What impressions do river rocks make?

Shared by Tonya Rooney, Mindy Blaise, and Affrica Taylor

What impressions do river rocks make? We pondered this question as we sat on river rocks in Micalong Creek, during a bush salon in the Wee Jasper valley. We’d prepared by reading a couple of provocative pieces. The first, by Beth Povinelli prompted us to approach the river rocks as sense-able co-existents – beyond the hierarchical categories of living and non-living that structure the dualisms of late liberalism. The other by Dwayne Donald, prompted us to consider rocks as elders who connect us to our ancestral past and to all other beings.

Through hanging out with river rocks, we came up with a range of impressions. Tonya focussed on how river rocks impress upon other bodies by holding them.  Mindy focussed on the impressions made by the contours on their surfaces.  Affrica focussed on river rocks as shape shifters, forming and shaping the valley floor.  In collaboration with the rocks and other materials in the creek, we produced three creative responses: a clay and rock sculpture of holdings; a ‘rockarama’ of paper rock rubbings; and a stitched rocky riverscape of dirty cloth and plastic impressed with their previous entanglements with rocks in the creek.

Wee Jasper Bush Salon, April 2021 (Tonya Rooney, Mindy Blaise and Affrica Taylor)

Povinelli, E. A. (2016) Geontologies: A Requiem to Later Liberalism, Durham & London: Duke University Press.

Donald, D. T. (2012) Forts, curriculum and Indigenous Métissage: Imagining decolonization of Canadian-Aboriginal relations in educational contexts. In Abdi, A.A. (ed). Decolonizing Philosophies of Education, pp.91-111, SensePublishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-687-8_7