This principle underlies the second module of our Transdisciplinary Themed, What is it we need to think and do to restore and restory our world?
This week we began an exploration titled, The Story of Connected - We have Good Teachers. We opened with a gesture toward understanding Relationally Responsive Standpoint Theory. The students then unpacked the purpose of an Acknowledgement of Country, and wrote their own in versions that were meaningful and moving. These were grounded in Dharug and Gundungurra Country, and also acknowledged the wider ecological and human communities that are part of their lives, their personal strength and resilience.
We discussed the traditional versions of Sleeping Beauty, the influences they have in continuing to shape our worldview, especially around gender, sexuality and nature. Inspire by a close reading of Sophie Strand’s rewilding of this story, where the sleeping beauty is the animate Earth and the prince’s new quest is to awaken her within his/our own consciousness of connected, we wrote our own rewilding of this story.
We have also explored James Lovelock’s Gaia Theory and Lynn Margulis contribution to this, sneaking into a scientific worldview that depicts the Earth as living, evolving and dynamic, where living beings combine and collaborate to create and sustain life.
* Yunkaporta, Tyson and Shillingsworth, Doris (2020) “Relationally Responsive Standpoint,” Journal of Indigenous Research: Vol. 8 : Iss. 2020 , Article 4. by Yunka Porta in Relationally Responsive Standpoint (deakin.edu.au)
** Strand, Sopie: The flowering wand, Rewiding the Sacred Masculine (Inner Traditions, 2022)
I admit the thought was on my mind but the fluttering was in my heart who was the princess I had come to awaken to ask for her dreams there was no parting of thorned vine or stepping through a field of stinging nettle for she had come to me I knew her immediately a dazzle of colour had caught my eye and I was hooked as her chittering and chattering reeled me in sensing I had offered an invitation she flew to the verandah rail near where I was seated I knew to feed her first offer seed tidbit after sleep-waiting 100 years wouldn’t you be hungry she eyed me curiously as she snacked cracking the seed with her beak picking up one after another with skill I couldn’t fathom given the shape of her claw so un-resembling of mine then she flew off just a little to a nearby branch as if to say listen and so I did as a light wind lifted leaves and set a grasshopper creaking oh I said I think I get it you are not my princess though lovely as you are robed in rich crimson and forget-me-not blue the wind the insect creak the lift of your wing the tall nodding dahlia flowers were all princess and all leaning in toward me who in this moment felt clumsier than I had ever felt stumbling thought over word and then as suddenly as my distraction of self-doubt you my princess were gone but I got your message in tallness of tree in drift of cloud in slurp of wattle bird feasting and I thought it was you who had been sleeping 100 years but really it was always all along going to be me I heard you frog so I’m awake now.
