, North East Arnhem Land, northern Australia
In this article, we discuss how human and more-than-human agencies, experienced and interpreted through emotions and sensory experiences, actively shape and enable transformative learning for tourists. We examine the narratives of two visitors to Bawaka Cultural Enterprises, an Indigenous-run tourism venture in North East Arnhem Land, northern Australia. We attend particularly to the more-than-human place of Bawaka and the ways the visitors are d…
Bala ga' lili: Communicating, Relating and Co-Creating Balance Through Relationships of Reciprocity
Intercultural communication at Bawaka often brings ŋäpaki, non-Indigenous visitors, into a series of new relationships–with Yolŋu people, with each other, with place, and with themselves. From a Bawaka Yolŋu ontology, this is part of bala ga’ lili, giving and taking, co-creating balance through relationships of reciprocity and responsibility. This paper is a collaboratively written piece by Yolŋu hosts and non-Yolŋu academics as part of Bawaka Co…
Morrku Mangawu-Knowledge on the Land: Mobilising Yolŋu Mathematics from Bawaka, North East Arnhem Land, to Reveal the Situatedness of All Knowledges
Yolŋu mathematics refers to the complex matrix of patterns, relationships, shapes, motions and rhythms of time and space that underpin the ways that Yolŋu people, Indigenous people of North East Arnhem Land in northern Australia, nourish and are nourished by their environments. Through its fundamental reliance on human and more-than-human connectivity and situatedness, Yolŋu people mobilise the concept of Yolŋu mathematics to challenge Western kn…
Telling stories in, through and with Country: Engaging with Indigenous and more-than-human methodologies at Bawaka, NE Australia
Recent work in ethnographic and qualitative methods highlights the limitations of academic accounts of research interactions that aim for total objectivity and authority. Efforts to move beyond totalizing accounts of both the research experience and the investigator raise questions of how to engage with, make sense of, and (re)present embodied, sensual, visceral, and the ultimately placed qualities of collaborative research interactions. Our resp…
Reframing Development through Collaboration: Towards a relational ontology of connection in Bawaka, North East Arnhem Land
This paper draws on the collaborative experiences of three female academics and three generations of Yolŋu women from an Aboriginal family from Bawaka, North East Arnhem Land to contribute to debates in development around participation, power and justice. Through a reflection on the process of collaboratively co-authoring two books and associated outputs, the paper discusses the way the collaboration is guided by collective priorities that are he…
C aring as C ountry: Towards an ontology of co‐becoming in natural resource management
This collaboratively written paper takes the reader on a journey to B awaka, in N orth E ast A rnhem L and, northern A ustralia, to explore how a Y olŋu ontology of co‐becoming can inform natural resource management ( NRM ) theory and practice. By focusing on the process of gathering and sharing miyapunu mapu (turtle eggs) and the foundational Y olŋu concept of wetj , we challenge NRM to take seriously Indigenous ways of knowing and becoming, and…
Transforming Tourists and "Culturalising Commerce": Indigenous Tourism at Bawaka in Northern Australia
There is currently an increasing interest in Indigenous tourism in Australia. Policies in Australia often use the rhetoric of sustainability, but position Indigenous tourism as a means for economic growth and development (Whitford & Ruhanen, 2010). This study shows that interpersonal relationships, cultural and social interactions, and learning are key to achieving the goals of Indigenous tourism providers or “hosts,” and to the experiences of to…
Writing difference differently
This paper investigates the writing of situated knowledge and explores the possibilities of enacting difference by writing differently. We present a selection of research stories in which carrier bags, sounds, baskets, gardens and potatoes are interpreted less as objects of research or metaphors to aid in analysing phenomena, than as mediators of the stories. Our stories emphasise the ontological politics of engaging with and representing the rel…
Co-becoming Bawaka: Towards a relational understanding of place/space
We invite readers to dig for ganguri (yams) at and with Bawaka, an Indigenous Homeland in northern Australia, and, in doing so, consider an Indigenous-led understanding of relational space/place. We draw on the concept of gurrutu to illustrate the limits of western ontologies, open up possibilities for other ways of thinking and theorizing, and give detail and depth to the notion of space/place as emergent co-becoming. With Bawaka as lead author,…
Working with and learning from Country: Decentring Human Author-Ity
In this paper, we invite you night fishing for wäkun at Bawaka, an Indigenous homeland in North East Arnhem Land, Australia. As we hunt wäkun, we discuss our work as an Indigenous and non-Indigenous, human and more-than-human research collective trying to attend deeply to the messages we send and receive from, with and as a part of Country. The wäkun, and all the animals, plants, winds, processes, things, dreams and people that emerge together in…
Meaningful tourist transformations with Country at Bawaka, North East Arnhem Land, northern Australia
In this article, we discuss how human and more-than-human agencies, experienced and interpreted through emotions and sensory experiences, actively shape and enable transformative learning for tourists. We examine the narratives of two visitors to Bawaka Cultural Enterprises, an Indigenous-run tourism venture in North East Arnhem Land, northern Australia. We attend particularly to the more-than-human place of Bawaka and the ways the visitors are d…
The politics of ontology and ontological politics
There is a politics to what ontologies are recognized as existing; what pasts, presents and futures are made real; what configurations of place, time and being are validated; and what ethics underpin the reality of our connections with and as the world. And there is a powerful violence associated with their dismissal. In responding to Simon and Randalls’ discussion of the ontological politics of resilience, we consider ontological politics in an …
Morrku Mangawu-Knowledge on the Land: Mobilising Yolŋu Mathematics from Bawaka, North East Arnhem Land, to Reveal the Situatedness of All Knowledges
Yolŋu mathematics refers to the complex matrix of patterns, relationships, shapes, motions and rhythms of time and space that underpin the ways that Yolŋu people, Indigenous people of North East Arnhem Land in northern Australia, nourish and are nourished by their environments. Through its fundamental reliance on human and more-than-human connectivity and situatedness, Yolŋu people mobilise the concept of Yolŋu mathematics to challenge Western kn…
Goŋ Gurtha: Enacting response-abilities as situated co-becoming
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 an…
Bunbum ga dhä-yutagum: To Make It Right Again, to Remake
We say it becomes dhawaḏatj. This is muddled up; the process is not right. In songspirals and ceremonies, when things become dhawaḏatj everyone says ‘errgh’ and claps to erase the mistake and start again. Songspirals have been here forever. They are Rom, Law. They continually bring us and everything in our Country into being. They must not be muddled. We are still singing and keening these songspirals. As Bawaka Country, we say ‘errgh’. Too much …
The Creatures Collective: Manifestings
This piece explores the work and entanglements of our research collective, formed in 2016. First, we collectively articulate the ethos and the motivations that inform the ways in which we labor to engage with complex, plural, multi-vocal experiences of extinction, "the Anthropocene," and earth violence as they are felt and known across the diverse communities we represent. Then, drawing on more than three years of work across relations that tie u…
Songspirals Bring Country Into Existence: Singing More-Than-Human and Relational Creativity
Songspirals bring Country into existence. Co-authored by a more-than-human, Yolŋu-led collaboration, this article centers Yolŋu understandings of time and place and elaborates on our work together through a spiral-based framework. Our Indigenous and Country-led Collective nourishes and shares some Yolŋu understandings of songspirals to enable, enrich, and awaken Country; to challenge and expand Western academic frameworks; and to contribute towar…
Bala ga' lili: Communicating, Relating and Co-Creating Balance Through Relationships of Reciprocity
Intercultural communication at Bawaka often brings ŋäpaki, non-Indigenous visitors, into a series of new relationships–with Yolŋu people, with each other, with place, and with themselves. From a Bawaka Yolŋu ontology, this is part of bala ga’ lili, giving and taking, co-creating balance through relationships of reciprocity and responsibility. This paper is a collaboratively written piece by Yolŋu hosts and non-Yolŋu academics as part of Bawaka Co…
Songspirals as care infrastructure: Binding human and more-than-human worlds in and as sky Country
Sociology (12 works) · Ecology (9 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (9 works) · Indigenous (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (6 works) · Indigenous Health, Education, and Rights (6 works) · Geography (5 works) · Law (5 works)