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Shimmering: Animating multispecies relations with Wurundjeri Country
by Mindy Blaise and Catherine Hamm
Scholars who align themselves with the emerging field of environmental humanities are
experimenting with different ways of knowing the world. Part of this work involves writing
practices that make room for new relations to emerge. These practices require an experimental
orientation toward the world, including curiosity about knowledge construction. In this chapter
we are curious about the effects of binary logic and linguistic imperialism and how they are
invisible tools of colonization that continuously separate humans from nature. We utilize the
grammar of animacy to help us tell lively and animate stories about multispecies relations with
Wurundjeri Country.
This chapter moves beyond our narrow disciplinary trainings in early childhood
education by taking a more open, generous, and curious view to knowledges. Initially, this
required us to move away from focusing exclusively on the human child or the human child
acting on nature, toward thinking with multispecies relations. In our previous work1 we argued
that the field of early childhood seems to have lost its ability to think creatively and
experimentally. We originally drew from Bruno Latour2, who encouraged us to reconsider how
early childhood educators usually pay attention to the world. Latour contends that a more
expansive logic is necessary to create opportunities for connectivity and relationality, rather than
being constrained by binary reasoning such as nature/culture or reason/emotion. Therefore,
shifting attention from focusing on “matters of fact” toward making room for “matters of
concern” entails foregrounding relational and connected knowledge processes. It also involves
making room for more-than-human relations. These shifts require that we try out some new
2
practices. One of these practices includes experimenting with writing lively animate stories as a
way to activate new multispecies relations.
We are inspired by Deborah Bird Rose’s lively stories about flowering gum tree and
flying fox encounters.3 In these stories, Rose shows how shimmer, the Aboriginal ancestral
power of life, arises in relationship and encounter. Shimmer exceeds human action. It captures
our attention, like the ways in which leaves, wind, and sun bring together a brilliant sparkling
effect of leafy light patterns and connections that can literally stop us in our tracks or take our
breath away for the slightest moment. It is here, within this moment, when something more is
possible: an encounter, a change, a connection, an event. The starting point for Rose is always
through her connection to Aboriginal Australia. She shows how her Aboriginal teachers taught
her about multispecies kinship, connectivity, and care.
These stories are not about describing the gum tree and the flying fox (although careful
description is needed). Rather, they are about the pulses that bring together multispecies
relationships and encounters. For Rose, these encounters are only possible when she engages in
“passionate immersion”4. She is able to do this because she attends to the ways in which she is
connected to, rather than separate from, the multispecies world. She suspends the human desire
to always know the facts about flowering gum trees and flying foxes and instead learns with the
entangled world she is part of. Human exceptionalism prevents us from learning with
multispecies relations and encounters because it is predicated on the desire to know what the
species is and why it is relating this way or that way. We are interested in something different.
We are curious about what we might learn by paying attention to the pulses of multispecies
relations and encounters and how these moments call us into relation. We already live in a
pulsing and shimmering multispecies world, but we are not always open to these encounters.
Blaise, M. & Hamm, C. (2019). Shimmering: Animating multispecies relations with Wurundjeri
Country. In B. Denise Hodgins (Ed), Feminist research for 21st-centurey childhoods: Common
worlds methods, (pp. 93-100). London: Bloomsbury Academic.
3
When we recognize that we are always already called into relation with human and more-than-
human others, the nature/culture binary is diffused. We offer a lively animate story to show how
shimmering makes us curious and draws us to our connections within multispecies worlds and
worldings. In doing so, we argue that shimmering makes us accountable and responsible.
The following lively animate story does not aim to tell more truthful accounts by stating
the “facts” of what we see and hear on our weekly “out and about” walks with young children
and teachers. We are not trying to be clever with our storying and what we know about this place.
Instead, our writing and storytelling is a political doing. We are curious to experiment with
writing in ways that dissolve the hierarchies that typically situate human and more-than-human
entities as separate and unequal. Our storying challenges human exceptionalism by activating
multispecies relations that bring nature and culture together. We experiment with animacy5,
referring to the grammatical effects of lively nouns, pronoun use, and sentence structure to move
ideas and activate multispecies relations.
The lively narrative shows how we attend to the animacies of the world and how
shimmering calls other species to one another and also calls us into connection. When we are
called into connection, something new is produced. Rose6, drawing from Isabelle Stengers’
concept of “reciprocal capture,” is instructive for understanding the political potential of
shimmer to activate new modes of existence that are not transcendental. According to Rose,
shimmering is prone to a “reciprocal capture” with Western thought: “It is a process of encounter
and transformation, not absorption, in which different ways of being and doing find interesting
things to do together.”7 While reading the following lively animate story, we invite you to pay
attention to when it calls you into connection, to see if you are able to engage in “passionate
immersion” and to consider how “reciprocal capture” occurs.
Blaise, M. & Hamm, C. (2019). Shimmering: Animating multispecies relations with Wurundjeri
Country. In B. Denise Hodgins (Ed), Feminist research for 21st-centurey childhoods: Common
worlds methods, (pp. 93-100). London: Bloomsbury Academic.
4
Shimmering: Creek-egretta-child-yabbie relations
It is Iuk Eel season in Wurundjeri country.8 Hot north winds are beginning to abate, and the high
temperatures are slowly dropping. Wind, water, trees, and animals pulse and hum with the
changing Kulin seasons. Wind moves in gusts back and forth, rustling the bright pink buds of
Manna gum that are just starting to flower, luring Lorikeet and Eastern Rosella Parrot to her
branches. It is hard to ignore Lorikeet and Parrot as they screech and fight boisterously for
nectar. Rainfall is increasing and Frog, Possum, and Parrot begin their breeding rituals. The
creek on Wurundjeri country, now known as Stony Creek, flows strongly with the recent heavy
rainfall. Creek moves the water, Eel, and other water-based animals, such as crustaceans and
macro-invertebrates, in waves along her stony bottom. These animals were once plentiful in this
creek and a food source for both the humans and other animals of this place. Now, they are
fewer in number, or perhaps we humans have a difficult time paying attention to their everyday
happenings and relations.
Egretta novaehollandiae (White-faced Heron) glides along the waterway. Her wings
move slowly, effortlessly as she swoops low over the water. At a small bend, Creek appears still.
But suddenly there is movement. Water is rippling. Or did Water make a splash? A single brown
leaf floats through the air. Leaf is swirling up, down, and around until Creek catches the stem,
taking Leaf down her flowing waters.
Egretta returns again, now standing on top of Rock. Her thin, stick-like legs stand out.
There is something disarming about her bright yellow legs. And yet, in the distance they blend in
with Grass: yellow, tall, thin, and soft. She is standing still on Rock. Waiting. But for what? An
insect? A small crustacean moving slowly along the bottom of Creek, trying to hide among the
rocks and water weeds? Sun’s rays, shining onto the water, sparkle, and Ripple invites. Egretta
Blaise, M. & Hamm, C. (2019). Shimmering: Animating multispecies relations with Wurundjeri
Country. In B. Denise Hodgins (Ed), Feminist research for 21st-centurey childhoods: Common
worlds methods, (pp. 93-100). London: Bloomsbury Academic.
5
moves, so slowly, deliberately, and finally comes to rest on the edge of Creek. Egretta continues
to wait.
A group of preschoolers and their teachers encounter Egretta on their regular walk along
Creek. This is not the first time she has attracted their interest: They have had regular
encounters with her. They are excited to see her today because she has not been around the
waterway for several weeks. Her beak is a different color to the last time they saw her: It has
changed from dusty yellow to dark grey-black. Iuk Eel season also signifies the breeding season
for herons. The change in the color of her beak shows that she is ready to find a mate. The
Creek-Egretta-human encounter today is not like others before. Egretta lures their attention and
the humans become immersed in her doing something new.
<<insert Figure 8.1 about here>>
Figure 8.1: Creek-egretta-child-yabbie relations. Author’s photograph.
Egretta stands motionless on the grassy edge of Creek, her eyes focused down toward the
water. She stretches one foot out, placing it in the shallow water, and quickly scratches. Once,
twice, three times. She finds a steady place to wait in the water. Quickly her long grey neck jerks
down into the water and then rises up. What has she caught in the water? Does she have Yabbie
(a small freshwater crustacean)? Slowly, carefully, and rhythmically she walks from the water
with Yabbie dangling from her bill and finds a place on the creek bank to eat.
The children and their teachers stand in silent awe, watching as Egretta devours Yabbie.
She crunches the hard carapace shell with her beak to reveal the soft flesh beneath. In a few
short moments the only evidence of her feast are Yabbie’s claws that she drops from her mouth
onto the bank of the creek. As the humans see the claws fall to the ground, connections are
Blaise, M. & Hamm, C. (2019). Shimmering: Animating multispecies relations with Wurundjeri
Country. In B. Denise Hodgins (Ed), Feminist research for 21st-centurey childhoods: Common
worlds methods, (pp. 93-100). London: Bloomsbury Academic.
6
made: The humans have seen Yabbie’s claws on the bank before and wondered how they got
there.
Animating
In our previous experimental writing, we have provided examples of different kinds of narrations
to show the shifts that are required to move from factual observations to more lively affect-
focused stories.9 In that work we hoped to draw readers into connection through the lively
stories. We realize that this can be problematic because it relies on a linear and progressive logic
as we present one story followed by another that moves from the simple to the complex. In the
spirit of experimentation, and with the aims of this lively doing book, we have tried something
different. Robin Wall Kimmerer10 alerts us to linguistic imperialism and how it distances us from
the world, positions nature as an object and “renders the land lifeless.” The effects of linguistic
imperialism are great and have meant there is loss, for instance, the loss of original Indigenous
plant, animal, place, and season names. Linguistic imperialism also keeps humans and
nonhumans separate. Kimmerer argues that nonhumans become relegated and assigned a
pronoun that reduces them to inanimate objects in nature rather than subjects within
natureculture. The English language groups objects together and names them “it” (e.g., I watch
the heron fly away. It quickly moves away.) Through linguistic imperialism, this has become a
dominant way of thinking and knowing that has erased other worldviews. In contrast, Indigenous
worldviews use the language of animacy to recognize living beings as subjects rather than
objects. This is important, because the language of animacy recognizes how humans are always
already in relation to multispecies worlds. Dissolving the divisions between humans and
nonhumans helps make us accountable and responsible for the common world we share.
Blaise, M. & Hamm, C. (2019). Shimmering: Animating multispecies relations with Wurundjeri
Country. In B. Denise Hodgins (Ed), Feminist research for 21st-centurey childhoods: Common
worlds methods, (pp. 93-100). London: Bloomsbury Academic.
7
In our story, we have brought the language of animacy into relation with shimmer. We
used the language of animacy as a way to articulate the shimmer, to attend to the pulses and
movements in multispecies worlds.
Activating something more
In this chapter we have drawn on Rose’s11 idea of “passionate immersion” as a way to activate
you, our reader, to be in relation with our story. Our attempt was to draw you into the
multispecies worlds where our story is situated. We intentionally shaped our narrative in a
nonlinear way, moving with the ebbs and flows of multispecies relations with Creek, with
Yabbie, with seasons, and with the world. We used pronouns as a way to engage with the more-
than-human protagonists as subjects, rather than objects. We have chosen not to conclude our
chapter with a more traditional “summing up” of the main ideas and specific writing strategies
we used, but rather invite you to animate a story that involves multispecies knowledges and
relations. We offer the following questions for activating something more:
How can you animate stories that make the more-than-human relations the most
important subject? How do you position the more-than-human and these relations in a sentence?
What kind of grammar do you use?
How might you replace nouns with verbs?
How can the beginning of each sentence be reframed or refocused? How do you write-in
blurriness, overlappings, pasts, and presents?
Instead of only writing about relations between species, how might you rewrite playful
relations between species in ways that do not separate out the species and their individual
actions?
Blaise, M. & Hamm, C. (2019). Shimmering: Animating multispecies relations with Wurundjeri
Country. In B. Denise Hodgins (Ed), Feminist research for 21st-centurey childhoods: Common
worlds methods, (pp. 93-100). London: Bloomsbury Academic.
8
How might the tone of a sentence or phrase be used in ways that make relations less
certain, more partial, or noninnocent?
How can your writing work to dissolve the hierarchies that are created by linguistic
imperialism?
How might you activate your writing as political and response-able, experimenting with
making the more-than-human subjects rather than objects?
As a political and ethical practice, how might you enliven your storying to create
different kinds of relations between humans and nonhumans?
Notes
Bibliography
Blaise, Mindy, Catherine Hamm, and Jeanne M. Iorio. “Modest Witness(ing) and Lively Stories:
Paying Attention to Matters of Concern in Early Childhood.” Pedagogy, Culture, &
Society 25, no. 1 (2017): 31–42. doi:10.1080/14681366.2016.1208265.
Chen, Mel Y. Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2012.
Gibson, Katherine, Deborah Bird Rose, and Ruth Fincher, eds. Manifesto for Living in the
Anthropocene. Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books, 2015.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the
Teaching of Plants. Minneapolis: Milkwood Editions, 2013.
———. “Speaking of Nature.” Orion Magazine, 2017.
https://orionmagazine.org/article/speaking-of-nature/ .
Blaise, M. & Hamm, C. (2019). Shimmering: Animating multispecies relations with Wurundjeri
Country. In B. Denise Hodgins (Ed), Feminist research for 21st-centurey childhoods: Common
worlds methods, (pp. 93-100). London: Bloomsbury Academic.
9
Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of
Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30, no. 2 (2004): 225–248.
Rose, Deborah Bird. “Shimmer: When All You Love is Being Trashed.” In Arts of Living on
Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, edited by Anna Lowenhaupt
Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, G51–G63. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt, Heather Anne Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt (eds.). Arts of
Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
Blaise, M. & Hamm, C. (2019). Shimmering: Animating multispecies relations with Wurundjeri
Country. In B. Denise Hodgins (Ed), Feminist research for 21st-centurey childhoods: Common
worlds methods, (pp. 93-100). London: Bloomsbury Academic.
1 Mindy Blaise, Catherine Hamm, and Jeanne M. Iorio, “Modest Witness(ing) and Lively Stories: Paying
Attention to Matters of Concern in Early Childhood,” Pedagogy, Culture, & Society 25, no. 1 (2017): 31–42.
2 Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,”
Critical Inquiry 30, no. 2 (2004): 225–248.
3 Deborah Bird Rose, “Shimmer: When All You Love is Being Trashed,” in Arts of Living on a Damaged
Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, ed. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson,
Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), G51–G63.
4 Rose, “Shimmer,” 53.
5 Mel Y. Chen, Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2012).
6 Rose, “Shimmer.”
7 Ibid., G51.
8 The Wurundjeri people are one of the traditional landowners of Melbourne, Australia. They are one of the
five groups that make up the Kulin nation of southwest Victoria. The people of the Kulin nation describe
seven seasons, rather than the imperial four seasons. See
https://museumsvictoria.com.au/forest/climate/kulin.html. In Australia, March is Iuk Eel season. The changes
in seasons are the pulses of relationality of land, sea, sky and all species.
9 Blaise, Hamm, and Iorio, “Modest Witness(ing).”
10 Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching
of Plants (Minneapolis: Milkwood Editions, 2013); Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Speaking of Nature,” Orion
Magazine, 2017.
11 Rose, “Shimmer.”
