Voicing Derbarl Yerrigan as a feminist anti-colonial methodology

Abstract

The paper voices Derbarl Yerrigan, a significant river in Western Australia, through three imperfect, non-innocent, and necessary river-child stories. These stories highlight the emergence of a feminist anti-colonial methodology that is attentive to settler response-abilities to Derbarl Yerrigan through situated, relational, active, and generative research methods. Voicing Derbarl Yerrigan influences the methodological practices used as part of an ongoing river-child walking inquiry that is concerned with generating climate change pedagogies in response to the global climate crises and calls for new ways of thinking and producing knowledge. In particular, the authors found that voicing as a methodology includes listening and being responsive to Derbarl Yerrigan's invitations, paying attention to pastspresentsfutures, and forming attachments through naming. By telling lively settler river-child stories, this paper shows how voicing Derbarl Yerrigan is vital to open new possibilities for education and has implications for settler-colonial contexts, where the focus on learning shifts from learning about the world to learning to become with multispecies river worlds.