Films tell whale of a story from trailblazing study of Sea-Kin

Working on Unbroken Whispers: The Ripples Connecting Sea-Kin has been a two-year professional and personal odyssey for Associate Professor Jodi Edwards.

As well as producing ground-breaking research – captured for the Australian public in three short films that recently debuted at the Gala Cinema – the project revealed Jodi's own deep family ties to the sea.

“I always knew that my family were whalers before whaling became a thing, and my great-great-grandfather was a part of the Eden whalers who were taken by the Davidsons and forced to whale," Jodi said.

“And so, in understanding that, I knew we had a reciprocal and symbiotic relationship with orca, where the men used to light fires on the beaches and then they would go between the fires and they would chant and sometimes they would hit their spears on the water. 

“What I didn't know was my great-great-grandmother used to sit on the headlands at Brou Lake and sing to the dolphins and direct the dolphins to chasing the mullet and the salmon. 

“So when I found that out, I realised that we were in this place where we could lose it [the ability to sing to marine life].

“If we didn't start to practise it and re-practise it, we would lose it. And so we started to practise it.

“And so I'm still practising. I'm still giving it my best shot. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Most people call me the nutty professor – I’m okay with that," she says, laughing.

Tracking the migration

For more than two years, this proud Yuin and Dharawal woman has followed the southern and northern migration of humpback whales, as well as kept a close eye on the movements and behaviours of myriad forms of marine life as part of her work on Unbroken Whispers.

The Aboriginal-led research initiative uses Cultural Ecological Knowledge – including oral traditions such as stories, songs, dances, and geographic formations – to map Culturally Important Areas.

Jodi is a research fellow with the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security and her first-of-its-kind research project aims to ensure Cultural Ecological Knowledges are included in conservation planning. It has focused on Indigenous knowledge relating to the southern right whale, humpback whale, orca and dolphins, with cultural, environmental, social and technical research themes.

Films launch at Gala screening

As part of the initiative Jodi has championed the creation of three short films, which were launched in October at an event hosted by Screen Illawarra at Warrawong's Gala Cinema. Fellow researcher Dr Chels Alby Marshall and award-winning photographer Natalia Baechtold were Jodi’s production partners on the films.

At the debut screening, Jodi said she was feeling “very happy” about the films – Through the Eye of Observation, Truth Telling and Indigenous Knowledge Systems.

“I think the movies are a justification of lots of people having involvement in Unbroken Whispers," Jodi said.

“Natalia’s cinematography work, it makes the words that I put in front of those pictures, just powerful.”

The short films, each about 30 minutes long, are the culmination of more than 76 interviews and hundreds of hours of research, preparation and travel around Australia (including to South Australia, Tasmania and Queensland), not to mention filming on location and editing.

“I don't know how the whales feel, but I'm exhausted,” Jodi said.

“I'm glad that I did it and I'm glad I got that interconnection with whales. I learned a lot of personally about my own family and my own family's learning experience, which was great as well. But also, I think, people will get to see a different side of Australia through the film and through the voices that they hear. 

“What I want people to take away from this project is an understanding that Sea-Kin is everybody's business, looking after the ocean and understanding the connection between Sea-Kin. 

“It's a mindset: we’ve all got to look after that ocean out there, if we want to keep seeing the whales.”

As Jodi told the Flame before this project began: “In the deep, wide expanse of the southern seas, there are whispers – whispers that travel through the ocean like a secret passed from one generation to the next. These are the 'Unbroken Whispers', the sacred connections between the Aboriginal peoples of south-eastern Australia and the marine giants they’ve revered for millennia.

“Humpback whales, orcas, dolphins and sharks are more than creatures of the sea to Aboriginal communities – they are kin, wise law holders, and messengers of the ocean, with stories woven into the fabric of the land, sky, and sea.”

At the launch night, Jodi said the films give the project greater impact.

“I wanted people to see what was in their own backyards, I wanted people to understand.

“And as a researcher, as an academic, I didn't believe putting words on paper would have the strength and the appeal to people like a film would have. 

“So that's where it started, and then it was about finding Natalia to be able to express what we wanted people to see and hear.”

Natalia said the entire filmmaking process was labour intensive.

“We actually started with, of course, the research. But then the research led to the narration; we tried to break our research into components that were easy to convey in the films. 

“We actually intended to have four films," Natalia said, laughing. "They were going to be 15 minutes long, but then as we moved through and started going to communities and speaking to people, we ended up doing over 76 interviews, which is a lot of hard drives and it's a lot of manual sifting.

"It took three months of very long hours to go through every single transcript because auto transcribe doesn't work so well with cultural language, let alone accents and slang. 

“So, three months to transcribe and then pulling through and pulling out the messages that tied into the narration so that we could back using the voices of community, but also seeking to be able to back up that narration.”

Tracing whale migrations was crucial, Jodi said.

“We made a decision early on to migrate with the whales, so we migrated from Ngarrindjeri country in South Australia across, and then we went down to Tasmania, and then all the way up the east coast [of Australia] to Hervey Bay. 

“And then the next year, we came all the way back down and back across.

“In meeting and in migrating with the whales, and stopping in places, you just get to talk to people and that's one of the beautiful things about it.”

Working with Gumaraa, a cultural education and experiences company, Jodi is now leading some of Shellharbour Wild's Aboriginal Cultural Whale Cruises out of Shell Cove. Cultural cruises have proved very popular, with tourists eager to learn First Nations stories.

Amid all this and her scientific research, Jodi will continue to practise her singing.

“One thing that I've come to understand about it, sometimes it's not about the language or the song, it's about the vibration," she said.

“And I really believe that. I had a wonderful opportunity to take out a group of students from the University of Wollongong that study psychology… and I had the opportunity to take my daughter on that boat and pass on to her so that we are practising it and we don't lose it.”

The Unbroken Whispers short films are available for private screenings. Dr Jodi Edwards can be contacted at the University of Wollongong.

Screen Illawarra is a volunteer-run organisation that champions screen production locally and holds regular events.