Listening when others ‘talk back’

This paper addresses the ethics of inter-cultural collaborative art practice from an Australian perspective, through examining aspects of the project, Weaving the Murray . Anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose in her recent book, Reports from a Wild Country; ethics for decolonisation (2005) notes the legacy of white settler society in Australia, claiming that 'We cannot help knowing that we are here through dispossession and death' (Rose 2005, p.6). This is a shocking proposition and an uncomfortable position for white Australians. Yet to ignore this reality is to concede to the continuation of a present violence against Indigenous Australians. This is perhaps not now enacted through dispossession and death, but through another type of violence that sets the past aside and ignores the 'vulnerability of others.' (Roth 1999, p.5) Rose suggests an ethical position that 'would replace (this) violence with responsive attentiveness', an attentiveness to place and people, located in the here and now, that takes account of the past, and is based on listening to Indigenous Australians talking back 'in their own terms' (Rose 2005, p.5). When listening however, it is also necessary to pay attention to 'silence' to consider why words fail and how not-speaking can be used as a strategy of resistance. This paper reflects upon the ideas that underpin Rose's ethical position as they were played out with varying degrees of success, in the inter-cultural collaborative project, Weaving the Murray .