Songspirals as care infrastructure: binding human and more-than-human worlds in and as sky Country

With and as Bawaka Country (North East Arnhem Land), we share how sky Country and Yolŋu people are connected by, and co-become through, a multidimensional, multidirectional infrastructure of care. We discuss what care means, from a Yolŋu ontology, looking to the way a Yolŋu care infrastructure emerges through and as wetj (sharing), märr (love) and raki (a string that binds everything through relationships and responsibilities). One of the many ways that a Yolŋu infrastructure of care manifests is when it is sung and enlivened through songspirals. Songspirals sing the land and its many relations into being. In this paper, we are guided by the Guwak songspiral that holds and maintains important relationships between people, Milŋiyawuy, the river of stars, and sky Country. Bawaka Country, Rrawun Maymuru who is Wäŋa Wataŋu, custodian, of the Guwak songspiral and Guwak itself lead the paper. Guwak shows how wetj, märr and raki co-become as a complex Yolŋu infrastructure of care, connecting human and more-than human beings all the way to the heavens. As we follow Guwak, we elaborate on what it means to care as Country, and consider the complex ways that care infrastructures might guide more-than-human kinship and responsibility.