Featherlines : becoming human differently with earth others

Featherlines are the Aboriginal storylines of the great ancestral bird beings who traversed the Australian continent and continue to shape its living and non-living forms today. The research that underpins this chapter was carried out in D’harawal country of south western Sydney in eastern Australia. Here, at Yandelora the great Pelican ancestor begins its long journey through the country of many different language groups to join up the Bronze Winged Pigeon storyline, traversing the continent all the way to southern Australia. This linked storyline of Pelican and Bronze Winged Pigeon is a featherline, a storyline of bird creation ancestors. This chapter draws on the idea of the featherline to focus on the ways that birds shaped contemporary children’s experience of the Love Your Lagoons project. 300 children, their teachers and community educators participated in the project, walking to their local wetlands and incorporating their local wetlands into the school curriculum. In three of these schools birds were significant in shaping children’s experience, creating entangled relations with children and calling forth affective responses from children, teachers and researchers. These stories of becoming bird are brought into conversation with each other to illuminate the ways that birds shaped the methodological and pedagogical actions and meanings that enable us to learn to become human differently. In following the storyline of birds throughout this project, the featherlines of D’harawal country are evoked at the heart of the matter of our worldly methodological entanglements and their pedagogical enactments.