00:00 We are, our indigenous people actually have burned for years, didn't they?
00:03 And kept control of the fires and stopped all the fires.
00:06 But now, a lot of people say we've got a lot of landowners
00:09 that don't want to burn anymore.
00:11 And that's caused a lot of problems in these fire seasons.
00:14 As the El Nino weather pattern raises the stakes for this year's fire season,
00:22 meet the Australians who are learning from indigenous people
00:25 the ancient way of fighting fire with fire.
00:28 [no audio]
00:34 Here in the woods of northern New South Wales,
00:37 residents are keeping an eye on what's called a cultural fire.
00:41 Cultural burning is an indigenous practice
00:44 that involves setting deliberate and planned fires on landscapes.
00:48 Done correctly, it generates far less heat
00:51 than standard hazard reduction burning.
00:53 I'm blessing you with this and this.
00:55 It tackles small patches of vegetation at a time,
00:58 allowing animals and birds to move away from the heat.
01:02 Care is also taken to protect trees,
01:05 in particular very old scar trees that have stood for hundreds of years.
01:10 Protecting the trees is really important,
01:14 and Aboriginal people consider the canopy, the top of the tree, sacred.
01:18 So we don't want any fire in the top of the canopy
01:21 because what that does is takes out all the, potentially the old trees,
01:25 lets all the light in, and then we get this really bad regrowth.
01:28 So we're trying to break that cycle.
01:32 That's Richard Geddes,
01:33 the program manager for Jagoon Alliance Aboriginal Corporation,
01:37 which is helping Australians learn to use
01:40 the generations-old land management technique.
01:43 It's part of life, you know, it's part of the Australian bush, it burns.
01:47 And you've got to be on top of it.
01:49 Michael Smith reached out to Jagoon for help
01:52 after losing nearly three quarters of his property
01:55 in the so-called Black Summer deadly bushfires of 2019 to 2020.
02:01 We are, our indigenous people actually burned for years, didn't they?
02:04 And kept control of the fires and stopped all the fires.
02:07 Cultural burning was lost after the British colonized Australia in 1788,
02:12 and indigenous people were dispossessed of their lands.
02:16 It's been seeing a revival as more residents feel the need
02:19 to future-proof their properties.
02:21 One of the keys that was missing, I think, for a lot of people
02:24 was cultural burning.
02:26 Anastasia Guise, who manages the land care of her community,
02:30 is also among those learning how to prevent another Black Summer.
02:35 I didn't expect to feel this comfortable,
02:37 but I just, I feel like it's really right, it's been done gently,
02:42 there's a whole lot of trim on the ground, and I feel absolutely comfortable with it.
02:47 With the indigenous belief in custodianship
02:50 rather than claiming ownership of land,
02:53 Jagoon teaches about so-called good fire in a country
02:56 where most have a fear-based relationship with blazes.
03:01 The initiative also creates opportunities for Aboriginal people
03:05 to gain practical skills while maintaining their ancient methods
03:09 of caring for the land.
03:11 Jagoon Executive Director Oliver Costello says
03:14 it's about listening to the land and paying attention.
03:18 That's why it's so important that we get people back on the country
03:20 and learning how we can heal the land, bring the fire back,
03:22 bring the trees back.
03:24 Not only will they be better for us, cleaner water and air
03:26 and safer places, they'll also be more resilient to changes in the climate,
03:30 which we're going to have more, we're seeing big changes.
03:33 [background chatter]
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