Catastrophic Bushfires, Indigenous Fire Knowledge and Reframing Science in Southeast Australia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an excellent 'perspectives' piece highlighting and contextualizing recent scientific work that demonstrates how Australian landscapes were violently reshaped due to settler colonialism, impacting the fires that are often (incorrectly) discussed as 'natural' today. The authors not only distill and highlight empirical data that will be useful for fire managers, but contextualize historical science and Australia's fire landscapes in the context of genocide-- complicating the narrative that bushfires are the result of climate change alone. Particularly striking are Figures 1a, b, and e, and Figure 3, which demonstrate in a clear way the ecological and livelihood effects of colonization. Finally, the diagnosis of issues preventing uptake of Indigenous fire management will be useful for practitioners (page 7, 238--247). This paper is succinct, crucially important, and written in a way that is accessible for many audiences. Really well done!

My only suggestion piece of feedback relates to the framing of climate change on Page 5 lines 135-139. From my reading, the authors are certainly not denying climate change but rather are stating that an emphasis on climate change rather than settler colonialism's ecological changes, particularly as they relate to fuel sources, risks misdiagnosing the contemporary bushfire problem (and the need for Indigenous Fire Management as an important solution). I agree. However, I wonder if the framing might usefully be changed slightly; namely, what if climate change is also an extension of settler colonialism both in cause and effect (Davis and Todd 2017; Whyte 2016) rather than a factor that functions as an 'addition' to already disrupted environments? Climate change-- caused by primarily settler corporations, settler relations of extraction and enabled via lack of settler government response to climate change-- contributes to further dispossession and further harming of environments via fire in a way that demands Indigenous involvement and leadership in science and climate science, where climate justice is an integral component of 'landback'. This slight shift in argument --that climate change is a facet of contemporary settler colonialism-- I think, could help ensure that Indigenous involvement in science isn't restricted to fuels management (what could be inferred p. 8, line 278-279) but also climate science and climate change interpretation more broadly. Arguing from this perspective could combat against potential settler gaslighting of whether 'traditional' Indigenous practices 'work' in climate change environments (what is frequently the case in a settler Canadian context where this reviewer writes from). It also potentially enables an argument in favor of Indigenous involvement in climate and wildfire policy broadly, in addition to bushfire science regarding fuels.

Examples from this framing that interrogate ecological effects of 'settler fire regimes' and their unnatural fires that could be useful to argue alongside include Zahara 2020 (p.571-574) and Eisenburg et al. 2019 (p.8-10).

This is just a minor suggestion and is in no way necessary to make, but could broaden the already important implications of this paper.

Again, it was a pleasure to read this paper and I look forward to seeing it published.

Potential suggestions:

Davis, H., and Z. Todd. 2017. “On the importance of a date, or, decolonizing the Anthropocene.” ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 16(4): 761-780.

Eisenberg, C., Anderson, C., Collingwood, A., Sissons, R., Dunn, C., Meigs, G., Hibbs, D., Murphy, S., Kuiper, S., SpearChief-Morris, J., Little Bear, L., Johnston, B and C. Edson. 2019. “Out of the ashes: Ecological resilience to extreme wildfire, prescribed burns, and indigenous burning in ecosystems.” Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 7.

Whyte, K. P. 2016. “Is it colonial déjà vu? Indigenous peoples and climate injustice.” In Humanities for the Environment. Edited by J. Adamson and M. Davis, 102-119. New York, NY: Routledge.

Zahara, A. (2020). Breathing Fire into Landscapes that Burn: Wildfire Management in a Time of Alterlife. Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, 6, 555-585.

Author Response

Thanks you very much for your positive review. We wholeheartedly agree with your comments on the colonial aspects of climate change and have woven this in to the narrative where climate change is covered.  We feel this has strengthened the overall thrust of the manuscript.  We have also incorporated the references you have suggested where appropriate.

Thanks again for your review and your encouragement. We hope this paper contributes to the overall effort of decolonising all aspects of our lives!

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for this compelling and important article on integrating Indigenous knowledge and fire practices into fire management and research in SE Australia. The arguments are clear, candid, and strong, and the visuals are well suited and effective. The primary area of improvement would be to provide more thorough citations for some statements and arguments. For example, L145 -149: these statements about cultural burning could be supported by works from Timothy Neale, Jessica Weir, Michelle McKemey and their co-authors. Also, work from North America has also contributed to scholarship on Indigenous cultural fire: e.g., Frank Lake's work (could apply to L164-168). In L234-236, it seems like work by Rebecca Bliege Bird and colleagues in Martu territory has also made sound arguments for cultural fire buffering climate-driven wildfire. Lastly, I believe Indigenous scholars in the Americas have also made similarly strong arguments about the problems of Western scientific dualities, and for integrating Western and Indigenous sciences to ask improved questions and to advance fire management and science. See:

Johnson, Jay T., and Brian Murton. "Re/placing native science: Indigenous voices in contemporary constructions of nature." Geographical research 45, no. 2 (2007): 121-129.

Mason, Larry, Germaine White, Gary Morishima, Ernesto Alvarado, Louise Andrew, Fred Clark, Mike Durglo Sr et al. "Listening and learning from traditional knowledge and Western science: A dialogue on contemporary challenges of forest health and wildfire." Journal of Forestry 110, no. 4 (2012): 187-193.

Thanks again, and below I have included some of my aforementioned references.

Bird, Rebecca Bliege, Brian F. Codding, Peter G. Kauhanen, and Douglas W. Bird. "Aboriginal hunting buffers climate-driven fire-size variability in Australia’s spinifex grasslands." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 26 (2012): 10287-10292.

Lake, Frank K., Vita Wright, Penelope Morgan, Mary McFadzen, Dave McWethy, and Camille Stevens-Rumann. "Returning fire to the land: celebrating traditional knowledge and fire." Journal of Forestry 115, no. 5 (2017): 343-353.

McKemey, Michelle B., Maureen Lesley Patterson, Banbai Rangers, Emilie J. Ens, Nick CH Reid, John T. Hunter, Oliver Costello, Malcolm Ridges, and Cara Miller. "Cross-cultural monitoring of a cultural keystone species informs revival of indigenous burning of country in South-Eastern Australia." Human Ecology 47, no. 6 (2019): 893-904.

Neale, Timothy, Rodney Carter, Trent Nelson, and Mick Bourke. "Walking together: a decolonising experiment in bushfire management on Dja Dja Wurrung country." cultural geographies 26, no. 3 (2019): 341-359.

Smith, Will, Timothy Neale, and Jessica K. Weir. "Persuasion without policies: The work of reviving Indigenous peoples’ fire management in southern Australia." Geoforum 120 (2021): 82-92.

Author Response

Thank you for your very positive review and for the suggestions of how to broaden the literature coverage to encompass a more international perspective. We have incorporated these and feel that the manuscript is better off for it.

Thanks again.