Introduction

We begin our volume with a deliberate positioning of First Nations voices and Knowledges first. While subsequent chapters are grouped around specific themes, the chapter presented demonstrates a holistic approach that is resistant to this kind of siloing. We also wish in our small way to acknowledge and recognise the sovereignty of First Nations peoples globally and the legacy and longevity of Indigenous Knowledges that traverse and transcend disciplines that we (in the West) refer to as ‘philosophy’, ‘ethics’, and ‘aesthetics’. Building on the important essay by Gus Stadler (2015) ‘On whiteness and sound studies’ and Jennifer Lynn Stoever's (2016) Sonic Colour Line, sound studies scholars have begun to recognise the dearth of non-Anglo European voices represented in the field (see Bull & Cobussen, 2020). We had hoped to include more than just one contribution from First Nations perspectives in this volume, but it is perhaps unsurprising that the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic hit our First Nations contributors the hardest, with two initial chapter proposals having to be withdrawn as events unfolded. Dylan Robinson's (2020) recent work Hungry Listening represents the first major contribution to sound studies from a First Nations perspective, and this has provided an important touchstone for us. Robinson describes, among other things, how Indigenous forms of listening are ‘a form of attention in which we are attentive not just to sound but to the fullest range of sensory experience that connects us to place’ (p. 72).