For The Wild - October 21, 2020


VANESSA CAVANAGH, RACHAEL CAVANAGH, & DEB SWAN on Ancestral Fire Regimes ⧸205

Topics
cultural burning histories cool burns and animal reactions cultural fire practices cultural burning women's fire practices
Dr. NATASHA MYERS on Growing the Planthroposcene ⧸204 ASTRA TAYLOR on Voting, Democracy, and People Power ⧸206

Episode Stats


Length

55 minutes

Words per minute

147.65

Word count

8,250

Sentence count

237

Harmful content

Misogyny

11

sentences flagged

Hate speech

24

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
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00:00:30.920 Welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today I'm speaking with Vanessa Kavanagh,
00:00:37.700 Deb Kim-Swan, and Rachel Kavanagh. Our country responds to our people,
00:00:43.800 and the people respond back to country. Vanessa is an aboriginal woman with
00:00:48.480 Bunjalung and Wanarrua ancestry. Bunjalung and Wanarrua nations are both located in the state
00:00:55.800 of New South Wales in Australia. Vanessa is a PhD candidate and associate lecturer at the
00:01:02.220 University of Wollongong in Australia. Her research explores and amplifies the experiences
00:01:08.460 and empowerment of Aboriginal women in cultural burning in New South Wales. 0.98
00:01:14.460 Deb is a Nanandajuri Mimini with kinship affiliation to Dark and Young and Awabe country.
00:01:22.360 Debra currently works for Transport New South Wales as a culture and heritage officer, specializing
00:01:27.960 in preservation, traditional land management practices, and women's cultural practices.
00:01:34.120 Rachel is a Minjungbul woman from the Bangjalung-Yogumbe nations of southeast Queensland and northern
00:01:41.440 New South Wales.
00:01:43.040 Rachel currently works as an Aboriginal Partnerships Liaison for Forestry Corporation of New South
00:01:48.820 Wales and is the Principal Cultural Heritage Advisor for Currie County Foundation.
00:01:57.340 Well, Vanessa, Deb, and Rachel, to begin, I wonder if I might ask you each to briefly
00:02:03.680 introduce yourselves as you wish.
00:02:07.000 Nganyanyo Bulamang from Bununga Jagun.
00:02:10.820 My name's Rachel, and I'm from Fingerheads, far north New South Wales.
00:02:15.360 I am a Midjimbal-Yogunbe-Bangjalung woman and I've been working in land management for
00:02:24.180 over 20 years now and across different agency, government and private property.
00:02:33.360 I have a passion for my culture and country and empowering Indigenous people but also
00:02:40.380 Indigenous women to take their role and leadership in looking after country using culture as their
00:02:47.980 grounding. Hi, my name's Deborah Swan, prefer to be known as Deb. I'm a Nuttendjeri Minimi from 1.00
00:02:56.280 South Australia. However, I've always resided in Dark and Young Country, which is eastern New South
00:03:03.400 wales on my father's side is my aboriginality and that in jerry south australia which also
00:03:10.980 includes afghani kamaliri kinship and on my mother's side i have polynesian english
00:03:17.620 scottish and we have polish on my grandmother's side i have quite a mix of nationalities in my
00:03:25.640 family but i reside on darkened country central coast new south wales australia
00:03:32.720 Thanks, Sayana.
00:03:34.840 I'm Jinkiwala.
00:03:36.620 Nyanyedi, Vanessa Kavanagh.
00:03:39.060 My Mirang Bangam Bunjilang Dubei from Bunjilang Jagan and Wanarul woman.
00:03:46.480 So I just said hello to you in my mother's Bunjilang language and acknowledged that my
00:03:52.440 mum is a Bunjilang woman from the north coast of New South Wales and that also my father's
00:03:58.860 side of the family is Wannurua, our Wannurua heritage, which is the Hunter region. Yes, so as
00:04:04.020 Ayana said, I'm an Aboriginal woman from New South Wales, Australia. I work in the University of
00:04:10.380 Wollongong. I'm Associate Lecturer there teaching first-year Indigenous geographies. I'm also a PhD
00:04:16.620 student and looking at Aboriginal women's engagement and cultural burning in New South Wales.
00:04:22.700 So it's something that I've kind of been interested in for a really long time, caring for
00:04:27.760 country and having aboriginal women involved in environmental action across new south wales you
00:04:34.520 know it's always kind of been male dominated over the last couple of hundred years so 0.85
00:04:38.380 trying to make sure that there's space for aboriginal women to engage in caring for country
00:04:43.780 here's something that i'm really passionate about so thank you for having me here for this interview
00:04:48.300 today well rachel as we know several months have passed since global attention was focused on the
00:04:56.500 intense Australian bushfires that began in September of 2019. And I'm sure many listeners'
00:05:03.100 memories are imprinted with the vivid imagery of dark orange skies and vast swaths of burning
00:05:08.740 forest and ash-covered beaches. And in its aftermath, it's estimated that nearly 30 million
00:05:14.800 acres caught fire and around 1 billion animals perished. But before we delve into the power of
00:05:20.920 cultural burning and fire management, I wonder if you'd be willing to talk about the extent of
00:05:25.820 these recent fires and how they were unlike the traditional fire season. How much of Australia
00:05:31.620 was on fire at once? Yeah look I'm a firefighter as well that's another hat that I wear and yeah
00:05:40.680 this season it started much earlier than we anticipated and it went for much longer than
00:05:47.220 you know we expected as well. The fires were intense they were hot they were raging they
00:05:53.140 were angry and they were moving really fast you know and there's many different layers that relate
00:05:58.860 to why the fire season was so intense and you know you can look at climate change and all of
00:06:03.540 that sort of stuff to add to it but you know to get down to the sort of bare bones of it what's
00:06:09.800 actually going on is there's mismanagement of land and country and that's been going on for quite
00:06:15.120 some time now so we have all these different people owning land and putting in different
00:06:21.460 their management practices that aren't specific for the landscape, that aren't specific for the
00:06:27.740 species that are here in Australia. You know, all of that added, plus the severe droughts that we've
00:06:34.240 had, that's created, you know, the intense fire season. Long before colonization, Indigenous 1.00
00:06:42.400 peoples were caring for and highly literate in the landscapes of what would become known as
00:06:47.880 Australia. But this would change in 1788 when the British arrived. Both land and people faced
00:06:54.660 brutal extermination. So what are some of the diverse histories and the cultural importance
00:07:00.300 of traditional burning prior to colonization? And then can you speak to the origin of land
00:07:05.880 mismanagement in Australia? When did cultural burning stop and how did it change the land?
00:07:11.960 Across Australia, we've got a very diverse country. We've got hundreds of different
00:07:17.180 Aboriginal communities within the Australian landscape so we're actually really fortunate 1.00
00:07:23.020 that there's mob or communities that are that are still practicing cultural burning they haven't 1.00
00:07:30.520 actually lost their traditions or their practices and then you've got down the east coast you know
00:07:36.340 in the west coast where they're highly colonized sort of cities are or communities are and that's
00:07:44.380 where the culture has been fragmented and sort of stopped.
00:07:47.800 You know, during the time of colonisation or the frontier wars,
00:07:51.160 we were told that, you know, you couldn't speak language,
00:07:54.660 you couldn't practise your culture, and if you were,
00:07:56.460 you were taken away or, worst case is, you know, you were murdered.
00:08:00.840 So there's lots of different pressures that were put on our people
00:08:05.200 as to why they couldn't manage their country,
00:08:09.020 why you know cultural fire practices were suppressed and all of that so I think
00:08:16.040 we're actually lucky now that we're starting to get some of our lands back so we're starting to
00:08:21.600 be able to reconnect with our kinship and our cultural obligations to look after country
00:08:29.080 you know 250 odd years of of not burning creates a whole different type of fuel level
00:08:36.660 in the forest or in the bush we're getting a whole heap of different invasive species that
00:08:42.780 actually love fire so they're they're burning really hot and they're really enjoying it so
00:08:48.400 there's lots of things like that there's also you know we have our we have our cultural
00:08:53.700 obligations we've got our stories and sort of our ceremony so we know that you know and I can only
00:09:00.500 speak from my mob but I know that you know fire law comes from lightning you know and we know that
00:09:07.180 lightning comes with the big summer storms and at the end of those big hot summer days we've got
00:09:12.100 these cracking lightning storms and they're setting the bush on fire we shouldn't be suppressing these
00:09:18.540 fires but we have to in this contemporary you know day because we do have a monopoly of species
00:09:29.020 or a build-up of invasive weeds.
00:09:31.360 So we're not actually able to continue and just watch that fire go
00:09:35.500 or walk with it because there's so much fuel build-up underneath
00:09:41.200 that it can't naturally progress.
00:09:44.580 But, you know, if you want to look at how to sort of, you know,
00:09:49.640 start managing land properly in an ideal world, I'd love for, you know, 0.99
00:09:57.620 people across Australia to start engaging First Nations mob
00:10:00.500 to come and care for country, you know, we know our own land,
00:10:04.500 we know what's needed, we know what has to be implemented
00:10:09.700 for country to start responding again.
00:10:13.380 And that means fire in our landscape every year,
00:10:16.440 not looking at Western, the Western world or, you know,
00:10:21.960 Eurocentric practices implemented in Australia where it doesn't work,
00:10:25.760 where you can't burn country for 5, 10 and even up to 20 years. 0.94
00:10:29.380 That was never a thing for our people.
00:10:33.140 We were constantly burning and we were burning for lots
00:10:35.360 of different reasons.
00:10:36.760 We, you know, it was never just for fuel production.
00:10:40.780 We would burn for ceremony purposes.
00:10:44.540 Men and women would burn for different reasons as well.
00:10:47.620 It was for hunting, opening up the forest, getting rid
00:10:51.120 of bad spirits that were stuck in the messy forest.
00:10:54.220 So there's a number of different layers attached to why we would implement fire across our landscape.
00:11:02.440 And, you know, it happened at different times of the year.
00:11:04.800 And we always used our seasonal calendars or, you know, the weather to help us move that, you know, move that fire through the landscape. 0.95
00:11:14.240 I'm hoping we can transition to a conversation on the tremendous non-human kinship networks across Australia. 0.93
00:11:21.340 and I don't even know exactly where to begin because there are so many threads to be tended to.
00:11:27.200 But Australia is home to over 300 native species with nearly 250 of those not found anywhere else
00:11:33.440 in the world. That being said, many of these relations are being pushed to the margins of
00:11:38.560 existence. During the bushfires here in the West, we heard stories of hawks intentionally spreading
00:11:44.740 fire further to drive out their prey, wombat strengthening their water holes for others,
00:11:50.020 and, of course, the possibility that one-third of the world's koala population perished in these fires.
00:11:56.380 So I'm wondering if you could share with us what happened to animals
00:11:59.720 and how are they faring in the aftermath beyond what was reported in the headlines?
00:12:06.760 That topic's really hard on our heart.
00:12:11.140 Sorry.
00:12:13.240 It's very heavy on our hearts because it's like losing our elders.
00:12:17.720 One thing with cool burns.
00:12:20.020 When we do a cool burn, our plants and animals know cool burn.
00:12:25.840 They know cold fire.
00:12:27.140 They know the smell of smoke.
00:12:29.440 When you start a cool burn, it's like one ignition point.
00:12:32.740 There's no chemicals, no fuels, no contaminations.
00:12:36.340 Our people did traditional burns, but they started fire with rubbing sticks.
00:12:40.580 So there was no brought in material, pure, clean, cultural cool burns with white smoke
00:12:47.300 filtering through the landscape finding its way where it needs to go cleaning up the areas it
00:12:52.300 needs to do and sending back invasive natives or weeds where they need to go our animals have time
00:12:59.460 to they know that smoke and they know to get away climb up a tree off they go a cool burn does not
00:13:06.100 enter the canopy it might go a few meters up a tree and go out the whole difference between a
00:13:12.800 cool burn and hazard reduction burns and wildfires that take off is the contamination of fuel.
00:13:20.260 There's no time for the animals to get out of their environment to a safer area.
00:13:24.620 Climbers have time to climb to the top of the canopy.
00:13:26.880 They know they'll be safe.
00:13:28.380 They just wait a minute.
00:13:29.520 The smoke actually regenerates our plants and cleanses our trees.
00:13:33.780 You can see the leaves stretching down and inhaling and taking up the smoke.
00:13:39.940 It's like they're singing.
00:13:41.720 If you could just tap in there, we do have machines these days
00:13:45.400 that you can tap in and listen to our plants and animals
00:13:48.780 and how they're feeling and reacting to the environment
00:13:51.780 and you can hear them literally sing.
00:13:54.360 So our plants and animals have time to move and animals
00:13:58.500 that can't fly, like koalas and things like that,
00:14:01.240 will go to the top of the canopy.
00:14:04.060 When these fires come through, they were stuck, they were burnt,
00:14:07.540 they were singed.
00:14:08.320 We have horrific stories of people hearing screams from the forest,
00:14:14.620 of animals climbing out for protection, to climb up people and to get to water.
00:14:20.920 It was devastating.
00:14:22.960 Our elders, they're our kinship, they're our mob, they're our family,
00:14:27.180 and we lost thousands and we couldn't help them.
00:14:32.000 Our landscape will regenerate, our animals will regenerate.
00:14:36.180 We have lost a lot of animals, as we have since colonisation,
00:14:40.260 but it will be a very slow repair.
00:14:44.300 We knew this was coming.
00:14:45.920 We've been fearful of these times of wildfires coming
00:14:50.100 because we're watching our environment slowly dry out.
00:14:53.800 And with all the mining activities here that have total rights
00:14:56.640 over our water, over humans, our continent's drying out even faster.
00:15:02.420 And one thing that made tension this time was,
00:15:05.960 where are you getting the water to fight the fire from?
00:15:08.860 And the other thing that we talk about is the language.
00:15:12.060 We don't fight fire.
00:15:13.940 Fire is a spirit that has always been used in Australia.
00:15:17.480 It's a different language.
00:15:19.800 Hence why we say cultural fire practitioners, not firefighters.
00:15:24.220 You don't fight the spirit, you work with the fire.
00:15:31.880 Now, Rachel, in my mind, cultural burning exemplifies some of the consensual and caring
00:15:37.280 forms of kinship we can have with the land, as well as the profound ability to be literate in
00:15:42.820 the land and what it needs. Can you talk about the very practical application of cultural burning
00:15:47.740 in terms of the use of strategies like cool burns and pattern burning? How does pattern burning
00:15:53.380 protect top salt and wildlife alike? And how are the cultural burns nothing like the roaring images
00:15:59.280 of fire so many of us conjure in our heads? Yeah, the cultural burning or cultural fire
00:16:06.940 practices are very different to the traditional hazard reduction burning or fire regime that
00:16:13.420 different agencies and people put in. So when you look at an agency and they're in there and they
00:16:19.980 have to, they've got to burn, you know, 11,000 hectares this, you know, this winter. And so
00:16:26.240 a lot of issues are resources and people and all of you know the the issues that everybody has so
00:16:32.700 they're putting in massive lines of fire so they're walking with a drip torch and they will walk a
00:16:37.860 hundred meters and put a whole solid line of fire in that hundred meter they'll walk a little bit
00:16:45.920 and then they'll put another line of continuous fire for another hundred meters now when you do
00:16:51.880 that that actually starts creating its own atmosphere and it's drawing in the oxygen and
00:16:57.820 it's moving really fast and so the idea of doing that is burning you know the outcome of putting in
00:17:04.380 that type of hot fire is that moves through burns quicker burns really hot so it gets rid of
00:17:11.420 everything but in the meantime everything's dying nothing can get away and it's just a really hot
00:17:17.300 fire to get rid of all the weed so there's no real um healthy outcome from that when it comes
00:17:24.560 to cultural fire practices the actual fire regime or the the practice of putting in cultural burning
00:17:32.120 is it's low intensity spot ignition or mosaic burning style fire so you put one spot of fire
00:17:44.280 in you and you let that move so you you you know one ignition spot which could be you know the size
00:17:51.880 of a tennis ball that's your that's your spot of fire and it's a slow process and you just watch it
00:17:57.720 burn the flame isn't to get you know any higher than sort of your knee and then that means when
00:18:03.420 it slowly moves through the forest or the bush across the grass wherever you're burning you're
00:18:09.100 able to walk right behind that flame and you can actually put your hand in the soil move the ash
00:18:15.620 off the top of it and move that you know just that very fine layer of soil at the top of the ground
00:18:22.720 and the dirt underneath it is cool the insects are still moving through straight after that fire has
00:18:30.000 gone on and so having these cool low intensity fires as it allows our kin or it allows the
00:18:37.540 animals to move through it's not hurting the plants it's not killing um because it's so hot
00:18:45.100 it's actually you know the tufts of grass are still there you know like all the leaves might
00:18:49.660 have gone but that that healthy tuft of grass is still you know green and ready to sprout again
00:18:56.060 we have a lot of our species of trees and stuff that actually need fire and smoke to germinate so
00:19:04.320 if we're not putting the right healthy good fire in our landscape then we're not getting
00:19:10.560 our native species to come back you know the animals are fearful so they take off and they're
00:19:17.380 not coming back you know whereas you those those the cultural fire allows that natural flow and
00:19:24.780 that natural movement of um you know plants and animals to be able to still do their thing without
00:19:31.820 having to be impacted by it.
00:20:01.820 Wake us up from the slumberdome that's come. 0.99
00:20:06.980 Wahoon, wahoon, wahoon. 1.00
00:20:13.400 Some know not what they do.
00:20:18.020 Some are not connected to you. 0.83
00:20:25.260 Wahoon, wahoon, wahoon.
00:20:31.820 I will spend the rest of my days learning the ancient ways to stay connected to you, to get connected to you, to be connected to you.
00:21:01.820 I'm noticing that some climatologists suggest that much of Australia will become too hot and
00:21:17.340 dry for human habitation in the next couple of decades. And I can't help but wonder what
00:21:23.060 increasing drought, high winds, and temperature mean for future bushfire seasons. But at the same
00:21:29.520 time I'm hearing from you all that Australia needs fire, the land knows fire intimately and
00:21:35.560 ancestrally, and that cannot be denied. So what would you say to those who suggest that the fires
00:21:42.180 of the future will be so different than the ones of the past, that cultural burning may not be
00:21:47.260 enough? You know, that is true. The fire season is increasing in its length, like the fire season 0.86
00:21:55.360 time throughout the year is getting longer.
00:21:59.140 Fire season is starting earlier and finishing later.
00:22:02.720 You know, the temperatures are getting hotter
00:22:04.500 and climate is changing.
00:22:07.740 So, yeah, the Australian landscape is changing.
00:22:10.940 But I think, in fact, it means that cultural burning
00:22:13.740 is needed now more than ever.
00:22:17.180 And that's kind of, you know, that goes along
00:22:19.660 with the climate change, but also the human expansion.
00:22:22.880 You know, our urban expansion means that there is increased risk with the residential areas, you know, people's homes, our buildings and our assets.
00:22:33.600 There's that increased interaction between, you know, built areas and the natural world.
00:22:40.400 And so, all of those fringe areas need to be really effectively managed.
00:22:45.880 So, cultural burning can add to that effective management of, you know, those areas. 0.86
00:22:50.820 And if you couple that environmental need with the continuous experiences that Indigenous people have around the social experiences, unacceptable low life expectancy levels, low employment and education statistics, they're all kind of outcomes and representations of the failures of colonisation for Indigenous people. 0.91
00:23:19.540 so if you imagine you know if we could do more cultural burning and this then in turn created 0.99
00:23:26.080 more jobs for Indigenous people like and that creates economic sustainability and it creates
00:23:33.820 environmental outcomes and you know positive environmental conservation and it also creates
00:23:39.480 cultural pride and strength for Indigenous people so in that way it's like it's a win-win
00:23:45.320 but to achieve this we need to have you know there needs to be radical change so we need to
00:23:52.960 have Indigenous people all over the country being able to access and care for country
00:23:58.640 and so that we can maintain our cultural pride and strength and that we are healthy and our
00:24:06.380 you know our behaviours are sustainable so and it's not just Indigenous people like
00:24:12.060 there's an opportunity to share it with non-Indigenous people too, like Indigenous
00:24:16.820 people in Australia only make up 3% of the total population and there's lots of country that needs
00:24:23.080 to be cared for. So there's a lot of work and opportunities for everyone and that's, you know,
00:24:28.300 two-way knowledge sharing, environmental management techniques that involve Western
00:24:33.560 science and Indigenous science. So, you know, there's opportunities there for non-Indigenous 1.00
00:24:39.600 people as well. Now, Deb, during the bushfires, many were critical of Australia's continued
00:24:46.260 aggressive expansion of fossil fuels and coal mining, citing that these events are set to
00:24:51.560 become norm should government officials and policymakers continue their, quote, no regrets
00:24:56.740 strategy. It seems clear that the country is in the death grip of a power-hungry few. So I'm
00:25:03.460 curious to hear what you think it will take to push these leaders out it's slowly happening
00:25:10.220 the community's coming along with the abjur community and our concern to the environment
00:25:15.420 and together we need to make our governments accountable we put them in those places we need
00:25:20.820 to do something i often say why aren't we standing and down if we're all upset and we've all put
00:25:27.560 people in the powers to be we're the people that put our government there we need to do something
00:25:32.540 and stand up and go, no, we are not happy.
00:25:35.400 And it is the people and it's been, I mean,
00:25:38.800 I don't always agree with the media.
00:25:40.440 It's not always the truth of what's going on.
00:25:43.300 But seriously, there's more people overseas
00:25:45.720 owning Australia than Australia.
00:25:48.320 And water is a big issue here.
00:25:53.180 It's Australia's the driest continent in the world.
00:25:56.980 Yet the issues that we have here are over water.
00:25:59.400 and we have to have a, we have to treat Australia as a whole
00:26:02.780 like every other country and like the world.
00:26:05.920 Together, we have to look after each other.
00:26:08.300 We can't work in silos.
00:26:10.160 Australia can't just work in states.
00:26:12.720 Everything that happens at the top end of Australia
00:26:14.640 affects the bottom end of Australia.
00:26:16.480 The things that happen in all the Territory affect my people
00:26:19.220 down the bottom in South Australia because that water system
00:26:22.100 flows right through our country.
00:26:24.560 And as people are having irrigation licences and stripping out
00:26:27.880 and contaminating our water, the reports that we just got
00:26:31.260 about the use of water and coal mines in the Hunter Valley
00:26:34.680 was just shocking and over the top of the amount of gila litres
00:26:40.060 of water that are wasted to one mine that take from all the people
00:26:45.960 and agriculture and food.
00:26:49.680 It's serious and the government needs to do something now.
00:26:55.040 This planet will not last.
00:26:56.420 If we don't do something now, this planet will not last our grandchildren.
00:27:03.420 I do think it's our responsibility, and I'm really glad that you're speaking to that.
00:27:09.600 And now, Vanessa, in an essay titled, For Aboriginal Peoples in Australia, Fire Flames a Sense of Perpetual Grief, you write alongside Jessica Weir and Byme Williamson, quote,
00:27:23.460 how do you support people forever attached to a landscape after an inferno tears through their
00:27:28.840 homelands, decimating native food sources, burning through ancient scarred trees, and destroying
00:27:34.380 ancestral and totemic plants and animals, end quote. And several indigenous protected areas
00:27:40.740 along Victoria and New South Wales were lost to the flames, hundreds of sacred sites, some
00:27:46.440 thousands of years old were burnt, and countless more than human companions were lost. And so I
00:27:52.860 can't help but think of the power of attachment to land even after it is beyond recognition and
00:27:59.520 some of this attachment comes from a certain ancestral or spiritual familiarity so i'm
00:28:05.220 wondering how is the present day mismanagement of land a direct and violent assault on spiritual 0.93
00:28:10.620 connection yeah look that's right it's um aboriginal people you know experience that
00:28:21.460 grief in a multitude of ways but I also want to acknowledge that you know I mean there's two ways
00:28:27.740 to look at answering that question and that one is that Indigenous people have this ongoing right
00:28:33.320 and responsibility that we were saying you know this to maintain our own cultural identities but
00:28:39.040 that takes agency as well as that responsibility so the ability to care for country and the
00:28:45.100 destruction that those megafires caused along the coast that isn't immediately going to diminish
00:28:51.360 or remove Aboriginal people's connections to place like that connection will stay there
00:28:56.620 but there are like you said those values and landscapes you know things in the in the forest
00:29:03.740 those heritage sites they've been damaged and many of them have been destroyed so it's a real
00:29:09.200 wake-up call. And I think, you know, Indigenous people have been talking about warning against
00:29:15.520 that environmental destructions for as long as I can remember and probably for as long as
00:29:20.600 colonisations, you know, happened here in Australia. But this year we've kind of seen
00:29:25.540 people a lot more interested in Aboriginal, you know, cultural knowledge and especially around
00:29:32.420 fire, you know, looking at how Aboriginal people cared for country using fire and if there's
00:29:37.120 value to be able to instill some of that knowledge into the mainstream fire regimes
00:29:44.500 and then another thing is I think the the cute and cuddly koalas you know there was a big focus
00:29:50.820 on koalas this season and that brought out that emotional reaction to the fires and that was
00:29:56.780 something that the whole of you know Australian population and probably overseas as well were
00:30:01.900 aware that the fires were you know they say all Australian bush needs fires but then you see the
00:30:08.100 koalas that are decimated or you know all those native animals that are killed and it's like yeah
00:30:12.440 they need fires but they don't need that fire that's a really bad fire and for Aboriginal people
00:30:18.440 you know those animals so those koalas for some of them they've got totemic relationships with 0.98
00:30:24.220 those koalas and all other species that exist out there in nature so for Aboriginal people it's not
00:30:30.940 only just the loss of sites but it's also the loss of those family members you know it's that family
00:30:35.920 member grief so it's very kind of real and personal as well as losing those those aboriginal sites in
00:30:43.220 the landscape so there's that and there's also the disempowerment that aboriginal people experience
00:30:49.140 from not being able to care for country and that's been an ongoing thing through colonization
00:30:54.400 and I guess that can be really exhausting too.
00:30:57.360 So wanting to care for and maintain, you know,
00:31:01.400 a healthy country and their own self-determining identities,
00:31:06.840 but there's this kind of foreign imposed restrictions
00:31:09.840 and we hear about Indigenous people who for thousands
00:31:13.260 and thousands of years have lived in and off the ocean,
00:31:17.180 for example, you know, they're saltwater people,
00:31:19.440 they live close to the water and that's been their livelihoods
00:31:23.800 And that's been the way that they've been for thousands of years.
00:31:27.160 But they're now being prosecuted for maintaining their cultural practices because it goes against
00:31:33.380 the mainstream fishing laws that have been imposed against them.
00:31:36.920 So that's a real spiritual assault.
00:31:38.500 That's an attack on who they are as saltwater people.
00:31:42.520 And those restrictions then manifest into direct negative health outcomes and negative
00:31:52.040 health factors for that community.
00:31:53.800 And then that can, you know, flow on into negative social factors and negative environmental
00:31:59.640 outcomes.
00:32:00.680 So there's multiple layers to those impositions.
00:32:04.640 And then, you know, that kind of, in terms of fire, that ripples out into the wider society
00:32:09.640 too.
00:32:10.160 Like fires don't discriminate.
00:32:11.840 They affect, you know, everyone in the community.
00:32:15.080 So the smoke plumes hung across major cities for weeks here and people couldn't breathe
00:32:20.580 and there were people who were hospitalized.
00:32:22.340 you know and where the fires were active in towns and you know those places it didn't
00:32:28.640 fires don't care whether you're rich or poor or middle class or working class they're just going
00:32:33.760 to affect everybody you know it doesn't discriminate um and everybody kind of picks
00:32:38.900 up the bill for that those damages done you know through the different you know insurance premiums
00:32:46.100 or just, you know, just the effects on places that they care for, you know, wanting to have
00:32:52.500 nice national parks and such. So fire affects everybody and we all need to be kind of working
00:33:00.060 together to improve fire management here. Now, Deb, you shared with us that a significant part
00:33:10.780 of your thesis was around indigenous epistemology and ideologies, specifically in terms of the
00:33:17.400 importance of reciprocal research methodologies when working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait
00:33:22.660 Islander people. You write, quote, the positioning of the researcher and the participants is vital
00:33:28.600 before the research can take place, because participants are not something to be studied,
00:33:33.940 but are themselves active participants, researchers in the process, end quote.
00:33:38.060 and I'm thinking about this sentiment in terms of traditional ecological knowledge
00:33:44.040 how many restoration and conservation efforts seek to extract knowledge so I wonder if in
00:33:50.980 context of fire management you can speak to the necessity of indigenous designated roles
00:33:56.140 is Australia successfully doing this? In some areas of Australia we have
00:34:03.040 really good rangers, so rangers where, we call them rangers
00:34:08.940 where they work on their country and work in their country
00:34:13.480 to manage country and that is all land management
00:34:16.120 underneath that umbrella.
00:34:19.040 So their cultural burns are used to manage country,
00:34:22.120 monitoring their landscapes, identifying new plants,
00:34:26.260 writing down the medicinal and the stories that go
00:34:29.000 with their plans and over the years there's times where a lot of our knowledge has just been taken 1.00
00:34:36.640 written into books and then we have non-abigual people delivering our knowledge and it gets 0.95
00:34:42.120 changed or it's not exactly what our elders were telling in the first place and then our elders 0.93
00:34:48.100 are still sitting out in camps not being acknowledged for their knowledge they've shared
00:34:52.900 not getting paid we have people out there sharing their knowledge flying all over the place getting
00:34:59.920 you know writing books and getting accolades and money and economics and status from our people's
00:35:07.620 knowledge over the years people have made sure that we've put policies in place to not for
00:35:15.680 copyright on indigenous knowledge systems and another thing as in right now with the cultural
00:35:20.900 cool birds and part of what the National Fire Stick Alliance
00:35:25.420 in Australia are doing, they're trying to make sure
00:35:29.020 that we are respectful to our elders and where this knowledge
00:35:32.640 has come from and that they're included in all the papers
00:35:36.000 and policies written and that Aboriginal people are included
00:35:39.200 in the cultural birds on the ground and that we stay included
00:35:43.600 in this process.
00:35:45.320 And at this moment, that's our challenge now is working together.
00:35:49.040 we have to all work together across all land management in australia we have like local land
00:35:55.020 services and water and agriculture and then biodiversity and then your bugs and you know
00:36:03.220 insects and all that kind of thing where we all need to work together understand aboriginal land
00:36:10.440 management and it seems over the years it's not till we have a catastrophe or something goes
00:36:15.380 terribly wrong that people then turn around and go hang on a minute these other people are trying
00:36:19.720 to tell us something he's going maybe we should listen we shouldn't have to get to a point where
00:36:24.620 something so terrible happens that people will then want to listen to us when we've been trying
00:36:30.420 to talk the same talk for a long time and it really devastates our elders when they have a
00:36:36.860 cultural responsibility and obligation to look after country and they're not allowed
00:36:41.340 or they've got to stand aside, it breaks their heart.
00:36:44.860 It's like watching a child go rogue that you're not allowed
00:36:47.760 to look after or take care and you know what the end consequence
00:36:51.900 is going to be.
00:36:53.060 A lot of our elders have been frightened about what happened
00:36:55.880 in November here, that it was going to come because they're watching
00:36:59.900 the fuel build up and the change in our environment and the plants
00:37:04.080 that will ignite, you know, eucalypts and things like that,
00:37:08.460 that will ignite in a high burn.
00:37:13.980 And it's important that our elders are acknowledged for that.
00:37:19.900 Collectively, it seems like much of your work
00:37:23.440 is dedicated to the empowerment and experiences
00:37:26.720 of Indigenous women and cultural burning.
00:37:29.040 And I'm so grateful that you all continue to do that work
00:37:33.660 so passionately.
00:37:36.940 and I'm wondering how have women played a part in cultural burning across New South Wales and 0.91
00:37:43.120 why does this need to be revitalized what does a gendered lens reveal about the ancestral
00:37:49.680 tradition of tending fire yeah look that's a really great question and I'm coming at this
00:37:57.900 topic from the perspective not only as an indigenous woman but also as a researcher
00:38:03.060 and just looking at the history you know aboriginal women or indigenous women were just
00:38:08.920 as present and involved in caring for country and involved in the landscape prior to colonization
00:38:14.720 as what indigenous men were like there was no inside you know we were always outside and that
00:38:21.860 involved tending to country you know teaching children of future generations you know caring
00:38:28.700 for elders caring for the landscape so that we had what we needed and we you know we were
00:38:34.500 maintaining our resources um that we needed just to survive so we couldn't have survived in
00:38:42.140 australia um it's the driest inhabited continent on earth so we couldn't have survived here for
00:38:49.160 thousands of generations without that expert knowledge and practice you know we wouldn't
00:38:54.340 to survive the ice ages or those dry times without being present and active and for women you know
00:39:01.660 aboriginal women indigenous women we were a part of that and for many of us fire was a big part of
00:39:08.300 that um as a you know a caring for country a landscape management technique so women have
00:39:15.400 wide-ranging roles in country and um i just find through my work and through my research i want to
00:39:23.420 be able to support and maintain that connection into the future because I think that that's
00:39:28.640 something that we need as as people and that's what's going to sustain us as a culture as well
00:39:33.880 into the future yeah that's what my interest is we even like to when we explain cultural
00:39:40.720 cool burns it's like a feminine spirit it's like a spirit of its own but um as far as uh
00:39:48.480 women and men's burns there's certain areas in our country in australia and part of our culture
00:39:54.400 that has men and women areas gender pacific there's community areas that are it's like a
00:40:01.280 four levels say four levels of a story if i could explain it that way so when you're a child the
00:40:07.740 first level of the story is like community everyone is to learn that story at the beginning
00:40:12.040 of your learnings and you learn the basics of life and being
00:40:17.800 and working with your environment.
00:40:20.780 As you grow and you learn, you're given more information
00:40:24.140 and more knowledge that you are able to cope with. 0.85
00:40:28.000 And then you delve into areas of strictly men's business,
00:40:31.840 women's business, and there's areas that contain strictly women's sites
00:40:36.180 and women's plants. 1.00
00:40:38.440 And that is our role and our duty to take care of those areas 1.00
00:40:41.620 and nurture and look after those areas.
00:40:44.240 We do community burns together with children,
00:40:47.500 but we also do, you know, women do their burns
00:40:50.560 and men do theirs in areas that it's for our safety.
00:40:55.420 A question that was asked before about us reinvigorating the burning,
00:41:01.340 there's areas across Australia that have never stopped burning.
00:41:04.640 Some communities, the closer you get to Sydney,
00:41:07.100 to the nerve of colonisation in New South Wales
00:41:10.180 is where our culture gets disintegrated and where things have been stopped
00:41:14.540 because we had to for survival.
00:41:16.880 One day we were very healthy, gathering, eating our natural foods,
00:41:21.560 and the next day we were confined to missions.
00:41:24.500 We weren't allowed to eat.
00:41:25.560 We were given sugar, flour, tea.
00:41:27.080 We weren't allowed to speak our language, practice our culture
00:41:30.040 or sing or dance our songs.
00:41:32.780 So we had an abrupt change to our livelihood and our health.
00:41:37.520 um and this is a big question you know it's it's really important to have our 1.00
00:41:45.480 matriarch our matriarchal um back out on country and managing land through fire
00:41:54.300 we use fire women use fire for a lot of different reasons to men um you know we hold the story and 1.00
00:42:04.820 the law of our people and our kinship connections and so when it comes to putting in those fire
00:42:11.700 regimes or when to burn or and all of that sort of stuff it's it's definitely something that the
00:42:19.000 women would would start and they were they would give the knowledge and the and the um you know
00:42:28.520 they they would pass that on to say you know now's the time for this we had our stories about our
00:42:33.760 medicine and and you know women's law and women's ceremony so at those different times fire were used
00:42:40.300 as well but I think it's really important to state that you know like for such a long time
00:42:47.160 women's voices and practices were suppressed for such a long time and I know that our a lot of our
00:42:53.400 women and our matriarchs took a step back because it is a very patriarchal society so
00:42:59.500 our women did that so our people as a whole our first nations all of our black mob had a voice
00:43:07.180 because the patriarch would only listen to the men so we did take a step back in that
00:43:12.560 um to allow our people to have a voice but now that that's all sort of changing again 0.98
00:43:18.700 the women are starting to to take their roles in um in the matriarch society that we've always 1.00
00:43:27.720 sort of lived in and it was never and us and them we did things equally and we did things together 0.92
00:43:33.100 but it's it is now time for that to happen and you know in where my people are from the
00:43:40.460 people it's actually now the time of the grandmother dreaming so we call it um which
00:43:48.600 means grandmother dreaming so now it's the time of the grandfather he's had to take a big step
00:43:54.840 back and now it's a time for for all our people to sort of nurture and be in that caring space
00:44:01.440 and being around the women and the matriarch to take that lead again so that's actually written
00:44:06.060 in the stars and in in our dreaming and that's actually happening in a bigger much bigger space
00:44:13.080 than than you know just looking at cultural fire practices but um you know just to go back to
00:44:19.300 the importance of women in fire you know it's such a it's always envisioned that it's a it's
00:44:27.320 a man's job to sort of carry that but um you know Vanessa, Deb and I are all firefighters so
00:44:36.620 we're um we're trying to lead that change and and show um our women that it's definitely
00:44:44.380 an empowering position to be in and to carry that knowledge
00:44:49.320 and to stand strong in your knowledge and your power
00:44:53.080 and being able to implement such things is really powerful.
00:44:58.120 No matter what she'd do now, she carried you.
00:45:05.900 No matter who she'd be now, she carried you.
00:45:11.420 All the whales, all the wolves, all the snakes, all the spiders
00:45:16.380 They, they, they carried you
00:45:18.740 In the hospital bed when they're a weak one or a fighter
00:45:23.620 They, they, they carried you
00:45:26.040 No matter who she be now she, she, she, she, she
00:45:32.160 She carried you
00:45:33.240 No matter what she says or doesn't do
00:45:38.120 She, she, she carried you
00:45:40.520 You don't even have to like her
00:45:43.700 Just look at her and love her
00:45:45.520 And know that she carried you
00:45:47.840 She too was a child
00:45:50.800 And her little life was wild 0.62
00:45:52.780 You don't know what she went through
00:45:55.360 You may think that you do
00:45:59.220 You don't know what she went through
00:46:03.080 That little girl was you
00:46:06.100 you you you she too was a child and her little life was so wild you just don't know
00:46:22.820 what she went through and you may think that you do but you just don't know what she went
00:46:35.600 Well, thank you so much, Vanessa, Deb and Rachel, for taking the time today. Before we end, is there anything else that you'd like to share?
00:46:45.100 We've got some, you know, there is some great programs going out there across Australia. Like I said, there's a lot of communities that never stop cultural burns that are now out teaching other communities.
00:46:58.080 We have our National Fire Stick Alliance, which is an Australian national Aboriginal organisation that is working with governments and departments and philanthropists to come together.
00:47:14.300 We're working on a program where we want to train up 100 Aboriginal cultural practitioners across Australia to deploy, to go out and manage country.
00:47:25.000 We want to see more rangers, Aboriginal rangers that are getting paid proper wages, to have a full-time job, to look after country.
00:47:33.640 We want to share our knowledge with the community.
00:47:36.480 We want to teach people what our elders taught us.
00:47:39.920 It's our obligation to teach.
00:47:42.640 We've got a lot of organisations out there that are doing this work, sometimes quietly in their own, you know, sometimes the broader community don't know what we're doing.
00:47:52.460 But we also have a lot of non-Aborigal people that are interested
00:47:57.060 and come along to our cultural burns and cultural events
00:48:00.520 to sit together and yarn and learn together.
00:48:04.100 And they're beautiful times and days.
00:48:06.680 And I can see that we will get there and things will get better
00:48:12.560 and we will work together.
00:48:14.940 It's a lot of work in the meantime to sit down
00:48:17.340 and get the bureaucratic Western system and paperwork
00:48:20.560 so that we can roll out and do these things.
00:48:24.020 But I do have faith and hope that we will come together
00:48:31.080 and we will see Aboriginal people out there in permanent jobs,
00:48:34.140 looking after country and teaching people about fire
00:48:38.080 and not to be fearful of it.
00:48:39.540 We want to teach children at school, you know,
00:48:42.960 what cultural burns and our cultural practices.
00:48:46.360 They're things to grow up with and learn and not to be scared of.
00:48:50.560 I think together, all Indigenous nations and together sharing our cultural knowledge across the planet and working together as one, we will get there eventually.
00:49:04.020 I just hope to see it in my lifetime.
00:49:07.260 Oh, something I did want to mention, I don't know if any, one of our fire practitioners, Victor Stephenson, it's been pretty, he's actually been to Canada and working with some nations over there.
00:49:20.260 He's released his book, Fire Country.
00:49:23.800 He'd been writing this for the last three years
00:49:26.140 and then we tried and he just got to release this.
00:49:29.920 And it's how Indigenous fire management could help
00:49:31.960 to save Australia.
00:49:34.380 So it's Fire Country by Victor Steffensen.
00:49:38.120 Yeah, no, thanks for that.
00:49:39.900 Like I think one thing I would add is that everybody has got
00:49:44.640 the opportunity to support and amplify the voices
00:49:47.540 of Indigenous people around whatever issue that, you know,
00:49:51.080 is happening or, you know, being promoted at that stage.
00:49:55.100 Like a couple of days ago here there was a group of us
00:49:58.520 that are involved in a local running group and we heard
00:50:02.560 about the campaign for missing and murdered Indigenous women
00:50:07.880 and a running group over, I think it was in America there,
00:50:12.160 and we sent our support to them and took some photos of us.
00:50:15.100 They were asking everyone to wear red in support of missing
00:50:18.020 and murdered Indigenous women worldwide. 0.83
00:50:20.580 So we wore red when we were running and sent photos to that campaign 0.86
00:50:25.180 and, you know, put it up on our Twitter feeds and supported, you know.
00:50:29.180 So it's a way that that's not just for Indigenous people to do.
00:50:33.060 That's something that all people can get behind and support Indigenous people
00:50:37.520 in the work that we're doing so that, one, it kind of shares the load
00:50:43.540 a little bit but it also shows Indigenous people that you know that there's allies there and that
00:50:48.860 there are people that are willing to listen and kind of buoys our momentum and our strengths
00:50:53.540 so in terms of the fires you know there's probably the biggest Indigenous-led organisation
00:51:02.780 in Australia in relation to the cultural burning is the Firesticks Alliance Indigenous Corporation
00:51:08.960 so if people want to jump on to the fire sticks alliance i think it's um firesticks.org.au
00:51:16.080 jump onto their website you know take a look at some of the videos watch some of the videos that
00:51:23.120 talk about cultural burning and that's from a whole range of indigenous presenters um they've
00:51:29.520 got resources there that people can can um use in or you know just read and learn about cultural
00:51:36.780 burning there's a book that there's a couple of books actually so there's some publications that
00:51:42.720 people can purchase they can come along to cultural burning workshops so the cultural
00:51:49.080 burning workshops there's a group of them that are run that are open to all people so it's not
00:51:54.240 just for Indigenous people to participate in so and that's a way that people can come along and
00:52:00.080 learn like I take my kids the last couple of years myself and my children have gone and camped for
00:52:05.340 the week and worked with you know worked alongside local aboriginal people learning about how they
00:52:11.080 care for care for country using fire in that local landscape so especially the you know the
00:52:17.500 non-indigenous fire managers um people who work in those fire departments and agencies and and
00:52:23.600 forestry agencies and national parks they get a lot out of coming to those workshops and just
00:52:28.520 listening to aboriginal people for that week and and letting um letting aboriginal people have that
00:52:34.560 leadership so yeah there's there's ways that people could learn and get involved and and
00:52:40.480 support local aboriginal people so and that doesn't matter if it's fire or if it's water
00:52:45.460 management or if it's you know heritage sites or even like i said you know with the missing and
00:52:49.960 murdered indigenous women just those social campaigns and social justice campaigns so
00:52:55.900 there's work for everybody to do here so i just encourage everyone to you know to use their power
00:53:02.020 to be able to support Indigenous people wherever they can.
00:53:06.060 Yeah, look, it's such a vast sort of space to be talking about
00:53:12.620 and I'm very passionate about it.
00:53:15.560 You know, I suppose I just want to reiterate that it's, you know,
00:53:21.800 the fire regime and being around that good smoke
00:53:25.760 and that healthy smoke really just invigorates the soul
00:53:29.460 and the spirit but it's it's more than that as well because you're you're looking after the land
00:53:35.360 and you're looking after the country and you know like it's a really hard thing to sort of
00:53:41.580 um explain but when you see mob and or when you see you know indigenous people out on country
00:53:49.040 and they're looking after country it's an overall it's an over um
00:53:53.340 overall well-being that changes in them and it's it's nothing that I can explain because it's a
00:54:01.660 visual thing and you can actually see their spirits come alive and you can see you know the
00:54:06.640 passion and and something that even people who've never been out on country before to look after it
00:54:12.300 or to do anything can you invite these people along to to put in fire or to do different things
00:54:19.060 to manage and look after country and they always walk away going wow I never thought it was like
00:54:24.240 that and that's because our country responds to our people and the people respond back to country
00:54:30.820 and it's almost watching that reconnection of kin through country and people
00:54:38.140 ignite again so you see that spark happen that's been so
00:54:43.740 um suppressed for so long and it only just takes that one day or that one you know project or that
00:54:51.040 one event for them to actually walk away going oh and then they feel connected again and belonging
00:54:56.880 again and so it's such a bigger it's so big um you know and and it's really hard to sort of
00:55:05.100 capture that space but that's what I enjoy seeing I really enjoy seeing that healing in country and
00:55:11.160 healing in people because that's really powerful and that's empowering and that makes me go you
00:55:18.460 know i'm doing the right thing and and this is where we need to be
00:55:22.400 thank you for listening to another episode of for the wild podcast i'm ayana young
00:55:40.480 The music you heard today was from Santiago Cordoba and Cavaglia.
00:55:46.260 I'd like to thank our podcast production team,
00:55:49.220 Francesca Glaspell, Erica Ekrem, and Melanie Younger.