ABSTRACT
Environmentalists, Indigenous rights activists, and academics are rightly called to account for imposing romanticised and essentialised versions of Indigenous peoples and their world views, and for mobilising these identity politics for their own political ends. This chapter discusses the generative romance of co-becoming Country and how the collective understands romance and romanticisation. It reflects on how the work embraces risk and vulnerability. The chapter also discusses the all-too-real dangers of romanticising and essentialising the identity positions and relationships that accompany the work. Romanticisation has long been seen by Indigenous people and postcolonial thinkers as a deeply colonising process. Imagining colonised peoples in a stereotypically 'romantic' vision denies their diverse agencies, identities and lived experiences, and has served to validate colonial policies of expansion and appropriation. Marr is multi-sensory and more-than-human. Marr is the specific feelings of being on, with and as Country.
