@article {bnh-8363, title = {Indigenous-informed disaster recovery: Addressing collective trauma using a healing framework}, journal = {Progress in Disaster Science}, volume = {16}, year = {2022}, month = {12/2022}, abstract = {

Indigenous knowledges are increasingly recognised for their value in disaster resilience, with particular attention to\ traditional ecological knowledges. Yet the expansive and holistic\ worldviews\ of Indigenous peoples offer an even broader set of knowledges and perspectives, such as the field of Indigenous healing, that are highly relevant to systemic challenges in disaster resilience and recovery. This theoretical paper explores the potential for an Indigenous-informed healing framework to address collective trauma from disasters. It begins by addressing key matters of concern in knowledge sharing between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. It then considers Indigenous healing as an international field of knowledge and practice, distilling consistent features across a range of texts. These shared features in Indigenous peoples{\textquoteright} healing traditions include: holistic approaches to wellbeing; social rather than solo processes; identifying and treating the roots of trauma; strengths-based and community-led processes; the need for socially and culturally safe spaces; and Indigenous notions of responsibility, justice and forgiveness. We then analyse points of difference and resonance with disaster recovery literature, in a novel effort to bring the fields of Indigenous healing and disaster recovery together through respectful and thoughtful dialogue. In doing so, this paper seeks to inform much-needed efforts to enhance culturally responsive practices in working with Indigenous peoples affected by disasters. The exploration also identifies that a healing-informed approach to disaster recovery offers opportunities to better support all communities affected by disasters, by unsettling assumptions and enabling holistic understandings of complex interactions between multiple disasters, community contexts and systemic inequities. To meet the many challenges facing the sector now and into the future, innovations fostered by such cross-disciplinary explorations are crucial.

}, keywords = {disaster, Healing, indigenous, recovery, resilience, Trauma}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pdisas.2022.100257}, url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590061722000448}, author = {Phoebe Quinn and Bhiamie Williamson and Lisa Gibbs} } @article {bnh-8003, title = {Cultural burning and public sector practice in the Australian Capital Territory}, journal = {Australian Geographer}, year = {2021}, month = {05/2021}, abstract = {

Aboriginal peoples{\textquoteright} fire management practices captured global attention during the Australian 2019{\textendash}20 {\textquoteleft}Black Summer{\textquoteright}, as a possible method to mitigate bushfire risk; however, these {\textquoteleft}cultural burns{\textquoteright} are no straightforward matter for public sector practice. As the slow, retrospective work to address historical and contemporary discrimination is imperfectly underway, we explore a cultural burning program supported by a government agency in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). In this paper, two co-authors share their experiences helping create a cultural burning program as Aboriginal people but not as Traditional Custodians. We document the steps taken to build support, create opportunities and engage Ngunnawal and Ngambri Traditional Custodians, and identify early positive results and challenging matters being generated. We demonstrate that rather than being restricted by public sector bureaucracy, the ACT cultural burning program has leveraged policy and entwined itself around the machinery of government in a way that accesses resources, creates opportunities and is slowly but surely changing public sector practice. Nonetheless, this is a journey of iteratively learning. It remains that more substantive measures are needed to recognise Traditional Custodianship if the current cultural burning program is to become a more substantial expression of Aboriginal peoples{\textquoteright} cultural land management.

}, keywords = {Aboriginal fire management, Bushfire, cool burns, cultural burning, natural resource management, Wildfire}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1080/00049182.2021.1917133}, url = {https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00049182.2021.1917133?journalCode=cage20}, author = {Dean Freeman and Bhiamie Williamson and Jessica Weir} } @article {bnh-8217, title = {Cultural burning in southern Australia}, year = {2021}, month = {09/2021}, institution = {Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC}, address = {Melbourne}, abstract = {

There is so much interest in cultural burning {\textendash} the landscape burns practised by Aboriginal people {\textendash} and its relevance to southern Australia{\textquoteright}s bushfire risk, but what is cultural burning? The people to learn from are the First Nations, Traditional Owners and Custodians of Country. Indeed, to really understand requires being part of a cultural burn on Country.

This edited report, as well as the posters available separately online, bring together and uniquely present six diverse personal cultural burning experiences from across southern Australia. These experiences both diverge and align as Aboriginal peoples{\textquoteright} paths, perspectives and priorities have always diverged and aligned.

Four of the contributions centre on burning one{\textquoteright}s own Country in southern Australia, as shared by Minung/Gnudju kayang (wise woman) Carol Pettersen of the Noongar Nation, Gilgar Gunditj Elder Eileen Alberts of the Gunditjmara Nation, Palawa man Jason Andrew Smith and Ngunnawal murringe (man) Adrian Brown. These experiences range from growing up burning with family and continuing to be involved today, to reigniting cultural burns on lands where it has too long been absent. We also have two stories about roles in university and government as shared by Bundjalung and Wonnarua woman Vanessa Cavanagh\ and Kaytej Elder Wayne ampetyane Davis. They describe how their roles involve learning from and supporting the First Nations, Traditional Owners and Custodians of Country, and the difference when they themselves are involved in burns on their own Country.

This difference is no minor matter: it marks the unique authority and connections held between specific people and places. More than an inter-generational form of land management, cultural burning involves matters of respect, obligation and responsibility with ancestral lands, waters, skies and everything in between. These burns are a cultural practice undertaken by Aboriginal people in relation to Country and kin, connecting and investing in their wellbeing and self-determination, and Australia{\textquoteright}s fire regime.

This authority and connection with Country is the first of four matters that inform the creation of this report. The second matter is the assumption by some people in society that cultural burning is to be imported from northern Australia into southern Australia. This fails to understand that cultural burning only occurs in relation to Country and the people of Country. Further, the cultural burning leaders show how this specific cultural practice has been passed down by families and nation groups to present times in places that are often described as settled and urban. At the same time, knowledge has always been shared by Aboriginal people across the continent, and this is not de-valued.

Third, Aboriginal women have long been marginalised from land management conversations with government and university. In recognition, women come first in this report. As Aunty Carol, Vanessa and Aunty Eileen share, cultural burning practices have intricate and interwoven roles for men and women. We look forward to hearing more such voices as cultural burning becomes better known.

Fourth, cultural burning is about\ healing relationships between Aboriginal\ people and their Country. There has been,\ and continues to be, much physical and other violence directed towards Country and people\ of Country. With climate change, there are even more challenges in this work and even more care needs to be taken. Supporting the healing of these relationships is an important responsibility for non-Indigenous people.

These six individual and shared cultural burning experiences bring to life these four matters and more. You will also see that ten Cultural Burning Principles have been developed. Again, this is to help articulate some of the core matters at hand, which Aboriginal leaders have been raising for generations. These voices can be hard to hear when they are the minority in the room, and so different from the dominant culture of governments and universities.

We are particularly concerned that the groundswell of support for Aboriginal peoples{\textquoteright} fire management expertise, during and after the catastrophic Black Summer (2019-2020), does not address fundamental misunderstandings about Aboriginal peoples{\textquoteright} fire management practices. By not addressing these misunderstandings, existing problems become repeated in the new work that is being established around cultural burning.

We hope this report\ and the posters\ will help address this by\ providing the opportunity to see\ a different viewpoint, to stand in\ someone else{\textquoteright}s shoes. This is critical
in developing more respectful\ relationships between Indigenous\ people and non-Indigenous people.\ We are all living together on Country.

Whilst the report and posters cannot compare to the experience of being at a cultural burn, they share realities that are little known in places where important decisions are being made {\textendash} such as the offices of bushfire inquiries, the boardrooms of government agencies, the risk-reduction burns of fire practitioners and the professional practices of university researchers.

We note that cultural burning is a new term to describe burns that in earlier times never needed such a label.

And now, over to our six cultural burning leaders.

}, keywords = {cultural burning, culture, indigenous, southern Australia}, isbn = {978-0-6452058-1-7}, issn = {687}, author = {Jessica Weir and Dean Freeman and Bhiamie Williamson} } @article {bnh-6814, title = {Aboriginal Peoples and the response to the 2019-2020 bushfires}, year = {2020}, month = {03/2020}, institution = {Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University}, address = {Canberra}, abstract = {

Aboriginal people were among those most affected by the 2019{\textendash}2020 bushfires in south-eastern Australia. Yet aside from renewed public interest in cultural burning practices, Aboriginal people have received little attention in the post-bushfire response. In this paper, we describe population geography of Aboriginal peoples affected by the 2019{\textendash}2020 bushfire season in New South Wales and Victoria, and the geography of Aboriginal legal rights and interests in land across these states. We find that over 84 000 Indigenous people, or one-quarter of the Indigenous population of NSW and Victoria, live in the bushfire-affected area. While Indigenous people comprise nearly 5.4\% of the 1.55 million people living in fire-affected areas, they are only 2.3\% of the total population of NSW and Victoria. Because Indigenous people in the bushfire-affected area have younger population profiles, more than one-tenth of children in the bushfire-affected area are Indigenous, raising the diverse effects of bushfires on infants and children in particular. Aboriginal people also have a variety of distinct and spatially extensive legal rights and interests in land as First Peoples, including across much of the fire-affected area. Presenting a series of quotations from published accounts, we demonstrate that the Aboriginal experience of the 2019{\textendash}2020 bushfires have been different from those of non-Indigenous Australians.

}, keywords = {Aboriginal peoples, bushfires, Emergency management, Natural hazards}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.25911/ 5e7882623186c}, url = {https://caepr.cass.anu.edu.au/research/publications/aboriginal-peoples-and-response-2019-2020-bushfires}, author = {Bhiamie Williamson and Francis Markham and Jessica Weir} }