CSE General Meeting

Wednesday 26 March 2025

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Andi Stapp-Gaunt presents Sympoiesis and the Cultural Interface

In this presentation, I explore ways of making stories with—rather than about—the more-than-human world. My research engages Torres Strait Islander academic Martin Nakata’s Cultural Interface (2007) as a framework for reconciling Aboriginal, Māori, and Western Feminist Multispecies theories. By bringing these knowledge systems into dialogue, I propose eleven guiding pedagogies that shaped my novel, Rabbit Island. Foregrounding Aboriginal Protocols of Relatedness and Māori mourning rituals, my approach emphasises connection, storying, responsibility, and transformation as key dynamics for creative practice.

About Andraya

Andraya is a bicultural Māori Dutch woman from the Ngāti Porou iwi (tribe) of Aotearoa, New Zealand. She works as a casual academic at the University of Canberra, where she convenes the Introduction to Creative Writing unit and teaches in the Indigenous Studies minor. Andraya is a member of the First Nations Collaborative Research Web (UC Centre for Creative and Cultural Research) and has worked as part of the UC Story Ground Program for five years (Story Ground explores the intersection of Aboriginal epistemology and creative writing). She is also an executive English teacher with the ACT Education Directorate. Her home is populated by two humans and seven free-roaming house rabbits. The rabbits are her kin and storying partners.