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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-08-26 Daily Xml
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NAIDOC Week

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:52): I want to speak today about the National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee, better known as NAIDOC. NAIDOC Week celebrations and commemorations were held this year from 4 to 11 July 2021 with the theme 'Heal Country'. The week provided an opportunity for not only Indigenous communities to celebrate their history, culture and achievement but also for all Australians to mark the significance of the event.

The Florey Reconciliation Taskforce, now in its 21st year, celebrated NAIDOC Week with a sunset flag ceremony, followed by refreshments, which featured the delicious lemon myrtle cookies baked by our friends at Tauondi College. These biscuits are highly recommended and much sought after.

While these celebrations invite Australians to learn about its First Nations people, it is disappointing to find many students do not yet have a good understanding of how Australia has been shaped by this heritage. South Australian Primary Principals Association President, Angela Falkenberg, in The Advertiser article 'Indigenous History Gap' on 28 June this year, highlights David Unaipon as an important figure recognised by his face being on the $50 note, yet his significance is not always taught in schools.

David was an inventor, writer and political advocate for equality for Aboriginal people and assisted with inquiries and commissions into Aboriginal welfare and treatment. If our First Nations history is not properly recognised or taught in schools, the importance and significance of it cannot be fully appreciated.

Prior to British settlement, more than 500 Indigenous groups, approximately 750,000 people, inhabited Australia. Each group had a close relationship and custody over their land. Indigenous cultures were developed over 60,000 years, making these First Nations the custodians of the world's most ancient living culture. Upon settlement in 1788, the Indigenous population is estimated to have been reduced by 90 per cent in the first 10 years due to new diseases, settler acquisition of Indigenous lands and direct and violent conflicts with colonisers. The decline of the Indigenous population has continued, unfortunately, well into both the 20th and 21st centuries.

The colonisation of Australia also had a negative effect on the land. Cultural burning was an important aspect of Indigenous life for tens of thousands of years. Colonisation suppressed knowledge of cultural burns through the displacement of homelands, the banning of Indigenous languages, culture and practices and forced assimilation with settlers. Colonisers did not always have an understanding of the use of fire and the traditional fire management of the land was lost.

Climate change has a significant impact upon increasing temperatures and the hotter and drier summers we now see. Compacted with colonialism and poor land management, the effect and number of wildfires in Australia has increased. The Northern Territory has supported cultural burns of public lands since the early 1980s and New South Wales began in 2017. It was not until 14 May 2021 that the first cultural burn took place under the auspices of a South Australian local government. The cultural burn took place at the Tuthangga Carriageway Park in Adelaide.

Cultural burning involves an intimate relationship with the land and a localised understanding of environmental needs. Cultural burning is a slow burning of land, where the temperature remains low to ensure seeds and nutrients in the soil are not harmed. It also avoids the burning of trees where wildlife resides. This type of burning strengthens ecosystems and promotes growth after the burning process. The Western style of burning has become popular with the increase of extreme heat and drought seasons and involves the dropping of incendiaries from planes. This form of burning is cost-effective but less controlled, with more evidence revealing this method may not even reduce the damage caused by wild bushfires.

Cultural burning is an example of living with the land without destroying it. In 2017, the Bega Local Aboriginal Land Council in New South Wales implemented cultural burning before and after the 2018 bushfires, which destroyed nearly 100 homes and several thousand hectares of forest. Six months after the bushfires, regrowth had begun in areas where cultural burning had occurred. This is just one example of how our First Nations people lived on the land without harming the land.

These strategies and traditional cultures hold significant practices, which support and sustain growth and life. An opportunity exists in Adelaide to promote cultural burnings and other Indigenous practices at a Dry Creek site, where walking trails can be accessed from Walkleys Road, leading to the Stockade Botanical Park. Senior Kaurna man, Karl Telfer, has visited the site with local elders Uncle Dookie O'Loughlin and Uncle Frank Wanganeen. Together, we have explored opportunities where we perhaps may have local park rangers employed to talk about the local Indigenous cultures and also to hold performances, such as dancing, storytelling, weaving and other things where interested people can learn from Aboriginal people the things that happen on our own local lands. I look forward to working with them to that end.

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