Caring for Country: A Reciprocal Ecology of Care

By Sarah Thomson, Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation [1], PhD candidate, University of Queensland and Delta Lucille Freedman, Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation [2]

Cultural Warning

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article may contain the names and/or words of people who are deceased.

Acknowledgment of Country

The authors wish to acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people as the Traditional Owners of the greater Melbourne area within which we live and work. We pay our respects to their Country and to their Elders, past, present, and emerging and recognise that sovereignty was never ceded. As non-Indigenous social scientists, we further acknowledge the damage caused by our disciplinary predecessors, that we are the direct beneficiaries of knowledge gained often violently and without consent, and that First Peoples remain the rightful owners of their traditional, ecological, and cultural knowledges and practices. We thank the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation’s Narrap Rangers for their valuable input on this article.

In Australia, despite a long history of colonialism, First Nations communities are now increasingly involved in the development of nature-based solutions for ecological remediation and climate change mitigation often referred to under the rubric of ‘Caring for Country’[3] (see Morgain, Wintle, Bush, Fletcher, & Croeser, 2021). Emerging as a formal movement at the end of the twentieth century and fuelled by government funded land care programs, the Caring for Country philosophy embodies traditional Indigenous community-based natural resource management (Altman & Whitehead, 2003). Based upon our experience as anthropologists engaged on matters relating to cultural heritage and land and natural resource management across metropolitan Melbourne, we discuss the Caring for Country ethos of reciprocal care that derives from a uniquely Australian Indigenous relational ontology with the more-than-human world, underpinned by cultural obligation, ritual practice, and spiritual connection combined with modern scientific knowledge and technology.

Traditional land and natural resource management

First Nations communities consistently, predictably, and purposefully managed the Australian landscape for a period of at least 60,000 years[4] prior to European invasion in the late eighteenth century. At the advent of colonisation there were more than 250 distinct Indigenous languages spoken comprising over 800 dialects. Linguistic groupings and their nested estate groups spread across the entirety of the island continent, managing diverse environments comprising arid desert, Mediterranean shrublands, temperate montane and tropical and subtropical rainforests, each of which offered suitable food, water and other natural resources for subsistence (Gammage, 2011). 

Central to pre-contact land management regimes in what would later become Victoria, located in the southeast of the continent, was the periodic practice of ‘firing’ or selectively burning tracts of Country at the appropriate times (known as cultural burning). Far from a random event, fire was consistently and predictably applied depending on terrain, climate conditions, and vegetation type to ensure appropriate conditions for regeneration and suitable access to game. Ecologically, fire management ensured Country was kept healthy by returning nutrients to the soil, removing shading litter, forming cleared areas where seeds could germinate and grow, and maintaining the open vegetational structure necessary for staple plants to thrive and therefore promoting their growth. Historical, ethnographic, palaeoecological, and archaeological literature reveal that both grasslands and wetlands were fired.

In addition to firing, harvesting of plant foods and digging for roots and tubers modified the landscape of south-eastern Australia rendering an effect on the soil, vegetation type and vegetation cover, such that botanist Beth Gott concludes that, it “might well be regarded as a form of 'natural cultivation’... It has important implications for the abundance and distribution of food plants, as well as for the general ecology” (Gott, 1982, p. 65). There remains an ongoing debate in Australian anthropology and archaeology surrounding the modes of subsistence activity of First Nations Peoples. While engaging with this lively debate is beyond the scope of this article, it is important to recognise that seasonal subsistence activities typically comprised the hunting of game, the harvesting of plant resources and small prey, and cultivation of the landscape that ensured the persistence of favourable conditions suitable for future staple food-plant growth. Parallel to this largely academic debate, and perhaps of greater importance, are the modern practices employed by Traditional Owners who are leaders in land management, formalised in Victoria through processes such as the Victorian Traditional Owner Cultural Fire Strategy and the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning’s (DELWP) Aboriginal Self-Determination Strategy.

Environmental colonialism and the ‘wilderness myth’

The interrelated effects of ecological degradation, biodiversity loss and anthropogenic climate change are direct legacies of colonisation. Colonisation in Australia precipitated the enclosure of traditional estates, elimination of traditional land management practices, and introduction of invasive species (along with the suppression of language and cultural practice). Modern conceptualisations of ‘wilderness’, romanticising pre-contact environments as ‘pristine’ and ‘untouched’ continue to pervade environmentalism in Australia, neglecting the careful, predictable, and purposeful modification of the ecology by First Nations Peoples over millennia. This ‘wilderness myth’ denies that the landscape required sustained care and erases the traditional[5] land management practices of Indigenous custodians (Fletcher, Palmer, Hamilton, & Dressler, 2021; Neale, 2016). Thus, environmental management itself has a history of colonialism. Without meaningfully incorporating Indigenous knowledges, aspirations and worldviews, land and natural resource management may simply function to perpetuate the colonial project (Muller, Hemming, & Rigney, 2019).

Perhaps owing to the visibility and vocality of contemporary Indigenous movements, in conjunction with a growing recognition of the colonial foundations of modern environmentalism, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Indigenous land and natural resource management practices are increasingly being recognised and appreciated. Experts are now beginning to call for the incorporation of Indigenous leadership, knowledges, and values in restoring Country (Marshall, 2017; Morgain, Bekessy, et al., 2021).  Dire climate warnings no doubt also inspire governments to consider environmental restoration approaches historically considered ‘fringe’– or, to employ the racist nomenclature of the imperial powers, ‘primitive’. There is in fact a growing body of scientific research that evidences the efficacy of traditional practices and supports the adoption of traditional land management for improving ecological health as well as other social outcomes such human health and wellbeing, social cohesion, equitable governance, self-determination, livelihoods and culture (Morgain, Bekessy, et al., 2021).

Bunjil’s law: Country and reciprocity

For Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, ‘Country’ refers to custodial lands and waters and their sacred and holistic connection to these territories (Rose, 1996) (see also Hartwig, Jackson, Markham, & Osborne, 2022). The Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung community, who are the Traditional Owners of an estate spanning the majority of metropolitan Melbourne, describe Country as a cultural landscape comprising integrated layers. Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung academic and Elder Mandy Nicholson describes these layers as biik-ut (Below Country), where ochre is gathered; biik-dui (On Country), where the Wurundjeri walk, dance and conduct ceremony; baanj biik (Water Country), including the rivers, creek, raindrops, mist and dew that together sustain all life; murnmut biik (Wind Country), which facilitates transcendence of language and the smoke from Welcoming fires up to Bunjil, the Creator being; wurru wurru biik (Sky Country), where the physical forms of the spirit creator Bunjil (wedge-tailed eagle) and protector Waa (the Australian raven) are seen; and tharangalk biik (Forest Country above the clouds), which is where Bunjil resides in spiritual form (Nicholson & Jones, 2020; Nicholson & Zuvela, nd).

Conceptualisations of Country and care are embedded within networks of traditional and experiential knowledge and are attenuated with and through intersecting symbolic and material conditions. This is signified by Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Elders in describing their attachment to Country:

Country holds the history and cultural practices of our people. It holds our boundaries and laws of respect between clans. Country connects us to the place where our ancestors stood and lived and cared for Country. And now we do the same (Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Elder in Freedman, 2020).

For the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people, Caring for Country is a vital element of cultural practice and is undertaken by their dedicated land and natural resource management team. Across Australia (and abroad), many First Nations groups have established teams of Indigenous rangers who employ a combination of traditional Indigenous knowledge and modern techniques in the delivery of land and natural resource management services. These ranger teams are often funded by government programs and may operate alongside government agencies. The Narrap Rangers are the natural resources management service delivery unit of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung representative organisation, the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation. Operating under the business structure of this Corporation, and like many other Indigenous ranger groups around Australia, Narrap Rangers perform vital functions in the maintenance of the ecological health of physical Country. Examples of these functions include cultural and ecological burning, establishment of biodiversity corridors and ecological restoration of cultural heritage landscapes. As much of traditional Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country has been expropriated from their custodianship for almost 200 years, performing land management functions on Country serves as a form of cultural revitalisation, attending to the different layers of physical and metaphysical Country as an integrated whole.

Underpinning the Narrap Ranger occupation is a commitment to environmental, cultural, and economic objectives with a purpose to restore and manage the health of Country; a cultural obligation commonly characterised by Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people as ‘Bunjil’s law’. This may appear superficially as singular in purpose, yet the role is reciprocal, by which Narrap Rangers are also cared for by Country. In the delivery of natural resource management initiatives such as indigenous vegetation rehabilitation, managing the impact of feral animals and pest plants, and wildlife habitat restoration, individual wellbeing and cultural fulfillment is nurtured through meaningful and permanent employment pathways in addition with technical skills development, both of which result in tangible positive outcomes -environmentally, and in terms of social equity and mental wellbeing. These outcomes are successes that can be shared and celebrated with families and Elders, in recognition of this valued role of asserting custodianship through natural resource management. These outcomes are also understood as markers of achievement by external stakeholders, such as the Melbourne Water Corporation, through recognition of the professional role that Narrap Rangers perform in terms of service delivery.

The Caring for Country ethos is therefore a unique perspective of care that derives from a relational ontology with the plural layered, more-than-human world and underpinned by cultural obligation, ritual practice and spiritual connection made manifest through its integration with scientific knowledge and modern technologies (Escobar, 2008). Guided by this ethos, the Narrap Rangers operate as organisational partners with private enterprise, state government and its agencies, and local government, in determining when and where to perform cultural and ecological burns, and restoration and revegetation across Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung territory for the mitigation of intensifying ecological threats. In so doing, they enact, transmit, and revitalise cultural practice while maintaining social and individual wellbeing. Caring for Country therefore represents an ethos of reciprocal care that functions to maintain the ecological health of Country as well as the wellbeing of its custodians.

Footnotes

[1]Sarah Thomson is employed as an anthropologist within the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation’s Research Unit Yiagilang Ngarrngatj and is a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland.

[2] Delta Lucille Freedman is employed as an anthropologist  within the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation’s Narrap Unit.

[3] ‘Country’ is capitalised as a pronoun to signify the powerful connection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples to and reverence for the embodied physiographic landscape. Other terms will be capitalised throughout this article. It is the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung community’s preference that important terms such as Elders and Caring for Country are capitalised. As Elders possess significant cultural authority, capitalising the word acknowledges and respects their important role within the community. This is now considered standard practice across institutional settings for culturally appropriate and respectful language.

[4] 60,000 BP being the date associated with the oldest Australian archaeological site, Madjedbebe, where cultural heritage materials are dated to 65,000 +/- 6,000.

[5]‘Traditional’ is a contentious term. We employ it here as the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people understand its meaning as descriptive of cultural beliefs and practices that have their origins in, and continue from, the period prior to European settlement.

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