News Bulletin - Australian Animal Studies Group

Interview: Academics, activists, researchers
Deborah Bird Rose interviewed by Matthew Chrulew
Deborah Bird Rose is a Professor in the Centre for Research on
Social Inclusion at Macquarie University, Sydney. Her work
focuses on entwined social and ecological justice in this time of
climate change, and is based on her long-term research with
Aboriginal people in Australia. She writes across several
disciplines, including anthropology, history, philosophy, cultural
studies and religious studies.
Deborah has written numerous books and essays, including
Reports from a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation and
recently published Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction
(University of Virginia Press). She edits the Ecological
Humanities in the Australian Humanities Review with Thom van
Dooren.
Matt: In Report from a Wild Country you write that you seek ―to include the natural world within the
moral community of encounter, responsibility, and witness.‖ (34) What have been the inspirations
and tools that have allowed you to open up such traditionally anthropocentric methodologies as
ethnography to a world full of nonhuman forces, creatures and voices?
Deborah: The inspiration comes from my research with Aboriginal people here in Australia. I have
been fortunate to have had many wonderful teachers – elders who sat with me, took me
walkabout, told me stories, and really tried to help me understand the world around us. I was
inspired by the kinship of it all – of how humans and nonhumans are enmeshed in these bonds of
enduring solidarity, expressed in every day action and in ritual, and also located in country, in
sacred sites, in the signs of life that tell stories of what happened. I learned from people who know,
without having to think about it or defend it, that nonhuman others live lives of meaning, and that
their actions often tell a lot about their meaningfulness. The fact that we humans often can’t
understand what that meaningfulness is all about is not a statement about others, it is a statement
about us, and it is an invitation to learn more about others.
As I work with what Aboriginal people are telling us, I always want to find the balance between
respecting that knowledge by working with it, and at the same time refraining from appropriating or
inappropriately mimicking that knowledge. So, I’ve also been looking at some of the stories the
West tells about kinship among earth creatures. I know, as we all do, that we western people have
these huge stories about separation from the others, stories that set up a stockade of human selfenclosure
and refuse every suggestion, indeed, refuse much evidence, concerning the falsity of
what is effectively an apartheid wall. At the same time, we have many fascinating stories about
connections and relationships. Some of our ancient religious stories give us insight, and I love
working with them as they often seem to hold open the big questions in ways that are wonderfully
relevant to us today. Science is equally fascinating in this regard. Darwin based his research life on
studying kinship, and DNA studies show an extraordinary degree of relationality. Scientific
research also raises the question of the nature of the relationships – is it all based on ‘selfish’
genes, or is something more complex going on? I love the work of Margulis and Sagan; I love
thinking about life in terms of bacteria, recombinations, ecosystems within organisms as well as
organisms within ecosystems; I love thinking about symbiosis, and mutualism.
To look into the lives of others in terms that draw on Aboriginal perspectives of intentional,
meaningful action, and on biological perspectives of entangled mutualism, is to encounter a vividly
engaging world of complex, relational coming-forth. Societies like Aboriginal clans and other
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