Cellular

I met Kim Holten in 2007 at the University of New South Wales. She was a teacher and Aboriginal Education Adviser. I was just starting my PhD, exploring how animation can be used to combine different ways of knowing. Kim was raised in La Perouse by her grandmother, a Dhanggati woman, and so I was grateful when she agreed to participate in workshops I was leading. We began with listening to what people knew about Antarctica and climate change. We moved, drew and wrote responses to that experience. I traced and animated our drawings and words, showed draft animations to the group, and incorporated peoples' feedback to reflect, as much as possible, the group experience.

"...Kim wrote these words in response to hearing stories held in glacial ice, told by Antarctic scientists:

Years later (Feb, 2020) I find these recollections on Kim's way of learning, in the 2012 Keynote Address to the Children's Book Council of Australia:"

Nadia Wheatley: "...Kim explains that the Aboriginal way of learning is to do with 'the way we communicate'... And it's not just about the speaking but it's about the deep listening - it's being able to listen very closely to what people are saying. That was one of the invaluable lessons that my grandmother taught me, through the way she told her stories. My auntie Boronia does it, even to this day. If she wants you to listen to her, she'll talk to you on her drawing breath in - it's like a whisper - so you have to get closer to her. And my grandmother would do that too, so it would force you to come close and lean in and listen, to really get the message - to get the meaning behind what she was saying, as that story was being built up and built up and built up and built up and built up! And then getting to the point, and the inflexion in the voice going down.'"

Lisa Roberts 2021

	2024 Krill Song
	2022 Raising Darwin
	2022 Flying Sisters
	2021 Water Flows
	2009 Yam Sex
	2020 Tree Spirit
	2019 Algae Oxygen
	2020 Otter Song
	2020 Echidna Family
	2018 Mother Country
	2018 Ocean Breath
	2016 Human Inseparable
	2007 Cellular Memories

Mind map