An age-old question

Greg Lehman explains that Aboriginal cultural burning of the landscape is not the same thing as fuel-reduction burns

THE recent announcement by the Premier of Tasmania to provide $100,000 to increase Aboriginal involvement in fire management is an apparent response to the current bushfire crisis.

This is to be welcomed as a high-level acknowledgment of the continuing importance of Aboriginal knowledge and cultural practice in the management of ecological systems like open forests and grasslands.

These are the environments that have been most vulnerable to destructive fires.

Building on this commitment will offer benefits for biodiversity and conservation of many habitats that have existed since Aboriginal arrival but are now seriously threatened.

There should also be opportunities for Aboriginal people to reconnect with places and practices impacted by British invasion. Calls for further land returns become more meaningful if accompanied by the resources needed to take responsibility for properly managing that land.

However, there are two dangers.

Firstly, it would be a mistake to think that Aboriginal cultural burning is the same thing as hazard reduction; as the flood of commentary on social media might suggest.

Traditional methods of burning over a thousand generations crafted and maintained much of the natural environment here in Tasmania that defines us.

In reality, these are cultural landscapes that need upkeep.

Our Aboriginal ancestors carried out their ceremonial burning as an expression of their day-to-day relationships with the land.

This was a way of nurturing Country so that it could be kept accessible, and produce an abundance of the plant and animal resources that were needed.

It was the way of keeping Country healthy.

NO ONE SHOULD THINK OF THESE INITIATIVES AS A PANACEA FOR THE INCREASING FREQUENCY OF THE MASSIVE FIRES WE ARE NOW EXPERIENCING. THAT REQUIRES ADDRESSING THE MAN-MADE CAUSES OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Low-intensity burning, when carried out regularly, and with intimate knowledge and experience of the places being burned, also influenced the behaviour of large-scale destructive fires when they occurred.

But it did not prevent them. Plenty of research shows the occurrence of many landscape-scale fires in Tasmania before the disruption of Aboriginal land management by the British.

The existence of large stands of wet forest, which only regenerate after intense fires, attests to this.

We should fund Aboriginal cultural burning and transfer more crown land to Aboriginal title.

We should increase that funding to enable Aboriginal people to spend enough time on Country to be able to reconnect with and rebuild the intimate relationships necessary for proper cultural burning.

After all, it was government monies that paid George Augustus Robinson to remove Aboriginal people from that land in the first place in the 1830s.

But no one should think of these initiatives as a panacea for the increasing frequency of the massive fires we are now experiencing. That requires addressing the man-made causes of climate change by thinking globally.

In the meantime, investing in Aboriginal fire management is an effective way of acting locally.