Deborah Bird Rose Read Bio Collapse
Deborah Bird Rose was an anthropologist and leading figure in the interdisciplinary environmental humanities. Her books include Hidden Histories (1991), Dingo Makes Us Human (1992), Nourishing Terrains (1996), Country of the Heart (2002), Reports from a Wild Country (2004), and Wild Dog Dreaming (2011). For most of her career Rose was based at the Australian National University (1995–2008) and Macquarie University (2008–2013).
# 121
The animal who is your kin is called your warpiri. In the context of ngurlu, Daly Pulkara explained the meaning this way: warpiri is your “biggest sorry” (your greatest sorrow). In my words, warpiri is YOUR GRIEF. Your flesh and blood, flowing through the bodies of others who will be hunted, is your grief. You don’t have to grieve over everything; you couldn’t. But here, in this place of encounter with the necessary deaths of others, your grief may become extreme and so may your anger. If these deaths come about in defiance of Law, righteous anger is directed to those who have not managed death properly.
Iacopo Prinetti