Traditional Wisdom, New Understanding
For thousands of years, Australia’s Traditional Owners have passed on their knowledge about the seasons. This has reminded them when best to hunt, fish and gather and to carry out burns. But now, in a changing climate, these “calendars” are out of synch with the seasons.
Many of us know when wattle trees are flowering – some of us suffer from streaming eyes and fits of sneezing. Traditional Owners on Yuku Baja Muliku (YBM) Country near Cooktown have long known that those blooming wattles signalled the start of the fishing season for particular species. Now, however, climate change is making these plants flower later. This means the Indigenous people of the area have to adapt their calendars and make new links between the seasons and the native plants and animals.
Knowing when to carry out cultural burning practices is also changing in some places. Changing patterns of rainfall and temperatures dictate new timing for carrying out hot (high intensity) burns and cool (low intensity) burns.
The YBM people have become concerned about the shifts happening in their lands and around Archer Point in North Queensland. These changes have forced them to question their traditional knowledge and the links between certain species, ecosystems and weather patterns in their lands.
They have therefore teamed up with scientists from James Cook University to document changes in rainfall and temperatures that have impacted the seasons when plant foods are ready for harvesting – especially those plants that need burns to trigger growth or flowering. This makes it possible to develop a new “calendar”.
The project offers a great model of respectful collaboration between western scientists and Traditional Owners, who are expert scientists and keepers of their own traditional ecological knowledge. This partnership helped researchers to understand the perspectives of Traditional Owners and honour and respect their experience and knowledge.
It is an important reminder that research into climate change needs to value the long-accumulated ecological knowledge of First Nations People and help us all adapt to change.
For more about this project, see The Conversation, “Shifting Seasons Using Indigenous Knowledge and Western Science to Help Address Climate Change Impacts”
Written by Wendy Morgan