The Elders efforts are also being described with support from their co-researchers through through their TKRP and PhD research project. It is an Indigenous led co-generative action research methodology that is deeply embedded in an Indigenous worldview and connection to country. The project combines the Indigenous research methods applied by TKRP - the use of new media tools to secure, demonstrate and communicate Traditional Knowledge with western research tools of GPS, photographic images, GIS, remote sensing fire scar mapping and field notes to record and describe the Elders efforts at healing country through applying their TK and re-shaping the communication space of fire management.
Indigenous identified and led research
This research is ceremony
(Wilson 2008), it is the methodology of the TKRP addressing community
identified concerns that provide an axis to implement grassroots community
driven research practice embedded in the interconnected elements of Traditional
Knowledge, country and people. This is an Indigenous research paradigm that recognises:
Different ways of knowing being
and doing
Believes in inherited wisdom that may not be
readily understood
Understands ?plenty? (appropriate) time
Recognises interconnectivity between all things
and that all things are animate and sentient
Accepts there are stages, places and levels of
learning
Practically applies skills and knowledge
Uses processes that evolve through experimentation
without sacrificing time-honoured belief, spirituality, cosmology
Values local knowledge and kinship
Contributes to the oral record
Ensures local verification
Integrates with and contributes to daily life
Why is the PhD called
?The Importance of Campfires? ??
? The Importance of Campfires? is a metaphor that represents
the diversity of uses that the Awu Laya (Kuku Thaypan) people had for fire and
the relationships between fire, people and country. It came to me as a suitable name after hearing the Elders
talk about the multiple uses of fire for cooking and for warfare, the
relationships intricately described between flowering, timing for fire, the sap
in new leaf shoots and food for fauna. Each of these timed firing regimes whether for daily use, tool and
weaponry production, ceremonial or propagation purpose had an effect on the
landscape and the atmosphere. Awu
Laya people burned all year round for a variety of reasons except for a natural
break in August ? the driest month of the year. In the words of the last remaining fluent speaker of the Awu
Laya language Dr. Tommy George when asked how his parents were burning on
country in the old times, ?That?s a long story.? The result was a heterogeneous landscape able to support a
diverse array of species.
The first year of the research project before it was
officially launched I was lucky enough to go with ?Old Man? (Dr. George)
Musgrave[1],
Dale Musgrave[2], Victor
Steffensen, Bruce Rigsby[3]
and Noleen Cole[4] to Melbourne
to visit the Kuku Thaypan section of the Thompson collection held by the
Museum. I was siting in the Thompson collection the day after listening to ?Old
Man? (George) Musgrave identify, explain and record items in the collection
belonging to Awu Laya people and sometimes neighbouring clan areas that had
been incorrectly identified and catalogued. At this point of the visit I was I was looking at historic
photographs within the collection of fauna and the landscape and reading notes
in Thompsons journals. He had mentioned
seeing fire on the landscape in Kuku Thapan country for camping at night and
had remarked on the number of fires in one group camping, some were families;
some were separate camps for women and men, others for Elders with family
groups.
Can you begin to imagine the varying age classes of recently
fired and regenerating areas and abundance of nutrient deposits from charcoal
and ash moving through the system. Today when you travel through Kuku Thaypan country it is possible to see
fire scars above 15 m in the tallest (Messmate - E.tetrondonta) forests and large areas in a variety of ecosystem
types where the canopy is burnt and lifeless. Can you also imagine coming to
understand the deep knowledge of the relationships between fire and the natural
world that is held within the Awu Laya knowledge system and other Indigenous
knowledge systems across Australia that could be re-applied across the
landscape instead of the above current destructive scenario of fire in the landscape?
Then ponder, despite the Elders efforts through their fire
project; that is changing the way fire is occurring across a small area of
their country, the majority of burning is still occurring between the months of
August and December resulting in hot, intense fires across large areas
equalling loss of biota and ecosystem function[5].
Imagine then the importance of supporting people today back out on country
re-establishing a diverse firing regime, people whose knowledge systems contain
a longitudinal baseline of inherent adaptive management spanning 40 000 years.
The title also represents the importance of siting around a
campfire on country, relaxed, listening to the Elders telling and re-living
experiences of country, sharing and re-affirming knowledge, sharing whom we are
as people.
The Title is also a reference to a paper of colleagues (Crowley & Garnett,
1997)
that outlines the importance of cups of tea in order to open communication
lines and build trust and relationships. The paper describes the importance of building relationships when
engaging with station owners on a cattle property in Central Cape York to
implement conservation outcomes concerning the Golden Shouldered Parrot.
Bibliography
Crowley, G.,
& Garnett, S. (1997). The Golden shouldered parrot of Cape York
Peninsula; the importance of cups
of tea to effective conservation. In P. a. L. Hale, D. (Ed.), Conservation
outside nature reserves (pp. pp.201-205).
Brisbane. : Centre for
conservation Biology, University of QLD
