- Title
- Fire in Aboriginal south-eastern Australia
- Creator
- Cahir, David (Fred); McMaster, Sarah
- Date
- 2018
- Type
- Text; Book chapter
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/179257
- Identifier
- vital:15545
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781486306114
- Abstract
- In south-eastern Australia, climatic, topographic and vegetative characteristics have combined to produce a landscape in which fires occur with some regularity (Cruz et al . 2012). The historic record suggests that the frequency of fire in this area was a common source of interest (and concern) for European explorers and colonists first encountering the area. In most instances, the Europeans attributed fires to Aboriginal people, and theorised the potential motivations and function of burning practices. This chapter will introduce archival material that illuminates these colonial perspectives on Aboriginal fire use in southeastern Australia, and will discuss the ethnographic observations that were made of ‘customary’ uses of fire. This will include the association that fire was seen to have with religious, mortuary, hunting and communication practices. This chapter will begin by discussing the impacts that explorers and colonists had on the customary fire practices of Aboriginal people, recognising that while the historical record contains invaluable material about Aboriginal burning practices, its descriptions of Aboriginal burning practices must be assessed carefully. As Indigenous and European cultures encountered one another on the colonial frontier, it is also interesting to consider how fire, a simultaneously essential and dangerous force, featured in the historical relationships between Aboriginal people and the newly arrived Europeans. To explore this question, this chapter will discuss the way that Aboriginal knowledge of fire was transferred cross-culturally, and question how this may have influenced the lives of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. By drawing from the historical records, it will examine the effects that fire, including both its purposeful use and its accidental occurrence, had on frontier relationships.
- Publisher
- CSIRO
- Relation
- Aboriginal biocultural knowledge in South-Eastern Australia Chapter 7 p. 115-132
- Rights
- All metadata describing materials held in, or linked to, the repository is freely available under a CC0 licence
- Rights
- Copyright © Fred Cahir, Ian Clark and Philip Clarke 2018
- Rights
- Culturally sensitive
- Subject
- Ethnobiology -- Australia, Southeastern; Aboriginal Australians
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