Project Description
AABR National Forum 2024 – The Rs of Restoration
Igniting change: Collaboration for cultural fire– Liam Gallagher
Liam Gallagher has a Masters in Disaster and Emergency Management from Charles Darwin University and has been with the Victorian Department of Energy Environment and Climate Action for three years working previously as a forest and fire operations officer. Liam’s role as a cultural burn officer is to support the cultural fire and land management goals of traditional owners across the Port Phillip region.
Fire is a powerful and enduring force that has had a profound influence on the Australian landscape. The method of managing country using fire has been employed over millennia by Aboriginal people. In regions across Australia there is a proliferation of Indigenous communities applying, adapting and rejuvenating Indigenous fire practices and burning regimes through a range of land management activities and partnerships. The proliferation of cultural fire practices across Australia has led to a collision between traditional fire management and the risk averse management strategies of government agencies.
I’d like to acknowledge groups and organisations that I have the privilege of working with on a daily basis, with their connection to the land and waters and their unique ability to care for country through the spiritual act of applying fire. I’d like to acknowledge the ancestors that have walked the path before me and I know we walk on the shoulders of giants.
Aboriginal people have been using fire for managing country for many many years. There is a growing range of scholars who have identified how Aboriginal fire practices have changed and shaped the Australian landscape. The first colonists have described the intricate linkages between Aboriginal use of fire and the intrinsic management of the Australian continent. In January 1802 off Cape Shank and in the Port Philip Bay area it was impossible to survey any part of the coast because of the numerous native fires which covered the low shore in one continuous volume of smoke.
Early European settlers often described the continent as wild and an unfamiliar environment. But what they actually encountered was a landscape that had been very consciously and deliberately shaped by fire in what could be described as a continent wide economic and social strategy to support human life and protect faunal and floral species.
In the wake of the black summer bushfires in 1920, the hot and dry conditions over time since then combined with the existence of large areas that were not being managed through local fire and land management practices. This resulted in 126,000km square or 12.6 million hectares of Australia burnt between August 2019 and March 2020. The impacts of this have galvanised the Australian community in terms of learning from Aboriginal communities in terms of fire.
What is cultural fire?
Indigenous fire practices are holistic in nature. They incorporate an intricate number of dimensions that are intertwined with the spiritual and physical nature of the world. This encompasses customary lore, economies, social relations and structures, ecology and diverse technology such as season indicators.
The importance of fire is coupled with the innate knowledge and understanding of the interplays of local environments. As one elder describes it – fire creates new life. Burning was part of the daily routine. You burn grass, you get new shoots coming up, you get wallabies and kangaroos coming on, and emus feeding and that’s how people survived. That was the main reason for fire.
Fire is more than a complex knowledge system connected to one’s environment and maximizing it for ones survival. It is connected to lore and spiritual and kinship relationships. To put it simply, cultural fire has many tangible and intangible benefits to the environment and to people. These included:
- Care for country. Fire provides a fundamental way to re-connect to country, reinvigorate culture and share knowledge, and there are related cultural, health and wellbeing outcomes.
- Regenerate and protect native species, and to manage invasive weed species via mosaic and patch burning. This has related ecological and environmental outcomes.
- Fuel reduction to protect important places. These places can include cultural heritage or internationally-significant wetland areas, threatened species and ecological communities, infrastructure such as buildings, powerlines, and neighbouring properties.
- Meaningful employment, related social and economic benefits and outcomes.
- Improved decision-making power on traditional estates.
Case Study – Martu burning
I’d like to refer to a case study conducted by Greenwood and Co that was delivered on Martu country (in the Western Deserts of central Western Australia), which found
- fire increased the richness and diversity of plants and some plant (e.g. sub-shrubs) groups in the Western Deserts,
- that the maximum extent of large wildfires appeared to reduce plant richness, while the extent of mid successional vegetation tended to enhance the diversity of several plant groups, including edible species richness,
- and that findings underscore the importance of Indigenous fire regimes for promoting plant diversity in this fire-prone ecosystem.
Although this is only one example of the benefits of cultural fire from a purely ecological objective, as an Aboriginal person myself, the innate connection to country and spirit that arises when delivering fire is something that can not necessarily be tangibly described.
Many land and emergency management agencies have only recently begun to acknowledge that they have obligations to work towards partnerships with First Nations peoples. This has led to some successful partnerships and policy interventions here in Victoria such as the Victorian Traditional Owner Cultural Fire Strategy.
Many gaps and significant improvements are required to meet Indigenous expectations around fire management.
These include:
- Different attitudes and perspectives in understanding fire
- Legislation and regulation
- Land tenure and access to land
- Funding and resources
- Accreditation and training
- Liabilities and insurance
To overcome barriers to collaboration, agencies and organisations need to begin to take active steps to support the fire aspirations of traditional owners.
Maintaining intercultural collaborations can present many obstacles and there needs to be guidance on how to work together. A good resource has been recently produced by Natural Hazards Research Australia in a project titled ‘Cultural land management research and governance in south-east Australia’.
It produced a guide Principles and Protocols for Cultural Land Management for people who are engaging with traditional owner groups, which is relevant to government organisations, non-government organisations, and research institutes.
In Victoria, a cultural fire support network has been developed bringing together many agencies – four individual water corporations, five fire rescue Victoria Districts and 31 local government areas to discuss the challenges agencies are having to better support cultural fire. Some land managers are collaborating to adopt standard approaches across land tenure and start to break down some of those barriers that we have.
Organisations are at different stages and have different relationships, which means that not all have the appetite to be involved.
Where to?
- Continue to collaborate with all agencies and organisations to continue to break down some of barriers at a regional level.
- Advocate for further reform as a collective and in genuine partnership with Traditional Owner organisations.
- Apply principles and protocols for cultural land management to ensure we overcome barriers to intercultural collaboration.