Storying Itinerant Childhoods: Weaving a Sense of Belonging Through Collaborative Art-making.
Channel: Alys Mendus
Date: 2021-11-16

Dr Alys Mendus and Ginny Connelly-Mendus
An audio-visual family (auto)ethnography presentation for ISAN (International Symposium of Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry), January 2022. 

Independent Scholar/ Melbourne Graduate School of Education Casual Academic

2-year-old, Ginny’s favourite book is Baby Business by Jasmine Seymour (2019) which we read and re-read, lapping up the images, embodying the actions of the Indigenous baby’s smoking ceremony. This book means something to Ginny. This book means something to our family. Through an awareness of the wisdom and vision of Jasmine Seymour who explained that her book “Baby Business is a book that is for everyone who lives in Australia, over time I have heard many Elders generously say that if you are born on Country then you belong to Country” (in CBCA, 2019, para.3). I am learning about the importance of belonging, leaving questions about itinerant childhoods, defined as young people growing up in multiple locations. I wonder if you can sense belonging if you are always on the move? For Ginny, a white Australian/British child born on Bundjalung Country but no longer living there, where does she belong? This presentation will explore this space of “tangled belongings” (Bunda et al., 2019, p. 176) through storying (Phillips and Bunda, 2018) our family’s journey (our family [auto]ethnography) in Australia, by troubling place, sense-making and identity. 

Join me as I weave a basket. I was inspired by the collaborative art-making by the Indigenous and non-Indigenous women in SISTAS holding space (Bunda et al., 2019) and I began this project hoping to create a cartography of itinerant childhoods through my lens of crafting from Country by weaving baskets from plants in each place we spent time in, drawing on Indigenous basketweaving knowledges, my own experiences as a willow basketmaker in the UK and Pink’s (2015) work on sensory ethnography. I wish you all could smell the damp alive greenness of the reeds dancing in my hands. As I weave I want to work authentically and with respect and I couldn’t find any local Indigenous women to learn their basketweaving techniques and I know this is sensitive space. So for this first basket I am following techniques shared on a video provided by the Tjanpi Desert Weavers online. I know I could use methods I have used in the UK but I am conscious of appropriation and I struggle with the concept of using the Eurocentric knowledges when exploring connection to Country as that is actually following a colonialist mind-set so I shall keep weaving following the techniques shared on the video. 

This is where the space for child-led nature-connection art-making becomes essential and this presentation will share art and stories from a journey that we took as a family on the road in the Australian Winter of 2021. Ginny and I wake early and spend time outside observing birds, crafting and finding natural treasures. As we journey, I will scrapbook this collaboration as a memory book, things-made, things-collected, drawing on the wide scholarship on affect and ‘thing-thought’ (Harris & Holman Jones, 2019) by including the photos, drawings, pressed flowers, made objects, some kept and some let go of – enjoying the im-permeance and transience of what is created. This is an autotheoretical lens as the senses as well as the emotions will become part of the weave of place towards belonging, creating a tactile scented memory of place giving agency to the 2-year-old child to gather natural objects that mean something in that moment beyond their vocabulary and understanding by their parents. 

The paper will be written and presented by Alys Mendus, but the focus of the research is on the relationship between Alys and Ginny, mother and daughter, and Ginny’s voice will be heard through the collaborative art-making. I am aware as I share this presentation of our family [auto]ethnography with an ethic of care and an awareness of the autoethnographic research by Tamas (2011, 2021) on writing about/with your daughter. Observing and accurately recording how Ginny engages with each place, environment we are in and the use and value that she gives to the objects made is essential. For example, the first basket, made from grasses in Bundjalung country has quickly been described as ‘Ninny’s’ and used in her play kitchen. Throughout this paper Ginny is not seen as the ‘future’ (Lee, 2013) but seen as having her own direct agency, storying of place, totem and journey. The art-making is collaborative and not always adult directed, it emerges through observation. 

Through performative autoethnography and autotheory this presentation will allow the audience to join us connecting with nature, art and family as we explore place and belonging within the context of itinerant childhoods.