Burning land: mid-week links
What do indigenous voices have to say about fire in Australia?
During my research for “Burning land”, I turned over a number of stones which never made it to my article. Many of these metaphorical stones related to Australia’s first inhabitants, and their 50,000 years of experience living in and managing the Australian landscape. So I’ve decided to focus my suggested reading this week on indigenous Australian voices.
The first article is one which stood out for me, because it gave a much fuller picture of how the Noongar people of south-western Australia use fire than other material on the topic. Since the article was published in 1999, there has been increasing recognition of the value of including indigenous voices in decisions on fire management. The voices of people like the article author Glen Kelly, who is from the Noongar people as well as having a degree in environmental science, have played an important part in this change.
The second article is from the Kimberley region in north-western Australia. It’s from the website of the Kimberley Land Council, a group made up of Aboriginal people from that region. The Kimberley Land Council is earning carbon credits by managing the land in a way which prevents uncontrolled fires from releasing large amounts of greenhouse gases.
My third link is not an article, but a radio interview with Shannon Foster from the D’Harawal people. She talks about the inappropriate management of the land around Sydney that her elders had been warning about for years and how it contributed to last summer’s terrible fires there.
Finally, here’s my Substack link for the week – the newsletter of a gallery exhibiting the art of indigenous Australian artists from central Australia. Unfortunately the links in the newsletter which are supposed to take you directly to the gallery’s past exhibitions aren’t working. However here’s the main website, which has a lot of beautiful work. There’s a wide range of work, some more traditional in style, some quite different from what you usually see. I hope you enjoy the works as much as I did.
The Turnstone comes out twice a week - a full article on Sunday and some interesting links related to each week’s article on Wednesday. If you have any suggestions for topics or articles which I should highlight, please let me know.
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