An indelible memory of visitors to Willowra Aboriginal community in Central Australia is the sound of donkeys braying as they roam the village in search of sustenance and are chased by barking dogs. While Warlpiri people view donkeys as an integral part of their sonic landscape, outsiders typically perceive the animals as a noisy, land‐management ‘pest’ and want them removed. Recently, the arrival of a stranger in a truck towing a donkey trailer provoked concerned discussion. Talk intensified when, for a few days, the donkeys disappeared, and the silence of the donkeys echoed throughout the community. Tracing emergent social relations and mimetic connections that entangle donkeys and people in the Willowra region, this paper explores why donkeys matter to local Warlpiri, sensorially and otherwise. I contrast Warlpiri coexistence with donkeys to the treatment of donkeys by conservationists as feral animal and by capitalists as commodity. Linking the silence of donkeys at Willowra to the global trade in ejiao, a glue made from donkey hides used in Chinese medicine and cosmetics, I engage with Michael Taussig's (2019) ‘The cry of the burro [donkey]’ to examine differing senses of being and predicaments that the sound of donkeys evoke cross‐culturally. I conclude with a call to listen differently to other‐than‐human beings when considering multispecies assemblages. Attending to the sonic range of donkeys as an expression of their agency, I suggest that we learn from Warlpiri and heed the cries of donkeys and their global silencing if we are to ensure our mutual survival.

中文翻译：

---

驴子的沉默：威洛拉及其他地区人与动物之间的感官纠缠

到澳大利亚中部Willowra原住民社区的游客们无法磨灭的记忆是，驴子在村子里觅食，被吠叫犬追逐时发出的叫喊声。虽然Warlpiri人们将驴子视为他们的声音景观的组成部分，但局外人通常将驴子视为嘈杂的土地管理“害虫”，并希望将其清除。最近，一个陌生人乘坐卡车拖着一头驴拖车引起了人们的关注。几天后，驴子消失了，驴子的沉默在整个社区中回荡，谈话变得更加激烈。通过追踪在威洛拉地区驴和人们纠缠的新兴社会关系和模仿联系，本文探讨了为什么驴在感觉上和其他方面对当地的瓦尔皮里至关重要。我将瓦尔普里与驴并存相比，保护主义者把驴当成野性动物，资本家把驴当成商品。将威洛拉（Willowra）驴的沉默与全球贸易联系起来ejiao是一种用中药和化妆品中的驴皮制成的胶水，我和迈克尔·陶西格（Michael Taussig）（2019）一起制作了“驴子的哭声”，考察了驴的声音在跨文化中引起的不同的存在和困境。 。最后，我呼吁在考虑多物种组合时以不同的方式聆听其他人的声音。我建议以音速的方式表达驴子的特质，我建议我们向瓦尔皮里学习，并注意如果我们要确保相互生存，便会呼唤驴子的呼声及其全球沉默。