Good Fire Podcast by Amy Cardinal Christianson and Matthew Kristoff
Stories of Indigenous fire stewardship, cultural empowerment and environmental integrity
The Abundance Will Be Forever with Victor Steffensen and Ado Webster
Episode highlight
In this podcast, Victor Steffenson and Ado Webster reflect on their experiences as Indigenous fire-keepers and the future of Indigenous fire management.
Resources
Fire Country: How Indigenous Fire Management Could Help Save Australia by Victor Steffensen
Looking After Country with Fire: Aboriginal Burning Knowledge With Uncle Kuu
Sponsors
The Canadian Partnership for Wildland Fire Science
Support from:
● California Indian Water Commission
● Firesticks Alliance Indigenous Corporation
Quotes
10.52 - 10.56: “We’re not governed by anyone but ourselves and by our culture and by our country.” (Ado)
14.33 - 14.36: “We give to the country because we’ve always taken from it and she gives back.” (Ado)
18.26 - 18.33: “If we are aligned with the universe and we are aligned with mother nature, then the abundance… will be forever.” (Victor)
Takeaways
Rediscovering culture, discovering oneself (3.55)
Ado has recently begun working with Firesticks in the capacity of an employee, and loves working in an Aboriginal cultural environment where “the knowledge is safe, the sharing is safe and people are safe”. He recalls how he yearned for his culture as a teenager, which kept him from straying down the wrong path and is now helping him discover himself as he discovers his culture out in the country and shares that with others.
For the landscape and the people (9.00)
Ado thrives on the cultural exchange that takes place between Nations as part of his work now, something colonization deprived his community of. He is passionate about helping children access culture freely. By practicing cultural burning, Ado and his team feel proud of the “beautiful, healthy landscape” they have helped build, which is also healing to the community. He is mindful of the energy invested in burning, which dictates the health of the land later.
Work that heals (14.40)
Victor notes that working with the country helps liberate Aboriginal peoples from stereotypes that they are not hardworking. Work that heals the land for the future inspires youth to do the right thing - burn the right way - to enhance their connection with the land. He adds that no one whose job is to destroy the land is happy. He believes work should be structured to “bring back that passion in our communities”.
“Climate change is mother nature telling us to change” (19.17)
Victor laments that the negative messaging in the media makes us feel helpless against climate change. He brings attention to the disasters humans have lived through, and that this can also be salvaged by “doing the good work”. Spiritually healing the land and communities and evolving culture close to the landscapes will bring us closer to a solution, he says. Happiness and motivation will come by working together on the same level of understanding.
People from the ocean (22.49)
Ado explains how the different Nations in Australia have been named after fish, implying that they are people of the water with stories surrounding water bodies. Working with this knowledge will keep people from feeling lost in the fight against climate change. Victor points out that all people have traditional cultures that connect them to Mother Earth. Ado highlights that this is the reason we call the country our mother.
When you care for the country, it cares back (28.23)
Ado reassures that cultural burning is safe, which is why many go barefoot for a cultural burn. He feels a sense of oneness with all inhabitants of the land, and disagrees with preferential protective equipment for humans but not for the other animals. The health of every inhabitant is kept in mind when doing a cultural burn. With cultural knowledge, fire-keepers will always be safe because it will prevent more destructive fires. “The more you burn, the less burns”, he says.
Fire, language and country (33.11)
Ado narrates how Victor demonstrated to Ado’s Nation, his knowledge of the land that applies across different territories. Ado feels reassured that cultural knowledge has not been lost, and he is now learning to access it, which is dispelling all his doubts. Victor adds that landscapes have many similarities in values, and bringing the country back is the missing piece in reviving cultural knowledge. He shares some examples from Canada to illustrate this.
Let us do it our way (38.48)
Ado speaks about the National Indigenous Fire Workshop they conducted for Nations across Australia, where they successfully shared knowledge and did a cultural burn which lasted 13 days. He outlines the process of a burn, which includes monitoring the fire’s reaction and waiting for the right time to allow nature to develop resilience against fire. Not having burned due to colonization has changed the landscape, and is causing sickness in the forests.
Smoke in exchange for the safety of property (42.24)
Ado and his team received complaints due to the smoke from their 13-day-long cultural burn, but he insists that was the years of waste being burned away to make way for a healthier landscape and prevent wildfires. They had full control over it and understood the landscape well enough to know how the fire was going to travel. He observes that the part of the land they burned is now healthy whereas the rest of it is lifeless.
The whole world gets affected (47.33)
Ado says that knowledge opens up minds with the truth but it makes it more difficult to tolerate the wrong things being done. “The truth that we know is so far advanced and so beyond mainstream science”, says Ado, that the effects of behaviours not aligned with nature are easy to predict. Everyone was impacted by the large bushfires in Australia, and he feels strongly about people experiencing the benefits of cultural burning on the landscape.
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