First Knowledges Plants

Lesley Head, Michael Fletcher, Zena Cumpston

Description

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 Indigenous Australians.
Plants are the foundation of life on Earth. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have always known this to be true.
For millennia, reciprocal relationships with plants have provided both sustenance to Indigenous communities and many of the materials needed to produce a complex array of technologies. Managed through fire and selective harvesting and replanting, the longevity and intricacy of these partnerships are testament to the ingenuity and depth of Indigenous first knowledges. Plants: Past, Present and Future celebrates the deep cultural significance of plants and shows how engaging with this heritage could be the key to a healthier, more sustainable future.
'Plants: Past, Present and Future calls for new ways of understanding and engaging with Country, and reveals the power and possibility of Indigenous ecological expertise.'
- BILLY GRIFFITHS
'An enlightening read on the power of plants and the management practices of Indigenous people.'
- TERRI JANKE

Sujets

• Aboriginal
• Plants
• Australian
• Sciences et techniques
• ICIP
• Australians
• Indigenous
• Aborigine
• Indigenous peoples
• History of Australia
• Environment
• Trees
• Australia
• Nature

Informations

• Publié par: Thames & Hudson Australia Pty Ltd
• Date de parution: 27 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781760761882
• Langue: English

Extrait

Praise for Plants
A passionate invitation to rethink our relationships with the botanical world. With warmth and insight, Cumpston, Shawn-Fletcher and Head blend cultural and ecological knowledge, eliciting rich narratives from urban weeds, sediment cores and old photographs. A book about science, history, invasion and the Anthropocene, Plants: Past, Present and Future calls for new ways of understanding and engaging with Country and reveals the power and possibility of Indigenous ecological expertise.
- Billy Griffiths
From grasslands to yams and fruit-bearing trees, this book highlights the importance of Indigenous knowledge. An enlightening read on the power of plants and the management practices of Indigenous people.
- Terri Janke
Danielle Gorogo, Treelines , 2008
Treelines , the artwork detail used on the cover and reproduced in full above, shows an aerial view of Country, of the trees lining the banks of rivers meandering through the landscape. The relationship between Indigenous people and trees is one of coexistence. A living tree was usually marked for spiritual and historical significance; Treelines, like Songlines, are maps of the land Aboriginal people live on. People sing as they pass through Country, sing the stories of that Country and their relationship to it, and Treelines form part of this story.
Danielle Gorogo is a Clarence Valley First Nations artist living in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales. She is a direct descendant of the Dunghutti, Gumbaynggirr and Bundjalung nations. Danielle s multifaceted cultural heritage, which includes First Nations Australian, Papua New Guinean, M ori and Micronesian ancestry, is reflected in her art.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are advised that this book contains the names and images of people who have passed away.
The stories in this book are shared with the permission of the original storytellers.

For my mum and dad, Noelene Zada and Trevor Cumpston. Journeying with me, always. ZC
For my family, whose unwavering support and love light my path, making this all possible. MSF
To Biddy Simon, and to the memory of the late Polly Wandanga. LH
NOTE ON STYLE AND SPELLING
Readers may note that for different language groups, or within language groups, variant spellings occur for similar words, cultural groups or names.
Some of the variations encountered this book include:
Barka, Baaka
Barkandji, Bakandji, Barkindji, Paakantyi
Boon Wurrung, Bunurong
Murrinh-patha, Murrinhpatha
Njeri Njeri, Nyeri Nyeri
Woiwurrung, Woi Wurrung
CONTENTS
First Knowledges: An Introduction Margo Neale
1 Personal Perspectives Zena Cumpston, Michael-Shawn Fletcher Lesley Head
2 Looking Back, Moving Forward Zena Cumpston
3 Bolin Bolin Michael-Shawn Fletcher
4 Abundance Zena Cumpston
5 Cumbungi Lesley Head
6 Yams Lesley Head
7 Spinifex Lesley Head
8 Quandongs Zena Cumpston Lesley Head
9 Respecting Knowledge Zena Cumpston
10 Futures Zena Cumpston Michael-Shawn Fletcher
Acknowledgements
Image Credits
Notes
Index
FIRST KNOWLEDGES
MARGO NEALE, SERIES EDITOR
Australian indigenous plants offer a portal through which we can learn of the deep knowledge and complex systems of land management practised by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples over millennia. They offer us one of many ways of connecting to Country; of being one with it. Country is not only the heartbeat of this continent but also our heartbeat. It tells us who we are, how we should live, how to care for each other and care for Country. It holds the answer to our future survival on this planet.
Plants are not only part of Country - in our worldview they are Country. As such, plants are part of the Dreaming, given to us by the ancestors to ensure their survival. Plants have their own repertoire of song cycles practised by custodians in a variety of ways, as part of this cycle of survival. The knowledge imparted in these pages makes this book a tool for survival too, as the writers become part of the custodial circle revealing the many ways we can care for Country in the altered reality of the 21st century. You as reader, being complicit in this knowledge exchange, carry some responsibility for protecting Indigenous knowledges. The discussion of plants in this book is not just confined to food and medicine, nor is it confined to the most visible parts of plants - the foliage and flowers. It also concerns the wood used for making tools and weapons, the resin used to haft stone axe heads onto wooden shafts, building materials for shelters and fibres for making nets and carry bags, as well as the hulls of canoes and adornments for ceremony.
All of the books in this series are grounded in Country. It is the spine that runs through each of them and binds them as one, not unlike Songlines, which are storehouses of knowledge that run through time and place. In combination, this series of books on first knowledges takes the reader on a journey through an integrated knowledge system, a pathway along which they encounter multiple sites of learning. This bears comparison to how people can travel the Songlines, visualised as pathways or corridors that link sites of knowledge, in much the same way that these books do. Each explores the different ways that First Peoples connect with and experience Country. A relationship with plants is just one such way. Plants are also the doorway through which all peoples can come and join us on Country.
Each of the three authors of this publication brings original and enriching insights to the subject. Similarly, each brings assessments of the contemporary cultural landscape based on their own experiences navigating the multidimensional world of Aboriginality, whether through academia or lived experience. Their work here is a deliberate deviation from botany, though related in a limited way, as the writers untether plants from their disciplinary moorings to reveal the expansiveness of Indigenous knowledges concerning them. Conversely, other Western disciplinary titles used in the series, such as design , astronomy and law , intentionally present a challenge. They demonstrate how knowledge is compartmentalised in the Western system, standing in strong contrast to the integrated systems of Indigenous approaches, where there are no such separations. Views throughout this series diverge from one another, as they should; this series is as much about providing a forum for multiple voices, revealing a fluid and unsettled space, as it is about inviting readers to understand and appreciate Indigenous knowledges.
In keeping with this, the writers here include more than the visible and the objective. They dig below the surface, in multiple literal and metaphoric ways, to expose the myriad lives of plants and restore their cultural, ancestral and spiritual dimensions. In the process they widen the lens to reclaim urban areas as Country and reintegrate these Westernised spaces back into the deep foundations of Country, finding ways to reinscribe this connection into our everyday life . As Melbourne-based researcher, educator and storyteller Zena Cumpston notes, the cultural context of Country is not lost in urban areas. Though Country may lie dormant under certain circumstances, as it does beneath layers of concrete, bitumen and buildings for long periods of time, it always remembers. And once reactivated and acknowledged through appropriate human interaction, it is revitalised and resumes life. Out of sight is not out of mind. You may have heard the Aboriginal expression, Country in mind . All places in Australia, whether urban or remote, are Country. As Zena notes, no matter how violent the alterations, Country still holds her stories and we each, no matter what our culture or race, have a role to play in keeping her healthy and strong .
This book also reclaims our indigenous plants that have been deemed weeds by the colonisers, especially some of those growing in urban areas, struggling through the cracks in rocks and buildings, abandoned lots and suburban yards. Europeans turned Typha , or bulrushes, which we know as cumbungi, into weeds when our firing and management regimes were stopped and their distribution left uncontrolled. This allowed cumbungi to encroach into open waters, such as dams, wetlands and irrigation channels. Beyond its value as food, cumbungi is used in other parts of the world for insulation and wall construction. It is considered by author Lesley Head as a botanical canary in the coalmine , with its ability to both detect pollution and clean it up. Yet it has been labelled a weed to be eradicated.
The Western concept of Australia as wild and untamed wilderness is also overturned, the evidence showing it to be a mosaic of management constructed by Aboriginal people and not simply by climate. Fire was employed to manipulate plants and create new ecosystems, including grasslands, fruit tree groves and yam landscapes. The scale and nature of the creation of these fruitful cultural landscapes was, as Wiradjuri scientist Michael-Shawn Fletcher states, a firm and empirical rejection of the racist and dehumanising notion of terra nullius . He sets about using the Western scientific method to prove our agency in creating and maintaining our Country .
Michael-Shawn Fletcher specialises in palaeoecology and the long-term interaction between humans, climate and vegetation. To him, plants are the architects of life on Earth via their unique ability to convert the Sun s rays into food , and their capacity to exploit animals and humans despite being apparently unable to move. While the Western worldview traditionally considers humankind the masters of Earth , Michael proposes that, in reality, we may merely be vessels for the world domination of plants , pointing out that wheat now gets us to do its evolving for it .
Lesley Head, a well-established ethnobotanist and physical and cultural geographer, draws on archaeology