Fighting Fire with Fire - Indigenous Cultural Burning Practice
https://www.abc.net.au/austory/fighting-fire-with-fire/12134242
Transcript: (if anyone could make a pdf of the transcript that would be great
INTRODUCTION: CELESTE BARBER: Hello I’m Celeste Barber, on my iPhone from self-isolation on the north coast of New South Wales.*As we all face the fear of the coronavirus crisis, it’s important not to forget about the recent bushfires that devastated so many families.**Tonight’s program looks at the Indigenous way of managing fires, used by Aboriginal people for thousands of years.*And tells the fascinating story of Victor Steffensen, the face of the Indigenous cultural burning movement, who says this ancient knowledge could provide answers for the future.
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: Fire is beautiful. It’s just like water, it trickles through the landscape and the right fire protects the trees and it brings food and encourages new life.* It takes away all the rubbish that’s suppressing the landscape, it looks after our animals, and even the animals know fire. It’s something that belongs in this landscape. But when people don’t know the fire and they disconnect themselves from the landscape, then that’s when we have trouble.******************** *******************
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(News reports January 2020)
Parts of NSW are in the grips of a bushfire emergency.
The house behind me is too far gone.
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: When I see the fire out of control and raging, it makes me frustrated. And really sad for the land.*
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(News reports January 2020)
Fire came up in a blink of an eye. I’m looking at the tree right now that’s sparking.
It was just so intense. It was unbelievable.
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DR PETA STANDLEY, CULTURAL BURNING RESEARCHER: It’s heartbreaking when you can actually see an alternative and you’ve walked with fire that is so safe. To see what our firefighters have had to deal with is just, you know, it’s terrible.*
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BILL GAMMAGE, ANU HISTORIAN: This summer shows you that fire has to be addressed. The people most skilled at doing that are Aboriginal experts, they’re willing to help.* Surely we should ask them for that help.
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: The old people chose me to do this work. This is a responsibility that was thrown upon me and I intend to finish that.
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DR JACQUELINE GOTHE, UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, SYDNEY: As a cultural fire practitioner, Victor travels around Australia visiting communities. The interest from communities is huge, from indigenous communities and non-indigenous communities.
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: When those catastrophic fires went off like that, my phone went crazy. Thousands of people they were saying ‘we need you to start a program here and there.’ Aboriginal fire management is very complex and has a lot of layers of knowledge and information, but it’s all based on the really cool burn which is low intensity. The hot fires that we often see in the wildfires, and even the hot fires we often see with hazard reduction burning is not good for the country. So there’s a difference for the return for food for animals. When you burn at the right time, you get 6 months of no food. When you burn at right time, you have food in 6 days.
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1st OFFICER BARRY CHILD, KURANDA/MYOLA RURAL FIRE BRIGADE: I’ve learned from Victor is that we’re burning to promote native grass, we’re not burning to kill weeds. That’s not the way you go.* Yeah I worry that we’ve been doing the wrong thing for some time. I am definitely converted to the idea of cultural burning as a key resource for us.
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INSPECTOR CHRIS PALMER, NSW RURAL FIRE SERVICE: Victor learned from elders who learned from elders and he’s now starting to share that knowledge and tell that story. And I think that’s important.*************************************************************
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: I grew up in a little town called Kuranda which is only a half hour from Cairns. My Indigenous heritage is from my mother’s side.* She couldn’t tell me much because her parents and mother and the families were taken off country and sent to different places. And so they lost a lot of language and culture.* I would have been around 13 years of age, I started to really get into a lot of the culture stuff, because going down the river and camping with my friends, we would talk about it all the time.************
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BARRY HUNTER, FRIEND: Being out on country and being out in the bush, I guess that gave all of us answers about who we were and what we should know about, you know, our Indigenous culture, our cultural heritage and the knowledge that’s out there.***************************** ******
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN: Fire was always a fascination to me.* I think my first fire would have lit the banana patch in the backyard and it’s burning and then I go, oh, it was burning a bit too much now. And then it’s like taking over the banana patch and burning over the top of the chicken pen. And my sister was watching me, going “you’re in trouble!”********************
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BARRY HUNTER, FRIEND:
We were both sort of students of the film and telly subject at school. Knowing what cameras could do and what it could capture, we made little action hero films and I guess that was the start of Victor’s interest in filmmaking.* That whole journey has given Victor a pathway through life.
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: Going through school, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And then my friends come around and go, ‘hey we’re gonna go fishing, want to come along?* So I said, ‘yeah I’m gonna go fishing.’
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BARRY HUNTER, FRIEND: There was no real opportunities in around Kuranda.* So we both took off up to the Cape.*******************************************
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: I didn’t realise that that fishing trip, I wasn’t going to come back.* I ended up in a little township called Laura, and it was only a small town, little over 100 people live there, Aboriginal community.* That’s when I first met these two special old men, George Musgrave and Tommy George.* And everyone would talk about those old men.* And because I was interested in learning about knowledge and culture and I would ask people and they’d say, ‘go talk to them two old fellas, there.’****************************** ************
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BARRY HUNTER, FRIEND: Victor back then was like an empty cup and he wanted to be filled up with all this knowledge.* So Laura is a small town and you know, there’s not a lot of places to stay.* So he was invited to go and stay with old “TG,” we call him, Tommy George.*
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: Those two old men would have been for their tribe and for their people, they were the last to have that knowledge. And they’re also the last speakers of their language.* They were so hungry to pass on their knowledge. That was their dream, was just for the young people to learn and take over that role. And that’s what they saw in me.* Actually was just a young person wanting to learn.* And so they started to teach me.
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GEORGE MUSGRAVE: And that place used to be clean water, eh? It used to be clean water, really clean.* And now you can see mud, you can’t see the bottom.
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: I became someone they trusted and someone they could offload that knowledge to, in a way that would pass that on to their families and to help with other communities and pass it onto next generations.**
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DWAYNE MUSGRAVE, GRANDSON OF GEORGE MUSGRAVE: Victor was the one who stood up and said, “Well I’ll take all that on.” When they got to know him a bit more and he got to know them a bit more, they were like his son then, they were treating him and looking after him like he’s a son. And then here’s Victor pulling out this big camera. And he was filming.* What is he doing?* Then all of a sudden he has one of the old fellows sitting down there. ‘Look old fellows, I’ve got this new technology here.* It’s a video camera.* It’ll tape whatever you see.’ Like he explained it to them so they knew what it was.*
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: They didn’t know what the video camera was.* They thought it was a camera that took still photos.* They’d stand there and smile, wait for it, ‘you take the photo yet?’* And I’d say no no, this is video camera.**********
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GEORGE MUSGRAVE: What I’m going to do now, is to get this food, I’m going to cut him now. So you watch now.
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: They saw the importance of it straight away.* The video camera was the closest thing to the traditional transfer. That’s their voice and their recording.* And that is the most accurate way to record knowledge.********************
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DWAYNE MUSGRAVE, GRANDSON OF GEORGE MUSGRAVE: The two old fellows, they got pretty quick to the camera.* Everywhere they went they wanted Victor to film them.
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: So the old fellas were like walking encyclopedias, they were full of knowledge.****************************
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DR JACQUELINE GOTHE, UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, SYDNEY: When I saw the footage, I was overwhelmed with the sense of importance.* In my knowledge about Aboriginal knowledge, it had been like archives in museums. This was live, happening at the moment, on country, in our contemporary world.
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GEORGE MUSGRAVE: This tree is a firestick, See there it’s a firestick. Aborigines use this thing to make it fire.*
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: Old people always talked about fire, and applying fire in a way that is in sync with the seasons and in sync with the breeding times of the animals. The old men would look at indicators in the landscape, so if it was time to burn a certain eco-system, there will be certain flowers that indicate when they burn.* What they taught me was how to read the landscape.* It was just really amazing how those old people could break down each different eco system to having a certain type of burn. And that is very sophisticated knowledge. This area we’ve been burning for the last 3-4 years, doing traditional burning, and we’ve shown here that the right burning has encouraged the grass species.* I can't tell you how many films I made.* The films have played a crucial role for everyone to understand the intentions of indigenous fire management. Hundreds of Aboriginal tribes made up the continent, all speaking different languages, but all with one thing in common – the responsibility of traditional fire laws to the country.
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PROF. BILL GAMMAGE, ANU HISTORIAN: What the early settlers could see was that Aboriginal people were burning constantly.* Cook, going along the East Coast, talks about the frequent little fires and the constant smoke.* Some of the early artists also depicted smoke. Aboriginal fire had two basic objectives.* One of them was to reduce fuel, and the other was to provide a habitat for every species.********
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: The country was well managed and there was a lot of grasslands and healthy landscapes and that’s important because animals depend on the grasses and the grasses are there for seeds and food. When the settlers came to Australia, it changed immediately by taking fire out of the landscape completely. And so what was going on for thousands of years of people looking after the land suddenly just stopped. When the old people got their land back through the native title claim, it was still classified as National Park. They weren’t really allowed to put fire on the land.
George and Tommy would be like, ’we got to burn, we got to burn, the land is so unbalanced and sick.’ When we drove around on their country, they were heartbroken. They were seeing weeds and dead grass over the bonnet of the car and you know they couldn’t find places.* They couldn’t recognise their land.** Eventually one day, the same thing happened.* And I said, ‘burn it off, old fella, why don’t you just burn? And then he said alright, then let’s do it. Lit the grass and ran tiptoeing back into the truck and closed the door.* And we looked at the fire just taking off and our hearts were beating.* And we knew we were in trouble straight away, we just knew we were in trouble for doing that.*
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DR PETA STANDLEY, CULTURAL BURNING RESEARCHER: It was the National Parks Service and the neighbours were concerned. But I think it was a turning point because there was a recognition more broadly from neighbours and the agencies that this was something they were going to do, with or without a permit.****
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DWAYNE MUSGRAVE, GRANDSON OF GEORGE MUSGRAVE: The old fellas got more game, they went and did it again.* And they kept on doing that until the parks and the government and the police, they all said, well “these old fellas, they’re doing something good here. They’re not actually just lighting fires for the fun of it.” Once we started doing the burns, over time, over a couple of years, we started to see weeds disappear.
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DR PETA STANDLEY, CULTURAL BURNING RESEARCHER: It was amazing to watch whole landscapes be burnt and seeing how skilfully and tenderly they did that.* Flowering was protected, there was a decrease in bare ground. There was an increase in diversity of the understory, there was a decrease in the scar height.* There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that it was a positive thing for the environment and also a positive thing for people.************************************
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN: That’s when I realised the power of traditional knowledge and there was hope too, to set things the right way.* When we first got our first fire permit off National Parks, we were so happy.* It was like getting a letter from the Queen. Around about then, Peta Standley came to us wanting to do a PHD on the fire work. And I said to her, the PHD can only happen if those old fellas are properly recognised.
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DR PETA STANDLEY, CULTURAL BURNING RESEARCHER: The comprehensive knowledge that those old people held of the country and all the components was absolutely phenomenal. It took a year or so working with James Cook University. And in 2005 they awarded them honorary doctorates so they could be listed as co-researchers on the PHD thesis.********************************
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: So the old people became Dr George Musgrave and Dr Tommy George.*
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DWAYNE MUSGRAVE, GRANDSON OF GEORGE MUSGRAVE: When they came back from the university thing with all the little blue hat, they thought they were the king of the world.* Oh well, they were pretty over the moon about it.***************************
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN: It was a big thing for me.* They helped me so much. And they’ve always said to me, ‘keep going, keep going, boy.* You keep doing what you’re doing.* And from there, I did it for them. It was just to let the world know that Aboriginal knowledge is a valuable knowledge source that we need into our future.* And we’re only just seeing that now, people understanding how much we need that knowledge. *When I saw the catastrophic fires happening this summer, it was no surprise to me. It was a time bomb waiting to go off. The massive amount of fuel loads and the wrong vegetation.* That's lined up with drought as well. I feel sorry for the firefighters, they’re just volunteers, and then they’re thrown out into like a warzone, into an inferno. And out of all the pain and all that loss, I just hope that something good comes from this.** What goes through my mind when I see this is, I just get angry and heartbroken and sad. I mean, why wasn't the land prepared before the drought? That country should have been managed earlier and should have been looked after and not neglected the way it was, and we would've seen a different outcome to those fires. We would see more houses saved.* We’d see more bushland saved.* We’d see more animals saved.* It’s going to take a long time before we see this country looking the way it should be.
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PROF. BILL GAMMAGE, ANU HISTORIAN:
Just imagine if a series of fires like we’ve just been through had happened in 1788. People could not possibly have outrun them. Whole communities must have been wiped out.* But there is no evidence that that actually happened.* People prevented fires in those days.* Their skills prevented fires.
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: Today we’re at Kanjini which is private property.
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SVARGO FREITAG, PROPERTY OWNER: And we are really happy to have our local indigenous people to come along to do fire management on this place.*************************************** ***
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BARRY HUNTER, FRIEND: In cultural burning the key thing is that the fire is cooler and that it moves underneath the canopy. Because that canopy is where birds and other animals live. It gives those animals a chance to move away.* But also when the fire’s been through there, it gives them a chance to come back because those green shoots, green pickings will come back over almost immediately. And you come back in two or three years and that country is alive.* There’s birds everywhere, because the insects are back.
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: When we burn the right fire in the right ecosystems, we enhance our native vegetation.* So the fire is an application to get rid of the weeds and the invasive grasses. And that’s what makes it different from hazard reduction. It’s really about applying that fire in a way that is best for the country.* It’s not about, you know, let’s get this done before five o’clock, just for the sake of burning off the fuel.
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SVARGO FREITAG, PROPERTY OWNER: First time I experienced normal reduction burns by local fire brigades, they were actually outright scary. And it went into a massive big smokestack column and I was wondering, how many animals died in this?* These indigenous cultural burns, totally different feeling.* It’s so relaxed.* It’s so cool.* That fire doesn’t have to be threatening.
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1st OFFICER BARRY CHILD, KURANDA/MYOLA RURAL FIRE BRIGADE: I’ve been in the Queensland Rural Fire Service now since 2012.* The way that indigenous burning is conducted is totally different to what we’re used to in the fire service.* We’ve been putting in too hot a fire, blanketing too far an area, not allowing the animals to escape.************** Victor is a revelation.* We don’t need to black out the whole country and burn everything in sight. We can go out now on a reduction burn and consider the animals in the area and is it the right time for that sort of vegetation to be burnt, is it the right time for the birds, are they safe?***
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: I’ve done burns all over the country and seen the improvements in landscapes. And there are even places where the last wildfire went and didn’t burn our cultural burn areas. A couple of people got their houses saved from cultural burns. The fires went out and went around them.***************************************
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INSPECTOR CHRIS PALMER, NSW RURAL FIRE SERVICE: The last burn that was conducted caught up in the Currowan fire that we’ve just experienced.* And the area that was culturally reduced fared well.* And you will see a visual line on the ground where a flanking fire met with the cultural burn and the fire just petered out.* So it worked. Victor ran four workshops in this area.* They explained how things have been done traditionally and I got on board straight away because I could see the benefits.* Ideally what I’d like to see is the combination of traditional knowledge and academic knowledge coming together to work out what’s beneficial for the countryside, so that we can implement successful hazard reduction work.
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CRAIG CRAWFORD, QUEENSLAND MINISTER FOR FIRE AND EMERGENCY SERVICES: I do think that traditional fire knowledge could be part of the solution.* It's a matter to get the right people sitting down.* So local traditional owners, local experts from the fire service, from other agencies as well, and putting all that knowledge together, there is thousands of generations of traditional owner knowledge out there all across this country. And if we don’t tap into it, we're absolute fools.
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SHANE FITZSIMMONS, NSW RURAL FIRE SERVICE COMMISSIONER: There's no doubt, like with the broader burning landscape, we can do more cultural burning, we can do more work with local communities and particularly indigenous communities in different areas.* But the single biggest impediment to getting more hazard reduction burning done, cultural burning, prescribed burning, whatever you want to call it is typically attributed to weather and the limited windows of opportunity to take advantage of those weather conditions.*
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INSPECTOR CHRIS PALMER, NSW RURAL FIRE SERVICE: To say that this is a panacea, I’m hesitant to say. Where it’s worked, it’s worked well and those areas are small at this stage. Cultural burning on a broad scale is not achievable at the moment.* There’s not enough people trained.* Hopefully that can be alleviated in the future.*
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VICTOR STEFFENSON: These catastrophic fires that have just happened has woken this country up.* It’s incredible. And I just want all the talk to stop.* And I just want the action to begin. I have no doubt in my mind that Indigenous knowledge of fire is the key to adapting to climate change. Start looking after the land.* Look after your rivers, your water.* Burn your country the right way.* If we see this through the indigenous lens, then climate change is an exciting time, an opportunity. What I would like to see is Indigenous training programs. Young people are keen.
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BARRY HUNTER, FRIEND: That’s a big reason of why Victor wrote about it. The book is find ways of getting that message out to broader people.* Victor’s goal now is to ensure that what he’s been entrusted with by those two old people gets out and is well known sort of all around the world.*********************************************
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN: We lost old Dr George Musgrave in 2006 and we lost Dr Tommy George in 2016.* And if they were alive now to see those devastating bushfires, they would be terribly disappointed.******
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DWAYNE MUSGRAVE, GRANDSON OF GEORGE MUSGRAVE: If them old fellows was here, I’d reckon they’d be down at the Parliament House or somewhere down there in the high places, knocking on their doorstep, saying ‘look here, we need to do this.’*********
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VICTOR STEFFENSON, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONER: I think when the old people passed on, they knew that we would still be going and this work would continue. For me, it’s about getting this done and achieving those dreams for them, and getting the fire happening back on the landscape.*** And I just want to make sure that there’s a thousand practitioners out there once I’m done.
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GEORGE MUSGRAVE: They listen to us now, they believe us now. They pick old people to show them how to do.* Right, not to cut the trees, not to put a dozer through.* They believe us now, they believe us.Aborigines.
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VICTOR STEFFENSEN, INDIGENOUS FIRE PRACTITIONR We need change. We need to do things differently. Give Aboriginal people a go, for once.**************************************
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Chosun :gh:
