Decolonising Fire: Indigenous Land Stewardship and Climate Futurity

Thank you for tuning in to the fifth webinar of our 2023 series, Critical Public Conversations: Country, Climate, Colonialism. 

In this talk, Dr. Melinda Adams talks about work on decolonising or Indigenising our approach to fire. Placing good fire to the ground in accordance with Indigenous protocol mitigates against occurrences of wildfire. However, it also requires recognising that good fires, or cultural fires, are intentionally placed knowing the ecological and the cultural benefits held within our Tribes as part of our Land caretaking and tending to our Lands. Melinda explains a multiplicity approach to good fire research as an extension of climate futurity. This includes looking at the return of plants for basketry materials and looking at soil analyses to see how we can get our soils healthier by placing culturally-led, Indigenous-led, lower-intensity cultural fire.

This approach is also tied to policy and leveraging power back to cultural fire practitioners to be able to set more good fire to the ground. All of this is grounded in Native American studies pedagogy, which is also embodied as Native ways of being. Melinda also describes her experience of cultural fire workshops as work that can address Land dispossession and removal: “Because we don't get to learn the science of how well fire is treating our plants and our soils without learning about erasure displacement and removal, and how we can and should do better, and how we can and do have a climate futurity that centres Indigenous perspectives and ways of being in practices”. Consequently, there is a discernible difference between settler land-keeping and Indigenous people’s Land stewardship, recalling songs, stories, and obligations through purposely placed, culturally led fire.

To follow and like Melinda's incredible work, simply visit her X profile or website using the below buttons. 

Questions and comments from the audience

• What the spiritual benefits of cultural fire are and how many different reasons for using fire are there?

• What is the interconnection or the relationship between fire and water, so how cultural fire and cultural burning help with caring for waters?

• How have economic arguments have been successfully made for cultural fire and cultural land management because that is the settler discourse?

• What can be done to put in place better policies to incorporate Indigenous knowledge and wisdom into practice? How can we make this non-negotiable for governments who need to act on this?

Additional resources 

Critical Public Conversations 2023

The Australian Centre’s Critical Public Conversations webinar series will focus on the relationship between colonialism and climate change. The series seeks to interrogate the settler state’s incapacity to manage the ecology of this continent and will highlight the ways in which First Nations care for, and obligations to, Country are inextricably bound to questions of sovereignty. The webinar series will showcase research and activism that explores what it means to care for Country and do environmental work in the context of ongoing colonial occupation.