Everything is love: mobilising knowledges, identities, and places as Bawaka

In postcolonial spaces, thorny questions of romanticisation and essentialism remain central to Indigenous politics. Environmentalists, Indigenous rights activists, and academics are rightly called to account for imposing romanticised and essentialised versions of Indigenous peoples and their world views, and for mobilising these identity politics for their own political ends (Brosius 1997; Langton 1999). In this chapter we start to unravel these tricky questions of romanticisation and essentialism with reference to our Indigenous-non-Indigenous, more-than-human research collective. Our collective works together with marr, a love that binds us together, to and as Country; committed to working as kin and centring Yol?u ways of being and doing. Yet, as we do this, we navigate difficult territory as we try to minimise the colonising potential of romanticisation. Here, we share how we navigate this fraught ground, take you inside how we ‘do’ research within our collective, and delve into the politics of representation in research with Indigenous peoples. We ponder the generative romance of co-becoming Country and discuss how our collective understands romance and romanticisation. We reflect on how our work embraces risk and vulnerability, so that our collective can strive, however imperfectly, to remain true to marr, to the love that binds us together.