ABSTRACT
In our research together as Bawaka, an Indigenous homeland in the north of Australia, we have woven ourselves together, as family co-becoming with each other, co-becoming place and co-becoming time/s. We have done this in terms of what we know, what we do, how we do things, as well as who we are. We are five Indigenous Yolŋu women from north east Arnhem Land and we are three non-Yolŋu women from ‘down south’ in New South Wales. We are Laklakinspiring elder-her three sisters Ritjilili, Merrki, Banbapuy, and their daughter Djawundil. We are teachers, community leaders, tourism business owners and hosts. We are Sandie, Sarah and Kate, human geographers based in Australian universities.1 And we have co-become together as Bawaka with the three academics being adopted into family as sisters, mothers and grandmothers. Our doing together includes weaving baskets and gathering gunga (pandanus): dyeing, splitting, finding natural dyes, passing the gunga through our fingers, looping, threading, drawing together,2 and, while doing so, talking, drinking tea, eating, caring for each other and for our children (Bawaka Country including Suchet-Pearson et al. 2013). In these and other ways, we have made time/s, been time/s, lived time/s,
attended to time/s as they communicate with us, and practiced being in the moment of co-becoming together, a moment that co-becomes with what has gone before and what will come. Time/s have become the eternal present/past/future, and we have woven ourselves into more-than-linear multiple patterns of co-emergence and responsibility, the patterns and rhythms of Yolŋu Law/lore, that underpin, allow and bring forth Country.3
