Recent cultural burns on Yorke Peninsula are reconnecting Narungga people to the traditional practice of burning on Country, training local First Nations people, and facilitating the exchange of knowledge between First Nations’ people and non-Indigenous partners and land managers.
Burns were conducted at Point Pearce, Minlaton/Minlagawi Gum Flat and Ardrossan grasslands, with further assessments carried out at sites initially slated for burns including Dhibara Sanctuary, Dhilba Guuranda (Innes National Park), Rocky Bend and Warooka Property (Marawardi).
On this episode of Aboriginal Way we spoke with Narungga man and leading practitioner, Peter Turner, who conducted cultural burns at Point Pearce alongside Victor Steffensen from Firesticks Alliance and described the practice on Narungga Country as “well overdue.”
“The Old People, they managed the Country and more or less gardened it with fire. Now we’ve got a couple hundred years of mess that’s been allowed to build-up since these practices were stopped," Mr Turner said.
Funding for the project was secured from the Australian Government’s Preparing Australian Communities – Local Stream, designated for the series of cultural burns conducted on Narungga Country, with project management, funding and stakeholder coordination for the project organised by the Yorke Peninsula Council.
