Political Geography 81 (2020) 102218

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Political Geography
journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/polgeo

Dukarr lakarama: Listening to Guwak, talking back to space colonization

Bawaka Country including, A. Mitchell a, S. Wright c, S. Suchet-Pearson b, K. Lloyd b, *,
L. Burarrwanga b, R. Ganambarr b, M. Ganambarr-Stubbs b, B. Ganambarr b, D. Maymuru b,
R. Maymuru d
a
Balsillie School of International Affairs/Wilfrid Laurier University/University of Waterloo, 67 Erb St W, Waterloo, ON, N2L 6C2, Canada
b
Department of Geography and Planning, Macquarie University, North Ryde, Sydney, NSW, 2109, Australia
c
Discipline of Geography and Environmental Studies, The University of Newcastle, University Dr, Callaghan, NSW, 2308, Australia
d
Dhimurru Aboriginal Corporation, Nhulumbuy, Northern Territory, 0880, Australia

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Guided by the Yolŋu songspiral of Guwak, in this collaboratively written paper we argue that the extension of
Indigenous geographies earth-based colonization into space disrupts and colonises the plural lifeworlds of many Indigenous people who
Indigenous cosmologies have ongoing connections with and beyond the sky. Listening to Guwak, we speak back to promoters of space
Indigenous relationships to outer space
colonization who frame their projects as harmless according to four core understandings. First, they assume that
Indigenous legal orders
Space colonization
there are no people or other beings Indigenous to what they think of as ‘outer space’, and that none of the
Decolonization Indigenous people or beings who also live on earth have travelled to or inhabited this space. Second, they assume
Songspirals that space is dead or non-sentient in itself, and that it is incapable of fostering life. Third, they understand that
space is cleanly separated from earth, meaning that what happens in space has no effect on earth, or vice versa.
Fourth, because of these three assumptions, they do not identify any ethical objections to occupying and
exploiting space.
We follow Guwak as she undermines each of these assumptions, by moving through and as Sky Country. These
learnings emphasize the presence and role of Law, order and negotiation in Sky Country; the active, animate,
agential presence of beings in Sky Country; the connectivity and co-becoming-ness of earth and sky; and the
ethical obligations to attend to and care for and as Sky Country. We contend that the argument applies to many
worlds that intimately connect with, extend into (or beyond) what Western sciences call ‘outer space’. Indeed, we
hope that in sharing Guwak we encourage broader conversations about Sky Country and its relations with other
Indigenous worlds.

1. Introduction
The story of Guwak and Sky Country is an unknown story – it needs to be
told to white Australians and people everywhere, so they can understand.
There already are spirits up there, it’s a spiritual story … It is very good to
tell this, important
(Rrawun Maymuru)
… take as they journey through the sky together. To hurt Sky Country, to
Listen, can you hear the sound “Guuuwaak”? It is the call of Guwak, a
koel bird. It’s a beautiful, high sound that rings clear through the night.
The sound echoes and reaches the lands and travels up to the sky, to the
River of Stars. It tells us the spirits are travelling to the River of Stars.
Come, sit down and listen, because the spirits of Yolŋu people are
there and will continue to go there. There are plans to transform Sky
Country through exploration and colonization. Some of these plans have
already begun (Damjanov, 2015; Dunnett, Maclaren, Klinger, Lane, &
Sage, 2017; Garrick, 2019; Gorman, 2005; MacDonald, 2007). We are
concerned about how these could harm Sky Country, how they could
disrupt the journey that Guwak, and the spirits who have passed away,
try and possess it, is an ongoing colonization of the plural lifeworlds of
all those who have ongoing connections with and beyond the sky.
….

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: amitchell@wlu.ca (A. Mitchell), sarah.wright@newcastle.edu.au (S. Wright), sandie.suchet@mq.edu.au (S. Suchet-Pearson), kate.lloyd@mq.
edu.au (K. Lloyd).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102218
Received 29 October 2018; Received in revised form 21 April 2020; Accepted 24 April 2020
Available online 3 July 2020
0962-6298/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Bawaka Country including
We do not take lightly the privilege of sharing this story of Guwak
with you. As authors and readers, it is a particular honour to be
entrusted with the responsibility to appropriately receive and share the
knowledges, protocols and responsibilities that come with Guwak. We
need to understand the limits of what can be shared or known, and by
whom. This is especially true in the context of ongoing colonization and
evolving forms of exploitation, appropriation and denigration that are
now expanding further into Sky Country. Country is an Australian
Aboriginal English term for places as they co-become in emergent, sit­
uated more-than-human relations of response and responsibility
(Gay’wu Group of Women et al., 2019). Country includes lands, seas,
waters, rocks, animals, winds and all the beings that exist in and make
up a place, including people. It also embraces the stars, moon, Milky
Way, solar winds and storms, and intergalactic plasma. Land, Sea and
Sky Country are all connected, so there is no such thing as ‘outer space’
or ‘outer Country’ – no outside. What we do in one part of Country af­
fects all others.
As Rrawun explains in his words that open this article, it is impera­
tive for White people and people everywhere to understand that they
have to care for earth and the broader cosmos. This message has not been
heard by many who advocate for space colonization, exploration and
exploitation by NewSpace entrepreneurs, modernist states, academics
and scientific establishments who see what they call ‘outer space’ as a
new frontier, source of power and site of capital accumulation (Mac­
Donald, 2007). These colonial cosmologies of space assume that there
are no people or other beings Indigenous to ‘outer space’, and that there
is no life there to harm. They see ‘outer space’ as separate from earth, as
a site where the harmful effects of extraction can be externalized (Collis,
2017; Mendenhall, 2018).This enables proponents of space colonization
and extraction to justify their projects and to neutralize ethical concerns
associated with exploiting ‘outer space’ including the annexation of
Indigenous lands and displacement of Indigenous peoples for in­
stallations that promote space exploration.
Listening to Guwak, we want to speak back to promoters of space
colonization who try to distance themselves from the violence of earth-
based colonization and frame their projects as harmless. We show that
‘outer space’ is Sky Country and is part of Yolŋu people’s Country, whose
ancestors dwell there today. While we speak with and learn from
Guwak, we know too that ‘outer space’ is the ancestral domain of many
Indigenous cultures, of diverse Aboriginal nations through Australia, of
many First Nations throughout the world, and indeed of many diverse
non-Indigenous cultures in every continent as manifested through/as
time (Fuller, Norris, & Trudgett, 2014; Krupp, 1999; Watts, 2013).
Guided by Guwak’s journey into and as Sky Country, we argue that the
further extension of earth-based colonization into space would disrupt
Sky Country, forming an extension and intensification of the possessive,
colonial-capitalist practices and relationships that have long under­
pinned colonialism (Coulthard, 2014; Moreton-Robinson, 2015).
Join us as we respond to Guwak’s call. As we follow Guwak through
Sky Country we learn about the role of Rom (Law), order and negotia­
tion in Sky Country; the active, animate beings present in Sky Country;
the co-becoming of earth, sea and sky; and our ethical obligations to care
for and as Sky Country. We hope that in sharing Guwak we encourage
broader conversations about Sky Country, and that Guwak’s call helps
expose and question some of the broader ideologies of conquest and
capitalist expansion that underpins many of the corporate initiatives,
nationalist drives, and global agreements concerning Sky Country.
2. Co-becoming Sky Country: Guwak
This paper is a more-than-human effort – led by Guwak and Sky
Country in its telling and rhythm, shaped by Yolŋu and ŋa €paki (non-
Indigenous) authors in its argument, received by and now connected to
you in your more-than-human places. We see this as a form of co-
becoming. The paper is not an ethnography, which would root its
legitimacy and expertise in the detailed revelation of an Indigenous
2
Political Geography 81 (2020) 102218
knowledge system. Instead, it reflects a series of conversations between
Yolŋu and ŋa €paki collaborators, Country and a songspiral, who are
connected to each other in intimate ways. Bawaka Country is a home­
land in north eastern Arnhemland, Australia. Its caretakers include four
sisters and Yolŋu Elders: Laklak, Ritjilili, Merrkiyawuy and Banbapuy,
their daughter Djawundil, and Rrawun, Banbapuy’s son, a custodian of
the Guwak songspiral. The Bawaka Collective also includes human ge­
ographers Sarah, Kate and Sandie, who have worked in and as Bawaka
since 2006 and who, like many ŋ€ apaki, were adopted into the family,
kinship structure and system of responsibilities. Audra, a global political
ecologist, lives on the lands of the Attawandaron (Neutral), Haudeno­
saunee and Anishinaabeg peoples on Turtle Island (currently called
currently North America). She started working with the group in 2016
after we identified common interests in the effects of colonization on Sky
Country. In 2017 Audra met with Ritjilili and Djawundil was part of
conversations with the Bawaka Collective, and was also placed in the
family. These adoptions are an ongoing Yolŋu strategy to draw ŋa €paki
into Yolŋu social, cultural and legal orders, with kinship systems that
embed ŋ€ apaki in intimate and powerful relationships of obligation and
responsibility, alongside all human and non-human beings including
Yolŋu people, Country, winds, waters, rocks, fire, cigarettes and, indeed,
all that co-become on/as/with Country. This is not to make, in any way,
non-Yolŋu people into Yolŋu, to absolve them from their own places,
identities and complicities, or to erase difference, but rather to hold
difference within relationship, extend responsibilities and make non-
Yolŋu people both visible to and accountable within Yolŋu Rom (for a
fuller discussion of Yolŋu law and relationships including processes of
adoption see Gay’wu Group of Women et al., 2019; Bawaka Country incl
et al., 2016; Hart, Straka, & Rowe, 2017). For a discussion of the misuse
of adoption narratives and settler emplacement see Hunt (2018), Tuck
and Yang (2012).
Country, including Sky Country, is brought into existence through
songspirals. Songspirals bring Yolŋu people and Country into being and
they link Yolŋu people to Country. Songspirals are passed down through
generations and sung by Yolŋu people to wake Country, to bring into
being the lifegiving connections between people and place – people co-
becoming as place (Bawaka Country incl et al., 2016). Songspirals have
been here forever. They are Rom, the Yolŋu word for Law. Songspirals
created Country a long time ago and they keep on creating it. Guwak is
the koel bird, who calls through the songspiral, and guides and carries
the spirits of those who have passed away on their journey into Sky
Country. This songspiral is sung at funerals and important events and
has been written into contemporary rock music form by Rrawun and his
band East Journey (2018). Guwak has been there forever but still needs
to be sung into being, through all of these forms of expression.
Rrawun and Banbapuy led the sharing of the Guwak songspiral with
the Collective and sanctioned its sharing in this paper.1 The sharing of
the Guwak songspiral is possible because Rrawun’s father and mother’s
grandmother are from the Maŋgalili nation (see below). Hence Rrawun
is in the position of caretaker of Guwak and is sanctioned to share it
(Gay’wu Group of Women et al., 2019), as he and his mother, Banbapuy,
explain:
Yes, [it is ok] to publish [the Guwak song] but only from Rrawun’s
side. Need to say it is just his words. It is good because [another
academic] worked with Rrawun’s granddad. But he didn’t talk about
the bigger thing. This is another form of teaching, of understanding.
This is the first time Rrawun has done this himself for Maŋgalili. The
manikay [song] is the story behind the land, the universe. (Rrawun
and Banbapuy)
Rrawun shared Guwak: the story is from his words and does not
1
The sharing of Guwak is both for this paper and simultaneously for a new
book (Gay’wu Group of Women et al., 2019) about songspirals.
Bawaka Country including
speak for all Yolŋu. While he shares the words, he does not share all the
meanings as that would not be appropriate. This songspiral remains the
cultural property of Guwak and the Maŋgalili nation. The words were
variously written down by Rrawun, Banbapuy, Sarah, Sandie, Kate and
Audra. They were shaped, shared, revised and written into this paper in
a co-construction of knowing that unfolded in a number of places be­
tween 2014 and 2019. For this reason, you will hear different voices in
this paper – not only of each of its more-than-human co-authors – but
also the tones and rhythms of multiple, inter-woven conversations. You
will also hear certain concepts repeated as new meanings unfold with
each iteration, just as they did in our conversations. We follow the
specific songspiral as it leads this paper, lending form and order to the
words and concepts we share. Since we have made the decision to follow
the songspiral to guide our conversations and writing, the structure of
this article is not as linear as a traditional Western academic paper. We
hope, though, that it will draw you, your places and your kin into these
conversations and into the rhythm of the songspiral.
3. Plans to exploit Sky Country
We started talking about space colonization because the ways it in­
terferes with Sky Country and our relationships with it. The term space
colonization can be used to refer not only to plans for the long-term
settlement of planets other than earth, but also to space exploration
and exploitation. These plans include the exploitation of resources from
asteroids, the moon and other space bodies, and the annexation of
Indigenous lands and displacement of Indigenous peoples for in­
stallations that promote space exploration (including observatories and
launch sites). To address these plans, we need to extend our conversa­
tions into discussions of space colonization, its processes and imagi­
naries, and the economic and legal architecture developing around it.
Critical engagement with the relationality of space is an important
point of focus by Indigenous communities, scholars and their supporters
(Burarrwanga et al., 2013; Bawaka Country incl et al. 2019; Bhathal,
2006; Johnston, 2010; Cornum, 2015; Hunt 2018; Fuller et al., 2014;
Watts, 2013; Todd, 2016), as well as within geography and the social
sciences more broadly (Beery, 2012, 2016; Dickens & Ormrod, 2007,
2016; Johnston, 2010; MacDonald, 2007, 2008). Work in Indigenous
futurisms for example, powerfully critiques ideas and practices of ‘outer
space’ (and indeed futurity in many forms and expressions) that
continue to perpetuate conditions of Indigenous invisibility, and extend
settler-colonial narratives and fantasies both into space and into the
future (Byrd, 2011; Hunt 2018). Many Indigenous people continue to
struggle against the devastating impact of space exploration and colo­
nization in their Countries, including at Woomera on Kokatha and Pit­
jantjatjara Country in Australia and against the proposed telescope at
Mauna Kea in Hawai’i, as they seek to protect and nurture their relations
with earth and sky, and to assert their rights and sovereignties (Gorman,
2005; Peryer, 2019). These are critiques that we take inspiration from
and aim to engage with, from our own place and experience, particularly
as we acknowledge the co-becoming of diverse times, the ways that the
future is the past, is the present, and the ways these emerge together
with and as place and time (Bawaka Country incl et al., 2016, 2019).
These scholars point out that space should not be understood as de­
tached, or distant, from everyday life. Rather, whether through
everyday technological realities such as the use of satellite navigation
and communications networks, through the proliferation of stake­
holders in space - including New Space actors – or through the ways that
realities and imaginings of sky-worlds inform realities and imaginings
on earth, ‘outer space’ continues to play a crucial and increasingly
central place in life on, as, and beyond, earth.
Despite regular media reports of technological developments such as
the successful testing of reusable rockets (Sheetz, 2017), space coloni­
zation, tends to be treated as a fantasy or science fiction plot by global
publics (Dickens & Ormrod, 2007). Recent developments in both the
private and nationalized space industries, and indeed new
3
Political Geography 81 (2020) 102218
collaborations between the two, are rapidly changing this scenario.
Since the 1980s, for example, a group of primarily US-based entrepre­
neurs, advocates and space scientists, collectively referred to as
‘NewSpace’, have been competing to be the first to exploit outer space
for resources. Although the NewSpace community embraces diverse
perspectives and subjectivities (Oman-Reagan, 2015), its dominant fig­
ures share an understanding of the unbounded resources of the universe
and the right of humans to dominate it (Valentine, 2012). The dominant
actors in NewSpace enterprises are white, male, Euro-Americans who
are amongst the world’s wealthiest individuals, including PayPal and
Tesla entrepreneur Elon Musk, founder of Space Exploration Technolo­
gies Corporation (SpaceX); entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, who is a
principle in mining company Planetary Resources; and Amazon owner
Jeff Bezos, who founded spaceflight company Blue Origin. These com­
panies pursue various goals, including the development of reusable,
cost-effective launch systems (SpaceX, Blue Horizon) and off-Earth
mining equipment and techniques (Deep Space Industries, Planetary
Resources).2
Although the drive to mine and possibly settle space is fuelled largely
by private actors, several states, including the US, China and Qatar, offer
increasing support for this industry, including funding infrastructure,
research and development (Beery, 2012). Jason Beery (2012) points out
that although major space agencies such as NASA have been contracting
with private companies for decades, governments increasingly regard
commercial projects, such as space ports, as part of their core efforts to
promote economic growth, stability and the reproduction of the
political-economic system (Beery, 2012:25). In some cases, states are
working actively to create legal frameworks to enable or even incen­
tivize the exploitation of space. Notably, although not the only example,
in late 2015, the Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entre­
preneurship (SPACE) Act passed by the US Congress granted the exclusive
right to US companies to exploit minerals, water and other resources
(excluding biological life) found in space on a first-come, first-serve
basis. The SPACE Act grants private property rights to US-based com­
panies on the presumption that space has no owners or inhabitants.
For many advocates of space exploration and exploitation, extending
resource markets into space is a means of gaining exclusive legal control
over territory and resources, and, in this context, the term ’colonization’
is used in aspirational tones. For example, one early proponent of
commercial space colonization envisions a future in which the “global
expansion of European technology and civilization brought about by the
terrestrial age of exploration is but a pale foreshadowing” (Lewis,
1996:5). Indeed, many space entrepreneurs and boosters do not flinch at
the term ’colonization’ – they actively embrace it, as a beneficial project
undertaken for, and in the name of, humanity (UNOOSA 1999). Of
course, significant ground-work is required to frame colonization in
aspirational terms given the deep violences that have occurred in its
name, and so we turn now to four central attitudes deployed by many
would-be space colonizers and advocates to highlight some of the
foundations of these claims. While relationships with space are in no
way monolithic, and indeed dominant Western accounts have their own
diverse pre-Enlightenment engagements with the cosmos, as well as
complex contemporary relationships, the tropes that we discuss here are
strong and pervasive. These tropes act to empower and propel imagi­
naries and realties, both on earth and in the sky, that enact colonizing
2
These ventures are expanding and including Indigenous proponents (see
proposals for space ports on Anishinaabe land in Ontario). Of interest to this
paper is the establishment of an Arnhem Land Space centre on Gumatj land near
Nhulunbuy based on a relationship between Equatorial Launch Australia and
the Gumatj clan (through the Gumatj Corporation, the traditional owner’s main
corporate vehicle) where the Corporation is subleasing land to Equatorial
Launch Australia (Manicaros, 2017; The Australian, 2017). Such interactions
reveal the multiple views from within Indigenous communities – many con­
flicting and contested - and challenge a universal Indigenous perspective.
Bawaka Country including
pasts/presents/futures and negate the active agencies, legal orders and
sovereignties of First Nations people and of Sky Country, in all its diverse
manifestations.
First, many proponents of space colonization speak of space as a terra
nullius: an uninhabited wilderness awaiting exploitation. This proposi­
tion underpins claims that there are no Indigenous people in space, and
no people Indigenous to space. NASA, for example, claims that their goal
is to “build new land, not steal it from the natives [sic]” (NASA, 2014).
Even scholars who are overtly critical of mainstream space programs
and their effects on Indigenous peoples tend to cede this point. For
instance, astrobiologist David Grinspoon (2004) argues that, “Mars has
no people to be displaced … we may have the opportunity to explore
lands that are truly unoccupied, giving outlet to our need to explore
without trampling on others.” Space archaeologist Alice Gorman
(2005:88) has written extensively on the links between Australia’s space
programme and its consolidation as a settler colonial state (Gorman,
2005). Yet, even in her critique of this colonial project, Gorman con­
tends that
…of all landscapes, perhaps space alone can claim to be a true
‘wilderness’. Before 1957, there were no material traces of human
activity. And while there may yet be life in the solar system, there has
been no human life; no autochthons, no Indigenous inhabitants.
Interplanetary space was a real terra nullius.
Terra nullius, a legal fiction which provided a foundation for the in­
vasion and colonization of Australia and other First Nations territories
globally, is not defined as a place with no people, rather it is a place that
is deemed to have no Law/lore, no protocols and no constitutive re­
lationships (Langton, 2001). To speak of Sky Country in this way, then,
is an erasure of Indigenous Law, and of many, diverse legal orders, re­
lationships and systems that extend to, and include, space. The image of
space as an empty wilderness makes it possible for would-be space
colonizers to present their plans as victim-free or ethically unproblem­
atic.3 It also creates the impression that space is lawless and ungoverned,
which opens it up to almost unregulated exploitation untrammeled by
ethical concerns. As one international space law scholar argues, there
are assumed to be “no known natives to outer space … [so] there seems
to be nothing inherently immoral about a right of first grab” (Reinstein,
1999:79).
During the Cold War, fears that a rush to grab control of space for
commercial or military purposes would result in inter-state conflict
prompted its designation as a res communes: a global commons owned by
humanity and regulated by international organizations. The Outer Space
Treaty (United Nations, 1966) (still the most fundamental piece of in­
ternational space law) designates space as “the province of all mankind”
and argues that its exploration and use “shall be carried out for the
benefit and in the interests of all countries” (United Nations, 1966:13).
On this basis, the OST prohibits “national appropriation by claim of
sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means”
(United Nations, 1966:13). This norm was subsequently developed in
the 1999 Vienna Declaration on Space and Human Development (United
Nations, 1999), which argues that the use of space is crucial to
addressing the rising demand for resources, changes in sea level and
deforestation, and fostering international cooperation, amongst other
goals.
Legal frameworks based on the principle of res communes may appear
to be oriented towards protecting space. But they violate Sky Country in
a different way: they annex it as the property of the nebulous category of
’humanity’, defined in large part by the UN, and rooted in Western
3
These discourses presume that only those beings that they recognize as
‘humans’ would be worthy of ethical consideration. To the authors’ knowledge,
there has been no significant attempt to understand the ethical implications of
damaging other beings that reside in Sky Country; this is one of the aims of our
paper.
4
Political Geography 81 (2020) 102218
liberal values and modes of governance (Mitchell, 2014). The act of
claiming Sky Country as the property of “mankind” follows the same
logic as the creation of national parks through the displacement of
Indigenous peoples and their forms of governance (Adams, 2004;
Brockington & Igoe, 2006). Indeed, some scholars of international space
law have proposed a ‘planetary park’ model, in which whole planets
would be designated as wilderness reserves (Bruhns & Haqq-Misra,
2016). This strategy is intended to preserve the environment of space
in the face of intense competition for resources. Both of these ap­
proaches – understanding space as an uninhabited wasteland, or as the
“province of all mankind”– repeat familiar colonial tropes. The former
reproduces the logic of terra nullius, while the latter erases the particular
forms of inhabitation, care and co-creation carried out by many Indig­
enous peoples.
A second proposition that underpins dominant framings of space and
that acts to validate its exploitation is that space is inanimate or lifeless.
Without supporting life, this apparently empty wilderness can be treated
as a massive store of “off-earth resources” (Virgin Galactic, 2014, italics
ours), which are assumed to be nearly infinite in comparison to those
available on earth. For instance, Planetary Resources states that a single
platinum-rich 500 m wide asteroid contains approximately 174 times
the annual output of platinum, and 1.5 times the known world-reserves
of platinum-group metals (ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium,
iridium and platinum) (Planetary Resources, 2014). These resources are
intended to meet increasing resource demands made by a rising popu­
lation on Earth, but also to fuel projects of colonization beyond the solar
system (Deep Space Industries, 2014). Treating space as a lifeless, un­
inhabited, un-governed wilderness and store of resources also allows
proponents of space colonization to envision it as a dumping ground for
pollution and ecologically-harmful activity, a move that echoes the ra­
cialized undertones of environmental injustices on earth, whereby
harmful activities are concentrated around vulnerable people and places
(Schlosberg, 2009).
Some proponents of space mining argue not only that the extraction
of minerals in Sky Country is ethically defensible, but also that it can
occur with little regulation or concern for ecological damage. Whilst
other scholars and activists argue that space is an environment that re­
quires careful ecological management (Bruhns & Haqq-Misra, 2016;
Olson, 2012), these arguments appear to have had little impact on major
NewSpace entrepreneurs, whose plans hinge on the ability to export the
damage of extraction to the weakly regulated realm of space. Indeed,
some Newspace proponents claim that space extraction will have the
positive effect of reducing ecological harms on earth. For instance, space
resource company Planetary Resources argues that its aim is to exter­
nalize dangerous and polluting extraction activities “safely outside of
our delicate biosphere” (Planetary Resources, 2014). Similarly, Space
Adventures principal Chris Anderson asks rhetorically:
Wouldn’t it be great if one day, all of the heavy industries of the
Earth—mining and energy production and manufacturing—were
done somewhere else, and the Earth could be used for living, keeping
it as it should be, which is a bright-blue planet with lots of green?
(quoted in Fallows, 2013)
Anderson’s rhetorical question seeks to justify ongoing extractive
practices, both on and off earth, by displacing the harms they cause
outside of the scope of mainstream ethics (see Mitchell, 2016). In
framing space as lifeless and inanimate, the knowledges, Laws and
agencies of the beings and becomings of space, and the ongoing re­
lationships that many cultures have with space, are nullified. This, then,
allows for a seemingly unproblematized move of settler-colonial
emplacement, one in which the active agencies of asteroids, planets,
metals and gases, may be ignored and made invisible, and within which
Laws, sovereignties and relationships of Indigenous people are negated
(Hunt, 2018).
Constructions of space as lifeless and inanimate also rely on the
Bawaka Country including Political Geography 81 (2020) 102218

assumption that it is separate and distinct from earth. This idea is Guwak’s cry one last time. The sounds of Guwak will be heard in the
encapsulated through the Western imaginary of earth as a sealed vessel Milky Way, in the River of Stars.
disconnected from space and in an image of the enclosed globe that has
As the song spiral is sung, Guwak circles around the dead, finding the
come to be understood as co-terminous with earth. This motif of Western
soul, the sacred thread. When Yolŋu dance, they have the string made
cosmology is epitomized by early images of earth from space, including
out of possum fur with them; they dance around the body, entwining the
the iconic Earthrise photograph from the 1968 Apollo mission, and the
string together with the soul of the person, wrapping, circling it, with
equally famous Blue Marble photograph from the 1972 Apollo 17
that string. It says in the manikay: "with that string I am going back to
mission (see Oliver, 2015; Lazier, 2011; Cosgrove, 1994, 2001) and,
Milŋiyawuy – the River of Stars".
more recently, Google Earth imagery (Helmreich, 2011). Throughout
When the dancers do this with the string, it takes them back to join
these transformations, the globe has been framed as an enclosed struc­
the ancestors: as Rrawun says, I am going back to the River of Stars to
ture whose function is to shelter humans from a cold, dead, and
join my ancestors. Guwak marks your destination in the River of Stars,
threatening external universe (Sloterdijk, 2014). As Nigel Clark (2005)
and as you reach it, you hear the call. It is heard in the stars and the echo
argues, these images of a perfectly round, self-enclosed space have
is heard in the sea of stars on earth – the sea of milŋiya. The sound goes
eclipsed the idea of earth as part of a cosmic ecosystem engaged in lively
up to the river of stars and the echoes are heard in the sea on earth.
exchanges (see also Beery, 2016; Collis, 2017; Mendenhall, 2018;
The echoes are heard by people still living. In a ceremony, when they
Ormrod, 2014).
sing, the song of Guwak, the call happens when everyone is asleep.
Taken together, these tropes – of space as lifeless and inanimate, of it
“Guuuwaak”, someone calls, and people start waking up and joining in.
being a terra nullius, of space as separate and discontinuous from earth –
There are two people, one climbs up one tree, and the other another tree.
suggest that there are no ethical challenges associated with these ways of
The one calls out, “Guuuwaak”. It is the call of Guwak, a beautiful, high
relating to space. Guwak teaches otherwise. We now turn to her to learn
sound that rings clear through the night. The other responds, “Guuu­
about order and negotiation, the agency of Sky Country, how earth, sea
waak”, an echo. Guwak calls and the echoes reach the lands and the sky,
and sky co-become, and the ethical relationships and responsibilities
up to the River of Stars. The sound wakes everyone up, wakes everyone
these entail.
up. Some women start crying, doing milkarri of the Guwak songspiral
(Gay’wu Group of Women et al., 2019).
4. Dukarr lakarama: ‘we say tonight is the night we are going to
This is how Rrawun and Banbapuy describe the singing of the
straighten the pathway’
songspiral which we would now like to share with you. What follows is
Rrawun’s and Banbapuy’s transcription and translation of the Yolŋu
We now want to introduce you to the Guwak songspiral, which helps
Matha words of the Guwak songspiral.
to bring Sky Country (and earth) into being. During one of our conver­
sations, Rrawun and Banbapuy say, “We don’t say we will cry Guwak.
We say dukarr lakarama – we say, tonight is the night we are going to 4.1. Guwak songspiral
straighten the pathway.” With this phrase, Rrawun and Banbapuy
introduce Guwak and hope ŋa €paki understand that this is a great priv­ Waŋa nhina burrkitjthun Yolŋu warray’ŋu.
ilege, for Guwak to be shared with ŋ€ apaki and with the broader com­ The clans with their deep names Ritharrŋu, Bundurr, Butjala, Djalimana,
munity (see Gay’wu Group of Women et al., 2019). It has been shared Ŋarrkandja, we negotiate for the preparation and the making of the possum
precisely because it is important for people to understand their re­ string.
sponsibilities to Country, including Sky Country. Ŋ uruku ŋamaŋamayunarawu burrkungu, yaliyaliwu ŋarakawu
We first explain how the Guwak songspiral is sung or cried, then we Waymumbawu.
present Guwak and Rrawun’s translation of the songspiral. Next, we For this string, burrkun, I will prepare possum fur, the fundamental
share how the meanings within the songspiral challenge the assumptions backbone for Waymumba, the string.
discussed above. First, Guwak and Rrawun explain how the songspiral is Yurruna ŋarra yurru wunydjininymirriyamanydja bulka gath­
sung: andja gadanymirriyamanydja.
I will weave it and put possum fur on it.
When we say dukarr lakarama, we are going to straighten the
Bala ŋaraka dhunupakumana burrkundja.
pathway, we are talking about doing the Guwak songspiral. This
The string is admired and measured, put in a perfect position.
songspiral talks about a person that has passed away from their clan.
Bili ŋarrakunydja burrkun marr weyin ga Ritharrŋuwunydja
Guwak is known as the koel bird in English. This bird takes our spirit
marr dhumbul.
from where we are living and takes it back to our own country.
My string is established and completed.
Guwak is all black. It is a Yirritja4 bird. It’s from rocky place away
Beŋurunydja ŋayi yurru Guwaknha waŋa.
from the coastal area. They call that rocky mountains area Latharra
Guwak, she speaks, her cries, her call is heard, from far away, across the
Warkawarka. Guwak is coming down. That’s the journey, the Guwak
sky, through Country.
journey, she comes from that area. And the bird is looking for a place
Waŋanydja ŋayi yurru dhawalnha ŋupan wanhaka wa € ŋa, yurru
that is open. She felt a breeze, Wurrtjin watamirri, she felt the breeze
ŋayinydja Guwakdja ŋathili yana marŋgi nha €lili ŋayi yurru
from that area where people live who belong to the madirriny
butthun.
(south) wind, it is the feeling. She said, I will fly over there to where
Guwak speaks and her echoes reach the lands and the sea of Muŋurru,
that breeze is coming from. Wurrtjin watamirri (the beach, the
and from there go up to the skies; she already knows to where she will fly.
breeze) Guwak went there and as it says in the song, you will hear
Bala ŋayi Guwakthu dhakay ŋa €kulana watana guyŋarrnha.
Guwak feels the cold wind, the south wind, Madirriny.
Bala ŋarra yurru ŋurrungunydja marrtji ŋunha wata ŋupan
watamirri rirrakay dupthurruna ŋa €thili Milŋiyalili, ga Muŋurrulili.
4 From here I will first go to the place from where the cold wind blows, to the
In Yolŋu Law everything in the world is divided into two moieties – Yirritja
and Dhuwa. These are foundational relations of the Yolŋu cosmos in which stony Country, and speak where my voice will reach space, the River of Stars,
everything is interconnected and interdependent. Every person, animal, plant, Milŋiyawuy, and the sea of Muŋurru.
place, name, ancestor, everything living and non-living is either Yirritja or Ŋ unhili yukurrana nhina miyalk Nyapililŋu.
Dhuwa (apart from a few things, including tears and bodily fluids) (Bur­ There lives a sprit woman, Nyapililŋu.
arrwanga et al., 2013). Guwak waŋana dhuwala ŋarra yurru marr ganana Dhithi,

5
Bawaka Country including
Gunbalka Rakila.
I will leave this place, the essence of my people, with the seep name Dhithi,
leave the stony Country, Gunbalka Rakila, from where the string came.
Ŋ unha ŋupan guyaŋirri watamirri Wurrtjinmirri Dharrpayina.
I will chase and remember and fly towards to the Country from where the
wind blows, to where it directs me to Maŋgalili Country, nation of Wurrt­
jinmirri, Dharrpayina, deep clan names for Maŋgalili.
Bala butthurrunana warryurrunana burrkundja.
I take and pull the string and together we will fly; entwined, we will start
the journey, guided, directed by the Milky Way, we fly the universe.
Ŋ unhiyi ŋayi mulkana wa €ŋanydja nha €ŋala ŋayi dharpa bathala
ya€ku Marawil, ŋayi yukurrana dharrana wanawilyurruna.
When the Guwak got to her destination, she saw a big tree, called Mar­
awili; it stood there with branches like arms welcoming Guwak. ‘The Marawili
tree waits for me.’
Ŋ al’yurruna ŋayi Guwakdja bala beŋurunydja bulu waŋana dha
lakaraŋala marrtjina wa €ŋa malanyŋulili.
Guwak climbed onto the tree. ‘I will climb onto this tree and again from
here I will call out and chant the names of the Yirritja places, to tell them I am
here.’
As Rrawun shares the songspiral, Guwak guides us in focusing on
certain verses of the songspiral to help elaborate Sky Country. We begin
each section with a translation of the following verses into English:
Waŋa nhina burrkitjthun Yolŋu warray’ŋu.
The clans with their deep names Ritharrŋu, Bundurr, Butjala, Djalimana,
Ŋarrkandja, we negotiate for the preparation and the making of the possum
string.
Ŋ uruku ŋamaŋamayunarawu burrkungu, yaliyaliwu ŋarakawu
Waymumbawu.
For this string, burrkun, I will prepare possum fur, the fundamental
backbone for Waymumba, the string.
Yurruna ŋarra yurru wunydjininymirriyamanydja bulka gath­
andja gadanymirriyamanydja.
I will weave it and put possum fur on it.
Bala ŋaraka dhunupakumana burrkundja.
The string is admired and measured, put in a perfect position.
Bili ŋarrakunydja burrkun marr weyin ga Ritharrŋuwunydja
marr dhumbul.
My string is established and completed.
When the Guwak journey is sung, it begins with a negotiation – that
is, diplomacy – between the two clans, the Maŋgalili and Ritharrŋu, who
are the wetj, or ‘givers’ of the string. “The string holds the two clans
together”, Rrawun explains, “It talks about it in the songlines. The
countries are already connected”. They must all work together to weave
and create the finest possum fur string, the sacred string that Guwak will
carry to Sky Country. This negotiation is shaped by bala ga lili, or give
and take, a practice of negotiation that sustains the two clans in their co-
existence.
In short, the songspiral shows that there are clear Yolŋu laws and
rules for travelling in Sky Country and it is essential that the right tools
are prepared correctly – including through proper negotiations – so that
Guwak and the spirits can travel and reach the destination. The possum
string acts as documentation for the spirits of the deceased, opening
access to Sky Country: “For that I will prepare, make a string, that is my
passport” says Rrawun. He explains that, in order for the string to work
as a passport, it must be the perfect length (and depending on which clan
the deceased is from, the correct length of the string will vary):
Then I will make the fur into a string, the possum string. Put it into a
perfect shape, a perfect string. Then we will look at how long the
string is. I will check and look and admire how long it is. Like
checking identification so you can travel the universe.
After the string is finished correctly, Rrawun says, Guwak will cry to
claim that body’s spirit, “entwining the soul into the string”. Then,
Rrawun continues, “when Guwak starts again, with the string and spirit,
Political Geography 81 (2020) 102218
they will journey through the sky together. Because Guwak is a bird that
travels around, travelling as a messenger and picking up songs from the
land, picking up and taking them to the promised land … Guwak, will
open the way to the promised land, the River of Stars … Beyond it is
people waiting for us to meet them”.
As Rrawun points out, Sky Country is not only inhabited (an idea we
will return to in a moment) but there are also important rules governing
travel within and through it. Precise ceremonies need to be carried out in
order to make this travel possible. Djawundil describes the ceremony
associated with the songspiral:
[The songspirals] connect [to Sky Country] through the men when
they sing - songs about night, even middle of the night, Yirritja sing
Guwak, 12 o’clock, that song represents the burial day of the person
… song follows up, when we dance there is a dawu [fig] tree, they
spin the threads and put possum fur all around and every time we
€
dance in the night – the string with the feathers of the possum, the
nose of the Guwak bird – the caretaker (my kids) would dance and
roll the feather string and would place it on the coffin and that would
say it’s time to be buried.
Carrying out this ceremony makes it possible for the spirit of the
deceased to travel through Sky Country in ways that respect the Rom, or
Law.
The Guwak songspiral also provides the map through space and time
needed for spirits to travel safely through Sky Country. As Rrawun ex­
plains, this map also shows the relationships between his people and Sky
Country. Rrawun describes the paintings his grandfather made:
It’s similar to my grandfather’s painting, the painting he’s done –
how the land looks. Nowadays when you look from Google [Earth] –
it is exactly the same. And I said to myself, grandfather was a spiri­
tual leader – in his mind he was painting that and when we look from
Google exactly the same. The ancestors gave that already, we are
following the rules from the ancestors. How to paint the land, where
to sing from the start to the end … When they’re painting they’re
going to put the animals in exactly the same area how we sing it. If
it’s in the north we put it in the north, if in the east, we put it in the
east, it’s the map that tells the new generation where the sacred area
and this rringitj belongs to this area. The right place. The paintings
are a picture of the songline, where the map is.
So, the songspiral not only helps to co-create Sky Country, but it also
shows where Yolŋu continuously journey to and from. This has impor­
tant implications in relation to would-be space colonizers’ claims that
space is a terra nullius. It demonstrates that Sky Country is and always
has been a richly known, mapped, governed and cared-for place. The
Rom that governs it has always been there and never changes –
regardless of developments in state or international law, or in the
Western sciences.
Crucially, this Law and these ways of caring for Sky Country
constitute specific claims in relationship to it. As many Indigenous
scholars have powerfully pointed out, Indigenous stories and knowings
cannot be understood outside of relationships of Law, of the diverse
sovereignties of people and place, and, indeed of Indigenous people
themselves (Napoleon, 2007; Watts, 2013; Todd, 2016; Hunt 2018).
These are not trinkets or novel stories to share, but more-than-human
modes of belonging: relationships of rights, responsibilities and
kinship that bring with them particular modes of governance (Hunt
2018; Napoleon, 2007; Watts, 2013). The place beyond earth is not terra
nullius – that fabricated ground for colonization of earth and sky that
would assert that there is no prior claim; this is Sky Country, a place
governed by Rom. Such statements are not claims of exclusive owner­
ship of the type imposed by colonial modes of possession (Mor­
eton-Robinson, 2015). Rather Rrawun relates the Guwak songspiral and
his grandfather’s paintings of it to the bark petitions used to assert land
rights for Indigenous communities in the 1970s: “grandfather said we
6
Bawaka Country including
are going to paint, structure it into painting and tell non-Indigenous
people that we own this land”. In that context, ownership was asser­
ted as a form of governance in response to assumptions of terra nullius
rather than to indicate primitive accumulation and control, and it SP:
accommodated the claims of other communities. As we discuss in a
moment, the existence of such maps – whether embodied on bark
paintings, in the songspiral or or in Country itself – undermine the claims
of aspiring space colonizers to an uninhabited and ungoverned space.
Beŋurunydja ŋayi yurru Guwaknha waŋa.
Guwak, she speaks, her cries, her call is heard, from far away, across the
sky, through Country.
“There already are spirits up there, a spiritual story”, Rrawun says,
“Guwak, the bird, it is someone’s spirit when someone passes away …
When we talk about space, there are people already there”. The song­
spiral tells us that when Guwak flies with the spirit of a deceased person
to Sky Country, that person joins ancestors and kin who dwell there and
care for it. Rrawun explains further: “already a person who is related to
us lives there for me, my burrku, is given to me as my identity and my
authority … I will go there my place of belonging, the place of spirits to
again join with my ancestors”. One’s identity and kinship, in other
words, are linked not only to relations on earth but also to the relatives
dwelling in Sky Country.
The inhabitation of Sky Country by ancestors and other kin is com­
mon sense within the Guwak songspiral and the broader cosmology it
sits within. Yolŋu people are not alone in this knowledge. For example,
on Stradbroke Island, Queensland, a man called Mirabooka was placed
in the sky by the ‘good spirit’ Biami in order to look after the people of
the Earth, and he remains spread across the sky in the form of a
constellation (Bhathal, 2006). Kamilaroi people have a communicative
relationship with a giant emu whose body is composed of stars and the
dark space between them that travels across the sky (Fuller et al., 2014).
The Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples of Turtle Island are both
descended from Ancestors who came to earth from sky worlds. In fact,
the name ‘Anishinaabe’ refers to the fall of the first human from the sky
to earth; while the Haudenosaunee descended from Sky Woman, the
progenitor of all humans, who fell from a hole in the sky, pregnant with
the first humans, and co-created earth with the animals (Johnston, 2010;
Watts, 2013). All of these communities recognize and maintain kinship
relations with beings (human and nonhuman) who dwell in what Yolŋu
recognize as Sky Country (see Krupp, 1999).
Activities that alter Sky Country damage the dwelling places of kin
and disrupt their relations with people and other beings on earth. Dis­
ruptions such as these have had intensely unjust legal implications – for
example for Indigenous people in Australia and Canada who have to
prove continuity of inhabitation as understood by colonial law, in order
to make native title claims (Borrows, 2010; Moreton-Robinson, 2015).
Sky Country is, and always has been, continuously inhabited.
The way the songspiral is sung confirms kinship structures and
shared responsibility to care for Sky Country (Gaw’wu Group of Women
et al., 2019). As Rrawun explains, he is responsible for part of the song as
it maps onto specific places, but the duty of singing it is shared by others:
My song in reality, in Yolŋu will stop at Jaraku, … that is where the
song stops, the other clan will take over the story. In Yolŋu way we
always share, we don’t own things, nature owns us. We don’t say to a
particular animal we own you … Similar to when we sing, the
exchanging of the song, half way they will swap over and show the
other clan’s song, it’s about sharing, respect, deep understanding of
the land, the skies and the universe.
Rrawun’s words make clear that Yolŋu people and their kin co-create
Sky Country. This does not translate into Western ideas of ownership –
least of all those that suggest exclusive control over access, such as the
SPACE Act. Instead, Sky Country is governed through plural, over­
lapping (perhaps sometimes conflictual) layers of responsibility and care
undertaken by multiple more-than-human communities. Singing the
7
Political Geography 81 (2020) 102218
songspiral is a crucial part of maintaining the negotiations between
these communities.
Waŋanydja ŋayi yurru dhawalnha ŋupan wanhaka wa € ŋa, yurru
ŋayinydja Guwakdja ŋathili yana marŋgi nha €lili ŋayi yurru
butthun.
Guwak speaks and her echoes reach the lands and the sea of Muŋurru,
and from there go up to the skies; she already knows to where she will fly.
When Guwak speaks, her cries are heard, not only on earth but also
across Sky Country. As Rrawun offers, “The Guwak calls when you arrive
at your destination in the River of Stars. It is heard in the stars and the
echo is heard in the sea of stars”. In this way, the songspiral tells us that
Guwak, and Sky Country communicate and are heard by one another.
They have sentience and agency, actively co-constitute one another and
communicate through ceremony, song and journeys. Sky Country and
the beings that inhabit it are kin. For instance, Djawundil and Ritjilili
explain that ŋalindi (the moon) has a moiety – “it has a family, is kin …
everyone is related to the moon” (see Burarrwanga et al., 2013). In other
words, the more-than-human beings that co-constitute Sky Country are
entwined in kinship structures and are part of the web of responsibilities
and obligations that shape these structures. This is at odds with the
understanding of those NewSpace entrepreneurs who argue that outer
space has no ethical standing.
Guwak has strong and intimate relationships with Sky Country,
having made this journey through and as time/space innumerable times
(Bawaka Country incl et al., 2016). Guwak recognizes these places and
calls out to them, and they return the call. But what if Guwak cries out
and the echoes do not reach the rivers or the seas? What if that Country
is no longer there, or if it is damaged beyond recognition?
Indeed, the destruction or transformation of Sky Country by space
colonization could have detrimental effects on the songspiral, and on the
relations it (re)makes. Banbapuy states that these actions would damage
the songspirals themselves, and violate the Rom they embody. It might
also fundamentally alter the relationships between Yolŋu people and
their kin in Sky Country. As Banbapuy tells us, “songlines are there
forever. Songlines remain. But in future [after space colonization, we]
would be singing about the moon that existed before, but there is
nothing there”.
Djawundil worries about what would happen to the songspirals if the
beings they connect to – the moon, stars, sun, Milky way and so on –
were destroyed or tampered with. “I think it would mean danger,” she
says, “singing about something that existed before but now it is gone”.
The disruption of Sky Country and the songspirals that sing it into being,
may not destroy the songspirals entirely – they have always been, and
will always be – but the results would be unpredictable. The fact that
songspirals are eternal does not justify activities that might damage
them, particularly as the results are unknowable. As Sarah observes, this
would be akin to arguing that, because a deceased loved one can live on
in your heart, it is acceptable to murder that person. In short, perma­
nence of the songspirals does not justify or excuse colonial violence.
Bala ŋayi Guwakthu dhakay ŋa €kulana watana guyŋarrnha.
Guwak feels the cold wind, the south wind, Madirriny.
Bala ŋarra yurru ŋurrungunydja marrtji ŋunha wata ŋupan
watamirri rirrakay dupthurruna ŋa €thili Milŋiyalili, ga Muŋurrulili.
From here I will first go to the place from where the cold wind blows, to the
stony Country, and speak where my voice will reach space, the River of Stars,
Milŋiyawuy, and the sea of Muŋurru.
Many advocates of space exploitation argue that their projects would
help to protect earth by externalizing dirty industries such as mineral
mining to space. But Banbapuy tells us that “there is no difference be­
tween the land and the sky. If they mine the land, they are mining the
sky”. The reverse is also true: they are all part of Country. In Yolŋu
cosmology, there is no clear separation between earth and Sky Country –
they are continuous, threaded together by the songspirals that sing them
into being. As Banbapuy reminds us, songspirals go all the way deep into
the earth, to the depths of the ocean, and out beyond the realm that
Western sciences designate as space. What Western thinkers define as
Bawaka Country including
climate and weather are as much a part of Sky Country as are the stars.
Because they are continuous and entwined – literally co-respondent
to one another – what happens in Sky Country affects earth, and vice
versa. We can see this profound connection as the wind blows from earth
all the way to milŋiyawuy, the Milky Way, and the River of Stars and
back to the Muŋurru, the sea of stars. Importantly, the flow of continuity
is reciprocal – as Ritjilili and Djawundil say, just as the songspirals
extend from the center of the earth beyond the sky, “the stars and light
shine down to light the rivers here on earth”. Banbapuy describes how
the call of Guwak is heard simultaneously between Sea, Earth and Sky
Country. “The sound goes up to the River [of Stars] and the echoes are
heard in the sea, it bounces from the river to the sea. The echoes get
heard by people still living”.
Fuller and his colleagues write of resonant knowledge shared by
Kamilaroi collaborators, for whom “everything up in the sky was once
down on Earth, and the sky and the Earth reversed” (Fuller et al.,
2014:23). Within that cosmology, constellations and star formations,
including the Milky Way and Southern Cross, not only correspond to
places on Earth but are entangled with them, such that what happens in
either sphere affects the other – that is, “what’s up there is down here”
(Fuller et al., 2014:23). A story shared by Banbapuy, describes the
islands of Nalkuma, Murrmurrnga, Wakuwala, Gaywndji, to which the
deceased travel, as existing simultaneously in Sky and Sea Country. As
Banbapuy explains, “when you are alive you can paddle to the island [in
the ocean], when you die you go to [the island in] Sky Country. Before
Dad died he went to the island Nalkuma – he lay there – when he was
sick – we took him there by helicopter, then he went back home and
passed away”. Since these islands exist simultaneously in Sea and Sky
Country, to visit one is to visit the other. So, not only is there constant
communication and interchange between Sea and Sky Country, but they
are connected, inseparably sensitive to each other. Just as the preceding
verses of the songspiral tell us that the colonization and exploitation of
Sky Country might rupture profound, co-constitutive relationships, this
verse shows that the disruption of Sky Country would be reflected in the
places on earth to which it corresponds. Reflecting on his grandfather’s
maps (see above), Rrawun explains how the stars can be used to find
one’s way around Country:
When they are lost somewhere they will follow the stars. They will
follow stars and also they will follow the wind; if you are lost
somewhere in the bush if you see a tree or leaves blowing from the
east you will know that I am in this area and that my family is this
way and I will follow this in the day time. That’s why ancestors gave
everything for our survival technique, so we can survive through
that.
It is only because of the co-respondence between earth, stars, wind
and other beings that people with the right knowledge are able to
interpret their connections, intimately know and be intimately known by
Country. The model of a separate earth and space erases these re­
lationships and may compromise their continuity by underwriting the
disruption of Sky Country.
The damage that occurs through the breaking of protocols and the
damaging of relationships occurs in ways both known/knowable and
unknown/unknowable. There is the clearing of sites on earth, the ’space
junk’ orbiting earth (Gorman, 2005), the mis-communications and
changing seasonal messages that come when the sky speaks differently,
and the deep, lingering ramifications that occur from Law not followed.
There is also damage done to the protocols and Laws of
more-than-humans, many of which live beyond human understanding.
And the ways that futurities/pasts/presents predicated on Indigenous
absence, on possession and accumulation, and on the disrespect of
protocols will always continue to re-create wrongs.
Rrawun also expresses concern over the disruption of the links be­
tween Sky Country and Sea and Land Country if they are traversed by
those who do not have sufficient knowledge. He asks what might happen
8
Political Geography 81 (2020) 102218
if substances from Sky Country were brought back to Country on earth
and sea:
Say if you travelled 1 million miles up there and then you come back,
bring back all the toxic and all the radiation back here on earth, and
then go back to space. And could be taking dangerous toxic air waves
and spread like viruses.
Guwak knows how to travel to Sky Country and back without dis­
rupting or displacing. But would-be space colonizers may not, and may
inadvertently bring about cascades of destruction through their igno­
rance. This is another reason why it is so important to understand how
deeply connected Sky Country is with Country on earth.
Ŋ unhili yukurrana nhina miyalk Nyapililŋu.
There lives a sprit woman, Nyapililŋu.
Guwak waŋana dhuwala ŋarra yurru marr ganana Dhithi,
Gunbalka Rakila.
I will leave this place, the essence of my people, with the seep name Dhithi,
leave the stony Country, Gunbalka Rakila, from where the string came.
Ŋ unha ŋupan guyaŋirri watamirri Wurrtjinmirri Dharrpayina.
I will chase and remember and fly towards to the Country from where the
wind blows, to where it directs me to Maŋgalili Country, nation of Wurrt­
jinmirri, Dharrpayina, deep clan names for Maŋgalili.
Bala butthurrunana warryurrunana burrkundja.
I take and pull the string and together we will fly; entwined, we will start
the journey, guided, directed by the Milky Way, we fly the universe
After the string is finished, after the identification is finished, Guwak
will cry to claim that body’s spirit. It’s time to put that body’s spirit
into the string. Entwining5 the spirit into the string and flying
together where the wind blows from. Starting to journey to the
universe. (Banbapuy)
As the echoes heard in the songspiral are echoes of Guwak, they are
heard for the first time and every time. Guwak has been there all the
time – and Guwak has been travelling through Sky Country forever – just
as the songspiral has always been sung. But there is also an ethical
requirement, an obligation and responsibility to keep singing it, to make
sure that it is sung forever. The process of sharing Guwak is a process of
intergenerational learning through which Rrawun (and hopefully
others) will continue to learn and share the songspiral and carry out this
responsibility. To gain permission to share Guwak with us for this paper
and our new book, Rrawun spoke to old man Balaka Maymuru, his other
eldest brother from an elder brother. Balaka said, “Do it. Because if I pass
away, there will be no one else to share the Guwak”. Rrawun is worried
that Balaka is getting sick, so he needs all his sons and daughters to wake
up and learn the songspirals – “to ensure that our stories are not taken
away”. By sharing the songspiral, Rrawun is carrying on the work of his
grandfather, one of the first men in the community to open up an art
gallery and invite ŋa €paki to participate in ceremonies in the 1970s. This
was part of his grandfather’s vision of sharing knowledge through the
generations. It is crucial that young men also sing Guwak, keeping it
alive in contemporary song. Indeed, Rrawun wrote a song about Guwak
and Milngiyawuy, the River of Stars, with his rock band, East Journey.
This process of spiraling in, through and as time blurs any neat sepa­
rations between then and now, between this moment and the eternity of
the songspiral, and across generations. Rrawun sees this as part of the
work of ensuring continuity:
It is the same thing, we are using the same pathway in a different
context. Like right now, we are discussing about how great the uni­
verse is. We are learning together. We are trying to discover, while
we are alive, we are saying, what is going to happen when we pass
away. We are all doing that. We are getting the songs, putting the
5
Rrawun took a long time to find the English words for this – an indication of
how difficult it is to convey so much of this meaning to a ŋ€
apaki audience.
Bawaka Country including
songs in our souls and we will journey with that until later on, the
time when we pass away, we will journey, begin the songs and
stories, following the songs and stories until we get there, we will
know ahh, this is what we were doing. Same thing, I know that song,
I am going to put it into contemporary to show what the song talks
about. Same thing with life. I know this story, this song, I am going to
exercise and maintain it to reach the spiritual world, in a right path.
This ethical obligation to make sure that Guwak is sung forever is an
important way of taking care of the cosmos, and the kin who dwell
throughout it. As Rrawun explains:
Guwak is someone’s spirit when someone passes away. The spirit
waits until Guwak calls out. It’s like opening the gates to the heavens,
to the universe, for the spirit who is carrying the string. It is another
way to tell people to look after the universe. When we talk about
space, there are people already there. Already. You don’t see but if
you believe, it gets passed on.
Each time the ceremony is carried out, the songs are sung, the dances
danced and Guwak’s flight repeated, Sky Country is remade. Indeed, Sky
Country needs to be sung, danced and journeyed into becoming; it is co-
constituted by these acts. The songs and ceremonies that re-create Sky
Country will, as Rrawun says, continue to exist as long as Yolŋu sing
songspirals. In sharing Guwak with you, we hope to learn and remind
ourselves and others of our obligations to Sky Country, and how plans to
disrupt it might break these bonds.
5. Conclusion
Ŋ unhiyi ŋayi mulkana wa €ŋanydja nha €ŋala ŋayi dharpa bathala
ya€ku Marawil, ŋayi yukurrana dharrana wanawilyurruna.
When the Guwak got to her destination, she saw a big tree, called Mar­
awili; it stood there with branches like arms welcoming Guwak. ‘The Marawili
tree waits for me.’
Ŋ al’yurruna ŋayi Guwakdja bala beŋurunydja bulu waŋana dha
lakaraŋala marrtjina wa €ŋa malanyŋulili.
Guwak climbed onto the tree. ‘I will climb onto this tree and again from
here I will call out and chant the names of the Yirritja places, to tell them I am
here.’
By sharing Guwak with you, we are calling out the names of the
places the songspiral helps to co-create. Guwak refuses the idea of space,
portrayed by would-be space colonizers as a dead, empty stock of re­
sources awaiting exploitation. Sky Country, which Guwak traverses, is a
living, sentient, intimately-known space governed through Yolŋu Law,
relationships and kinship structures. Plans to colonize and exploit Sky
Country would not only extend colonial-capitalist dispossession
(Coulthard, 2014; Moreton-Robinson, 2015), but it would also damage
the beings (including ancestors and kin) that inhabit those places. By
breaking these relations, space colonization might also disrupt the
songspiral, the journeys of Guwak, and the ways of being that maintain
Sky Country.
We hope that through this generous sharing of Guwak by Rrawun,
Banbapuy, Djawundil, the koel bird and Country itself, you can start to
appreciate how the Yolŋu co-authors of this paper see Sky Country. As
Rrawun explains:
Song[spirals] are like a map deep inside us. When we sing we see
where we’re going. Freshwater to salt water to skies. All cosmic
knowledge. I see inside me, everything in my singing and dancing is
telling the map of the journey of the ancestors from start to end.
Guwak shows that Sky Country is richly inhabited and maintained
through a complex set of negotiations amongst communities and beings,
repeated ceremonies of the songspiral, journeys and other efforts. There
are Indigenous people and other beings (including ancestors) in Sky
Country and, because it is connected with Country on earth, these beings
are Indigenous to Sky Country. This undermines the statement – too
Political Geography 81 (2020) 102218
often taken for granted – that space is an uninhabited wilderness.
By highlighting the negotiations that take place in co-constituting
Sky Country, Guwak also shows that rather than the universe depicted
by mainstream Western sciences, we inhabit a pluriverse co-constituted
by multiple, intimate relationships of co-existence. Approaching Sky
Country in this way opens opportunities for relationships rather than
conflict driven by the desire to attain exclusive control over territory.
Guwak also shows that Sky Country is sentient and co-respondent with
beings on earth; as such, it cannot be separate from earth in the way that
would-be space colonizers suggest. We contend that there is continuity
between Sky Country and Country on earth – it is all Country, and
everything is connected through kinship. Kinship, and the connectivities
it nurtures, bring with them ethical obligations to recognize, engage
with and care for and as Sky Country. Crucially, Guwak has also
impressed the ethical imperative of singing the songspiral forever – and
ensuring its continuity – as a fundamental way of ‘taking care of the
universe’ Rrawun. We offer this article as a small contribution towards
that work and also hope it will encourage broader conversations within
political geography and beyond to help Sky Country be seen differently –
not as the sterile, uninhabited space depicted by many would-be space
colonizers and Western sciences, but rather as a living, co-respondent
pluriverse for which we all need to care.
Funding
This work was supported by an Australian Research Council Dis­
covery Project Grant DP140100290, an Independent Social Research
Foundation grant (Residential Grants, 2016) funds and the Wilfrid
Laurier University faculty research fund. Sarah Wright is supported by
an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship FT160100353.
Declaration of competing interest
None.
€
Acknowledgements
We wish to acknowledge Bawaka Country and Yolŋu people both
past and present.
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