Igniting Communities
This project is building culturally informed drought preparedness and social resilience through community events facilitated by Firesticks Alliance and Aboriginal organisations across southern Lutruwita/Tasmania.
By engaging the community to gather and learn about cultural burning from Tasmanian Aboriginal people, NRM South is facilitating connectivity within communities, and supporting Tasmanian Aboriginal communities to express and practice culture through land management practice and discussion.
Our Approach
Facilitated by Firesticks Alliance and Tasmanian Aboriginal organisations, this project is;
- Delivering workshops where participants can share and learn cultural practices to inform drought management
- Delivering field events/demonstrations for participants to learn practical skills
- Developing resources that capture the project learnings, to be shared with communities through stakeholders to strengthen social networks, and
- Supporting Aboriginal communities to express and practice culture through land management practice and discussion.
PROJECT PILLARS IGNITING COMMUNITY
HELPFUL LINKS
Firesticks AllianceBackground
The impacts of drought on the environment as well as an affected community’s social and economic health can be extreme. While many drought adaptation and resilience actions are focused on tackling environmental and economic impacts, social impacts can be equally devastating. Aboriginal burning as a land management tool has been used by Australia’s First Nations people for millennia, and plays a vital role in connecting communities. Connection to community and connection to land and Country becomes increasingly important in difficult times and Aboriginal stewardship and connection to Country provides an avenue for communities to gather, learn and connect not only with each other but with the environment around them. Cultural burning provides an important opportunity for Aboriginal communities to practice culture and connection to Country while enhancing social and environmental connections within the broader community.
Support for cultural burning
Cultural practices such as cultural burning are important in supporting local leadership, networks, and social connections. Culturally significant practices and events bring communities together to reconnect with Country and people. The same is thought of the wider community. By facilitating engaging and inclusive community events, the community will share knowledge of land and improve their social support and networks. Led by Firesticks Alliance, an organisation working to re-invigorate cultural burning by facilitating cultural learning pathways to fire and land management, the project will deliver a series of workshops and demonstrations, engaging people from all ages within the Tasmanian Aboriginal community and providing opportunities for intergenerational learning within the Tasmanian Aboriginal community and the broader community.
Connection to Country
Through engaging the broad community to gather and learn about cultural burning from Tasmanian Aboriginal people, NRM South is facilitating not only connectivity within communities, but also benefiting Aboriginal communities to express and practice culture through land management practice and discussion, providing the Aboriginal community a platform to inform the wider community on cultural ideologies on drought, drought management and what it means to be drought resilient.
Project Goals
Using cultural burning as a knowledge tool to support community connection to Country
Delivering workshops focused on yarning, reading and preparation of Country and application of cultural burning
Improving understanding of Aboriginal perspectives on fire and drought
Supporting drought impacted communities
This project will run until June 2025
This project is in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
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