The Thinness of Accounts, in Comments. In T. Neale. What Tradition Affords: Articulations of Indigeneity in Contemporary Bushfire Management

Timothy Neale’s account of and background to “cultural burning” in Australia resonates at several levels. Like Jenny, “a senior manager within a government fire agency,” I too have found the accounts of cultural burning practitioners in settled Australia thin and largely a riff on cool burns. An explanation for this, as Neale notes, is, in some people’s view, that people have lost the knowledge and are reconstituting it, but I am not so sure about that, for it seems equally true of people who have been north to learn from older Aboriginal people. Having spent time with Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land, one of the “authentic” homes of cultural burning, and having asked a few people about their burning practices, I was surprised at how thin their accounts were, even though the people I asked were supporting themselves by hunting and gathering and were active lighters of fires.