We Need to Talk About Fire - Episodes

Welcome To Country: Djiriba Waagura perform a traditional smoking ceremony, welcoming the filmmakers, speakers and the audience to Bundanon.

1. After the Fires (13:02)

The Black Summer bushfire season affected our communities in deeply challenging ways. Through conversations with Terri Rowe (NSW Health), Dr. Joshua Whittaker (University of Wollongong [UOW]) and Chris Palmer (Rural Fire Service), this film addresses how the bushfires changed the individual and collective lives of those who lived through it, and those who continue to live with the emotional impacts after the fire.

2. Good Fire, Bad Fire (16:11)

What distinguishes cultural burning practices from hazard reduction burns?

Associate Professor Owen Price (UOW), Professor Jason Sharples (University of NSW) and Vanessa Cavanagh (UOW) discuss the extreme conditions that contributed to the ferociousness of the Black Summer Bushfires, and share the processes and cultural significance of Indigenous-led cultural burning, and the importance of maintaining local authority and knowledge systems to sustain our ecosystems and relationship with the land.

3. Walking With Fire (10:55)

Climate change is altering the nature of Australian bushfires, from the unique characteristics of our fires to its seasonal and multi-year cycles.

Understanding the importance of fire requires ongoing analysis and close interpretation of the landscape, looking not only at how it behaves as a destructive force but also as a resource for long-term environmental maintenance and sustainability. Adrian Webster and Jacob Morris (Firesticks Alliance) discuss the potential of contemporary innovation that is guided by Aboriginal knowledge systems and advocate for the application of contemporary science and innovation guided by Aboriginal knowledge systems.

4. Nurturing Country (11:23)

Vanessa Cavanagh discusses the role that women and children have played in caring for Country through the use of fire. Cavanagh discusses the importance of intergenerational knowledge transfer as a way of ensuring responsiveness to the needs of the environment, highlighting its significance as an ecological resource we are dependent upon for our own nourishment and survival.