We don’t want to reduce diversity, we want to increase it. The same is true for knowledge.
As conversations around fire management evolve, cultural burning is increasingly recognised as an important part of caring for Country. Yet despite growing interest, it remains widely misunderstood. For Dr Peta Standley, the conversation is about much more than fire itself. It’s about Indigenous leadership, genuine collaboration and creating space for different knowledge systems to work together.
With a career spanning conservation, tenure resolution, cultural fire and environmental research, Peta has spent decades working alongside Traditional Owners across northern Australia. We spoke with her about what cultural burning really means, and how partnerships can help shape healthier landscapes for the future.
Q. What does genuine Indigenous leadership look like in environmental management?
A. How can you understand or learn something that isn’t able to be demonstrated by the people who hold that knowledge? You can learn some things from books, obviously, but now there really is a space for engagement and opportunity, and to continue solving problems together.
People often talk about integrating knowledges, whereas I don’t think that’s what is needed. What’s needed is people really coming together with their knowledge sets and demonstrating what solutions they can bring. It’s no secret that, following colonisation, Indigenous People haven’t had that opportunity until relatively recently, so why try and guess when there are those who can actually show you? Everyone benefits from that.
And local knowledge is critically important in that – specialist and technical knowledge all need to come together. What policy makers, NRM bodies and business holders should be doing is getting behind [Indigenous leadership and collaboration], because it can bring a whole wealth of knowledge into light that currently hasn’t had the opportunity to show what it can actually do.
Q. You make an important distinction between integrating and intersecting knowledge. Why does that difference matter?
A. People often talk about integrating knowledge, but even from an ecological perspective you’re losing diversity. We don’t want to reduce diversity, right? We want to increase and maintain it.
It’s diversity of knowledges, and each sits within its own knowledge domain with its own validity and value. Why do you want to make them intersect? Isn’t it better to collaborate, share that knowledge, and then ask what problem we’re actually trying to solve together?
There’s a deep knowledge held in Country that has been practised for millennia. Other knowledge systems have only existed here for a comparatively short time. We need to stop, listen and give it a chance. We took 200-odd years to destroy [some of these landscapes], and now you’re expecting someone to show you how to fix it in three years. Let’s just look at it realistically, and give these practices a proper chance.
Q. Building those partnerships requires trust. What does meaningful collaboration involve?
A. People often think all knowledge is freely available because that’s how Western systemsoperate, but a lot of Indigenous knowledge is place-based, protected and shared [under specific cultural protocols].
We need to keep asking how knowledge should be used, by whom, for what purpose and under whose authority. Like in research, we pass ethics tests; it’s not just a tick and flick, but a constant dialogue. And when you’re working with such important knowledge, you could actually be having an inadvertently negative effect without even realising it, but by doing stuff you take for granted or don’t understand the complexity of.
So there has to be trust built with true, genuine, free, prior and informed consent. There has to be collaboration through Indigenous projects that are led and delivered by Indigenous people, and a space for co-design where everyone comes together and asks, “what does this look like?”
Q. Cultural burning has become a familiar phrase, but many people still aren’t sure what it actually means. How would you describe it?
A. I wouldn’t say I’m the expert, I’ve just spent the last 40 minutes talking about why it’s important for Indigenous people to answer that question. But for me, cultural burning is seeing landscapes transformed from what you thought was their normal state. You realise you were only seeing them through the eyes you were taught to see with.
When you’re given the honour of being with Indigenous People who are leading these burns and explaining, over time you see changes that occur in the landscape from an ecological perspective – it really is mind-blowing. You see the biodiversity come back, you see less bare ground, changes in species, shifts in invasive plants and animals, and you start to understand what a healthy system actually looks like.
I don’t think a lot of scientists or land managers have seen what a healthy system looks like. That’s why it’s so important to stop, listen and let people show you properly.
Q. What are some of the biggest misconceptions surrounding cultural burning?
A. People are only seeing with their own eyes and trying to guess at the answers from their own perspective, but you don’t know what you don’t know. People are often threatened by things they don’t understand, but you have to have confidence in those whose knowledge it is. Give them the opportunity to show you.
There’s also this fear that cultural burning somehow means people will lose their jobs. But have you looked at how much of this landscape is poorly managed? There’s plenty of work for everybody. For example, when people weren’t foresters anymore they became tree planters and agronomists; they took that forestry knowledge and applied it to plantations.
There’s so much that people can still do in this space with their passions and interests. People don’t like change, but as the benefits start to flow, new opportunities emerge. We shouldn’t be afraid of learning something new.
Q. Why is fire management especially important for our Gulf region?
A. The Gulf has experienced successive seasons of massive wildfires, followed by flooding, pasture loss and changes to the landscape. If those cycles continue, we’ll see declining productivity, soil degradation and further impacts on biodiversity.
Rather than constantly reacting to disasters, we need to be proactively managing these landscapes together. Early season fire, partnerships between Traditional Owners, landholders, researchers and natural resource managers, and sharing knowledge all have an important role to play. There will never be a one-size-fits-all approach, and cultural fire won’t look the same everywhere. But the partnerships that grow through working together can only benefit our landscapes and our communities.
The climate’s always been changing. You have to adapt, and farmers know that. So let’s get in, adapt now and work together, because those large parcels of land need to be managed. It will only bring socio-economic strength into the region and give people a chance.
Photos by Seth Sedan and Bella Laifoo, Living Knowledge Network.
