Aboriginal outcomes and engagement

(Language) that just means welcome everybody to Strong Lands of the Gamilaroi. Go well and be safe here. Go with God.

Yaama everyone, Hank Flett. I'm part of the Aboriginal Ranger Program in the Tamworth region, or Northwest region I guess you could say. I'm a proud Gomeroi man from Walgett. I'm a Conservation Field Support Officer. That's the role they've given us within the Ranger Program. What we do is we're trying to conserve country and make country better and fix country and heal it.

And with this training block we're currently doing now, we're talking about doing cultural burning. And through these burns, we hope to heal country and rejuvenate country. And what we've learnt so far is how to do our burn plans and stuff so we can protect country, protect neighbors' properties, protect other people. Because this burn doesn't just affect us as Gomeroi people, it affects everybody.

And what I hope to get from this burn is to see country good. I hope to get community involved. I hope to see that community can come and appreciate the knowledge that we've learnt and that we can pass down that knowledge to them.

Being someone so young and in this space teaching a lot of older fellas who lost that knowledge can be a bit intimidating. But I hope that they can sit and listen and learn as we all have learned about this practice.

We talk about cultural burns. I'm not talking about it as a management tool. I'm talking about it as a cultural practice first and foremost. To me that's cultural practice. When I go out and burn country, I'm thinking about my old people. I'm burning country for them because they couldn't.

Yaama, I'm Will Robinson, proud Gomeroi man from Coonabarabran, direct descendant Mary Jane Kane, who's our traditional owner. It's great to be part of, I'm actually supervisor of the Aboriginal Ranger Program in Coonabarabran.

Part of the Ranger Program, we are participating in the Cert 3 Conservation and Ecosystems. And I see that as the relevance of that is so important to our people to be on country working. And a part of that is cultural burning, which is always a very important part of our culture.

And the continuity is still there today and has kept going for thousands of years. To have that experience and to learn what our old people knew and to pass that knowledge on is so important to our mob. And to be on country and to do the cultural burns, to heal country.

Our country is sick at the moment and we need to heal it. And through our cultural practices and our knowledge that we're going to gain, we'll pass it on to our emerging generations to keep that going for as long as we can.

But it's about healing country which then heals us and makes us better people and we keep that cultural practice continuing.

And there's also as part of the Ranger Program, we've done lots of training to upskill our rangers to create more opportunities for them in the future.

Hi, my name's Andy from Tocal College. I'm a teacher but what we're about today is knowledge sharing. The idea that by getting a whole lot of people together, then really important things like burning country can continue.

You see, the research has been done and it turns out this cultural burning is about as good as it gets for ecological restoration. But for me, the really cool part is the way that it restores people.

So I'm proud to be here today and have just a little tiny bit to do with seeing these 65,000 year old skills passed on.

My name's Lee Reavly. I'm a proud Wiradjuri woman from Narrandera. I'm the team supervisor for the Aboriginal Ranger team in Riverina area. We're based in Narrandera. I have three Rangers that I look after.

Part of the program is to do the Cert 3 in Conservation and Ecosystem Management. We've been learning out here in Tamworth, Culture Burns. We'll be conducting Culture Burns on TSRs in our region. So it's great to get on country and learn how to conduct it.

Michael Grant, part of the Aboriginal Ranger program based in the Murray region. From the Northern Territory, my grandfather's traditional owner of the Tiwi Islands. Proud Yimpinari man and also Thwutti man from my grandmother's side. So very proud of that.

Really, really proud to be a part of the Aboriginal Ranger program, meeting on country with other local Aboriginal people and getting to meet them and also their knowledge.

The best thing about it is, like I said, we're on country. We're with family. We're doing all the cultural things and it really brings you back to earth and it's a good feeling. It's a bit of a step up but it's good to really express our culture and really express our mob across to other people who don't understand or might not understand or possibly want to do understand.

There's plenty to learn. And yet this program is a prime example of that and really showing it off to Australia wide and expressing the need for cultural burns. Not only that but just everything you do, culturally, the respect. So it's a big thing for that and really proud to be a part of it.

So part of today is we're out on Rocky Waterhole out here in Tamworth and we're doing a bit of a site assessment for a cultural burn we have planned. Really looking forward to that. We have the Tocal trainers involved. We've also got local knowledge from local people around just to share that and really just express the need for cultural burns at a time like this.

It's a good thing. It's done well. It needs to be more of it, in my opinion.

So yeah, the more cultural burns we get across and the more info we can give out about it, the better it is for mob and people and just the country itself.

Hi, I'm Ben Kent, Field Supervisor for the Walaaybaa Ranges. I'm a local Gomeroi man. I am Billy Nean with the Walaaybaa Ranges, Tamworth Local Aboriginal Lands Council. I'm a proud Gomeroi man.

Yeah, the Local Land Services have got their trainee rangers out here so it's sharing that knowledge with them also so they can move on with that skill that they're going to be learning today.

Same with us. We've got two trainees on board with us so it's good to bring them out today and show them around and yeah, they learnt a bit up at the top end too so still learning in the process now so heaps good for them.

We like working with them guys as well, like Local Land Services. They're respectful and take a lot of pride in what they do for the land and how they share their culture back with us and get to learn from one another is amazing.

Today is important because it's all about sharing that cultural knowledge with a variety of things.

Mainly today is the cultural burning practices that we're going to be sharing with each other and just working with each other and getting an understanding of what those burning practices do to our country and why we do it.

It's important to have a relationship with land managers. It's important for us and it's important for them.

We find since LLS had a program Pathways to Country that gets us out on Country through just negotiating with the land manager.

And once you make that relationship you'll be surprised at how much the cockie wants you to actually have a look at other stuff they have found.

The farmers are now ringing the Local Land Services to let them know "hey, I've got something here I don't know what it is but I just want you to come and have a look".

That's the way it should be. We should be able to form these relationships with these people because they are no different to us and we are wanting to protect our culture and they are helping us do it now.

So for me LLS is getting us back on Country and getting our mob back to Country and to show and learn the white fellas and our mob to the young ones, what its all about.

Its a really good breakthrough, what we've had through the Pathways to Country and I hope the program goes for forever.