CULTURAL SCIENCE:
Barengi Gadjin Land Council ranger Lachie Marks ignites a cultural burn near Mt Arapiles, also known as Dyurrite. Traditional Owners have launched a new project in an effort to include cultural burning in land-management practices in the region.
Wimmera Traditional Owners hope to strengthen collaborative efforts with land-management authorities to help prevent major fires and pass on knowledge of an ancient cultural burning practice.
Barengi Gadjin Land Council, BGLC, representing the Wimmera’s Wotjobaluk, Jaadwa, Jadawadjali, Wergaia and Jupagalk peoples, has started a new cultural burning project, ‘Right Burning to Make Country Good’, with help from the Department of Environment Land Water and Planning.
BGLC on-country managers, under direction from Forest Fire Management Victoria, FFMV, continued with their project at Mount Arapiles, also known as Dyurrite, on Thursday last week.
The land council reignited its oncountry operations at Brynterion State Forest, south of Rupanyup, in June.
Cultural burning took place in Australia for thousands of years and the Wimmera’s Aboriginal communities only picked up the sacred tradition within the past four years.
BGLC on-country operations manager Stuart Harradine said the land council hoped to further strengthen collaborative land-management efforts between government authorities such as FFMV and Country Fire Authority.
He said greater co-operation between authorities and Traditional Owner groups across Australia would shore-up native vegetation management practices and help reduce the risk of major bushfire events.
“We think cultural burning can be a part of a package of different land management practices that can reduce wildfire risk across the landscape,” he said. “In response to the fairly recent fires in the east of the state and southern New South Wales, those devastating fires tell us that country isn’t getting the management that it should be.
“Cultural burning, in some circumstances, can help with that. It’s not the be all answer, but it’s definitely part of the answer.”
Mr Harradine said culturally planned burns were cooler, slower burns where fire was lit in patches to allow flames to take their natural paths.
“FFMV burn-offs are typically all about trying to get rid of the fuel load, so therefore they will conduct burns that are fairly hot in order to get an outcome,” he said.
“But we’re trying to say that’s not necessarily the way to go about it and cooler burns can still get an outcome and environmental benefits as well.”
Mr Harradine said the group was developing stronger partnerships with CFA and FFMV and non-government organisations to complete cultural burns on private land.
“There’s an opportunity to work with private landholders, in particular those who have protected conventions or remnant vegetation, where they might not be confident enough to do their own burning,” he said.
Mr Harradine said BGLC was constantly learning more about the traditional practice networks of Aboriginal groups across the country.
“This is a process of re-learning – there’s cultural burning networks across the whole continent where they’re sharing their knowledge and learnings from conducting cultural burns in different places,” he said.
Wotjobaluk man Damien Skurrie is taking part in the re-learning process.
Mr Skurrie said cultural burning was not only a major bonus for environmental outcomes but also a practice of cultural significance that needed to be passed on through the generations.
“This is about the rights and responsibilities we, as Traditional Owners, have for caring for country as we have for thousands of years – to care for country as our ancestors once did,” he said.
“This knowledge hasn’t been passed on due to all the terrible atrocities that occurred through European settlement that occurred in this part of the world.
“We scarified and lost that tradition of knowledge passing down from generation to generation.”
Mr Skurrie said he hoped Traditional Owners could continue to grow that knowledge.
“We’re at the stage now where the mobs who are left are trying to rebuild and gather that knowledge and those skillsets to practise traditions we once did thousands of years ago,” he said.