Country. Future Fire, Future Farming | Author: Bruce Pascoe, Bill Gammage

What do you need to know to prosper as a people for at least 65,000 years? The First Knowledges series provides a deeper understanding of the expertise and ingenuity of First Nations Australians.

For millennia, First Nations Australians harvested this continent in ways that can offer contemporary environmental and economic solutions.

Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe demonstrate how Aboriginal people cultivated the land through manipulation of water flows, vegetation and firestick practice. Not solely hunters and gatherers, the First Australians also farmed and stored food. They employed complex seasonal fire programs that protected Country and animals alike. In doing so, they avoided the killer fires that we fear today.

Country: Future Fire, Future Farming highlights the consequences of ignoring this deep history and living in unsustainable ways. It details the remarkable agricultural and land-care techniques of First Nations peoples and shows how such practices are needed now more than ever.

About the series: The First Knowledges books are co-authored by First Nations and non-First Nations writers; the series is edited by Margo Neale, senior First Nations curator at the National Museum of Australia.

Forthcoming titles include: Design by Alison Page & Paul Memmott (2021); Country by Bill Gammage & Bruce Pascoe (2021); Healing, Medicine & Plants (2022); Astronomy (2022); Innovation (2023).

Paperback
19.6 x 13.1cm
224 Pages