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ABSTRACT
This article enacts Deleuze and Guattari's (Citation1987) concept assemblage to craft a riverScape pedagogy that is informed by, and responsive to, the Murray Cod, the river, and its circumstances. The Murray Cod, the largest fish species in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin, has diverse cultural meanings. Cod are at once a creation being of Indigenous people, a migratory predator that breeds in response to warm floodwaters, and a fish suffering significant ecological decline as a result of changes to land and water use in its habitat. Murray Cod assemblage weaves these elements together to re/create a bioegalitarian pedagogy, part thought experiment and part teaching strategy.
Notes
1. I follow both Warren Sellers (Citation2008) and Margaret Sellers (Citation2009) in using the tilde symbol (∼) between words that I believe are enmeshed in one another, that are always-already co-existent. In this instance, natural history is a cultural activity that is shaped by a wide range of cultural influences. Cultural history is shaped by and embedded in the natural history that surrounds it.
2. Banded Stilts are a nomadic wader endemic to Australia. For many years their breeding patterns went unobserved by scientist, with speculation that they migrated to the northern hemisphere to breed. They were eventually found to breed on ephemeral saline lakes across southern Australia, where they feed on small crustaceans. Robin highlights how European-informed cultural ideas about bird breeding behavior led to misunderstandings of this species, and the landscapes that they inhabit.