Teacher background information

This elaboration will give students the opportunity to examine how traditional land management techniques are gaining increasing acceptance by the wider scientific community and how, through collaborative and reciprocal partnerships with researchers and government agencies, these techniques are informing and being incorporated into programs designed to care for country.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ land management practices effectively sustained Australian landscapes for tens of thousands of years. Many of these practices, built on an in-depth understanding of the needs of each particular ecosystem, have been disrupted over the past two hundred years. This disruption has resulted in the emergence of a range of impacts that threaten the ecological and cultural integrity of these unique environments. 

Challenges arising from introduced agricultural practices include the restoration of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, conserving biodiversity, protecting the habitats of a diverse range of endangered species, controlling the spread of, and eradicating, invasive species, and managing fire.  

Endeavours to re-introduce practices that incorporate aspects of traditional ecological knowledge and acknowledge customary law need to consider a range of issues in order to be successful. This requires the substantial involvement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land owners in the Caring for Country/Place. To promote this reintroduction of practices, many First Nations’ communities have invested considerable time, energy and resources to develop innovative partnerships with scientific researchers, government and industry. These cross-cultural partnerships allow for a two-way approach to share and exchange knowledge and skills from often complementary systems, in order to better understand issues affecting sustainability and to generate new ecological knowledge and responsive strategies to achieve a common purpose.  

A two-way, inclusive strategy based on respectful and ethical guidelines and protocols for incorporating First Nations’ knowledges into research practice, not only builds scientific knowledge, but also contributes to socio-cultural resilience through the cross-generational transfer and documentation of traditional ecological knowledge. The strategy also provides opportunities for reciprocal training; training for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rangers and businesses in the use of technologies, and hence has the potential to improve economic development and well-being; and training for non-Indigenous researchers in First Nations’ land management practices. 

Australian Government policies and legislation increasingly recognise the need for a partnership approach and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ engagement in strategies designed to protect the environment and conserve biodiversity.  

By exploring how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ knowledge and experience are being used to reshape contemporary Australian land management practices, students have the opportunity to examine the interactions between First Nations’ and Western philosophies and how the scientific knowledge of each can influence the behaviours, philosophies and techniques of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous land management practitioners.