Burning the Capital

• In Event: Unsettling STS 1

Abstract

The use of prescribed burning on public lands to reduce wildfire risk is a contested issue in southeast Australia, a debate that is transforming as these lands are progressively transferred back to, or shared with, Aboriginal land managers. Perspectives vary on the results and methods of the different sciences, especially fire science and ecology, as well as the role of Aboriginal people in fire management. Inflecting these debates are contradictory, inconsistent and shared understandings of 'science', 'Indigenous knowledge', and how they are navigated in relation to each other. This includes recourses to and critiques of the hyper-separation of 'tradition' and 'modern'. This paper explores how these conversations are transforming what we know, and how we might know it, when it comes to the management of public lands for wildfire risk, and the implications for practice and academia more broadly. I do so by presenting on my intercultural case study fieldwork of the Aboriginal practice of 'cultural burning' in Canberra. The case study is a collaboration with the Murumbung Yurung Murra rangers and the ACT Parks and Conservation Service, and is part of a larger project funded by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre. The paper is set within the broader agenda of developing an ethics of decolonisation towards both peoples and natures in settler-colonial societies, including through decolonising research.

Author

• Jessica Weir, Western Sydney University