 G'day, I'm Ewan Ferguson, Chief Officer of CFA and it's with great pride that I take part in the introduction of the Curry Inclusion Action Plan within CFA. This is a really important plan for CFA both symbolically but also substantially. This plan is about respect for the indigenous occupants of this land who occupied the land for many generations before European settlement. It's about inclusion of indigenous people in our practices day by day and also within our membership but significantly it's also about learning. We have a lot to share and a lot in common with the Aboriginal people of Australia. They've used fire to craft the landscape have developed this sympathy with the landscape and with fire that is something that we are still striving to understand. Of course fuel management and fire management and plan burning are very topical in contemporary times particularly after Black Saturday but for many years we've been trying to apply fire to the landscape in a way which is sympathetic to the ecology, sympathetic to the present-day owners of the land but importantly we need to recognise that what we do needs to also be in sympathy with the way in which the Aboriginal elders and the custodians of the land would like to see the landscape managed. I'm looking forward as part of this journey to learning more about what fire means to Aboriginal elders and then finally if we talk about inclusion CFA is striving to try and broaden the make-up and the membership of the organisation and this inclusiveness and equity is very very important in the CFA that we want to be. I urge you to take time to listen to some of the yarns and the stories which will be told as part of this video but also to read the Curie inclusion action plan and then to have a discussion about what you can do as an individual member, as a member of the community and as a brigade or a member of a broader corporate CFA. I hope you enjoy this video. I hope you get a lot of rich learning from both the plan and the actions which will come out of it. Thank you very much for listening. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the CFA have something very special in common. Fire. This shared culture of fire sets us on a journey to learn how to better protect our communities and importantly learn how to better care for country. This is what the Curie inclusion action plan or CHIAP is all about. The Curie inclusion action plan is a road map that articulates what CFA will do to improve inclusion and engagement with victorious Curie communities. CFA uses the term Curie for its inclusion plan and extends this inclusion to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Victoria. My name is Professor Henry Atkinson. I am a former CFA member. I joined in 1954. In the old times we had our own terminology for who we are. I am a wangi, a Wallisica man from the Yorta Yorta Nation up near Etuga. The Wallisica area of the Yorta Yorta Nation is my traditional country. We have the oldest living culture in the world and we have always used fire. Our smoking ceremonies are an ancient practice. They are a cleansing ritual designed to cleanse the past and clear the air for the future. Welcome to you and particularly to get a bit of an insight into your culture and history is a bit about what today is. We've got that shared interest in fire and I know that fire is a very significant thing in Aboriginal culture. It's a very big thing in our business as well. So, you know, if that's some common ground for us to start to build a relationship on, I think that's a good one to start with. It's just about for us and for me particularly, trying to get an insight into you guys that you actually think differently about us. And we hope that that's the outcome for the day. CFA sent a film crew out to capture a few of the important stories from some of the CFA's curry members and to find out what else is happening to better engage the curry community. Harold Smith. I'm a regulatory on my father's side. Jody Jody tribe on my mother's side. I've been a part of the South Marine CFA. I've been here five years now. I've got a lot of training out of it. I picked up a lot of knowledge, real great people, men and women. They're very, you know, supportive because growing up in Australia, being a curry man, I've come across a lot of prejudice my whole life and I've never come across any in the CFA. And to see the CFA starting off this curry inclusion action plan, I think it's great. You know, when I'm at land, I get the feeling of my ancestors out there. I get a very strong feeling. And I even get the feeling that our ancestors are saying thank you to the CFA for looking after the land because that's what's most important to us. We like all of Australia to, you know, just take time out and show respect and acknowledge it. My name is Jamie Ackens or William Ackens. I come in as Jamie with a position on the captain here. My father was Aboriginal, part of the Stolen Generation. So we never really knew who we were. It wasn't a real good time back in the 70s to be of that sort of culture. So I used to get bashed around a fair chop. CFA's been great to me. It's given me a lot of skill, a lot of confidence. You know, I manage trucks and fires and the whole brigade, you know, who would have thought that 10 years ago that I'd be sitting in the position I am responsible for, you know, a brigade in town sort of thing to keep them sort of safe. So to include, you know, the curry community into this is great because not only are they going to be part of their community, they're going to bring in a wealth of knowledge that a lot of people in the community don't actually know because they have ancestors, especially in places north of us, who can give them knowledge on what the land was like and what they did to care for that land. So we could pass that information through in brigades. And the only way to do that is to encourage, welcome and learn from curry people. When other societies around the world were choosing agriculture as their primary way of managing the land, here in Australia, my people chose fire. The land was burnt in a planned methodical way with a thorough understanding of the traditional landscape. Phil Hawkey, vegetation management officer for the Northeast region, Country Fire Authority. We travelled to Orange to a burn workshop. It was a three day workshop where two days were spent out in the field doing traditional burning with the traditional owners up there, the Wiradjuri people. Traditional burning involves a whole manner of different things. In this particular case, the outcome was to treat serrated tussock, imported wood that is invaded the land up there. And it's prolific. It's a shocking thing in the country. And they're looking at seeing if traditional burning will treat that country. It's supported by science from from ANU as well as some local ecologists who are working there and will be a three year program to just see how the burning treats the area. So they're going to try different methods. They'll burn different temperatures, different times of the year. But this was a really cool burn. It was fantastic to see fire in the landscape in what is really classed as a cool burn. So it's really cool that moments after the fire passed across the land, you could put your hand on the ground behind the fire front and the the ground was quite cold. It was just a gentle little backing fire that moved across the landscape and burnt all the tussock, but seemed to leave everything else behind. To be able to light a fire in a way that burns itself out is pretty pretty high technology, I guess of its day. You know, we've seen that more recently in probably the last hundred years or more of the devastation that it causes if we don't in terms of the foliage that's that's on the ground. But that that firing process. So, you know, you you're able to keep keep that foliage down, but encourage those animals and encourage the floor and the fauna to come back basically. The technique is is different to our normal burning where it's a backing fire, which is a fire moving against the wind, single ignition. So rather than multiple ignition points, this is just lit from one point. And then the fire just gently backs across the landscape. In this case, just up a gentle slope and virtually put itself out once it had reached a certain point. The skills shown by the traditional owners and the burning crew that came down from Cape York was was fantastic to see. They had a really good understanding of fire behaviour and really knew what the fire was going to do. The way the fire was lit and the way it travelled across the landscape, it was very gentle and never at any stage got out of control. Micklin fire occurred on the 9th of February this year, 2014, started just north of Melbourne and then progressed in a northerly direction for the next few days. Now that that fire impacted 400 properties through the Micklin area. And a lot of those are smaller lifestyle sort of properties, somewhere with large scale farms. If we applied this style of burning into those properties where they could be responsible for managing their own land at the appropriate time of the year, the outcome from that fire may have been very different if there was a checkerboard of little patchy burns across the landscape. I think it's a fantastic opportunity for CFA to learn and more than CFA, it's about the community learning because CFA isn't a land manager. It's not responsible for managing the land. The individuals, landowners are responsible for that. And if we apply this sort of technique, there's an opportunity for individual landowners to manage their land in a in a simple way and be fantastic if we had some Aboriginal practitioners in the community working with people, teaching them how to do this and how to manage their own land. Our interests in terms of the traditional owners and the people and what our elders think about how we need to preserve and what we need to preserve. I guess if you were looking at this particular place over here, we've got a fenced in midden, which is that spot we're camping in the same place for thousands of generations, devastating for those that have come through a mound like this, or even bushfire to burn these beautiful trees that we have. Clearly, that's a huge, very high level of significance to those local Aboriginal communities. Hence, those areas and those particular artefacts need to be protected. So we need to glean and collect that knowledge and then put in some management strategies to protect them. The Victorian landscape holds the imprint of thousands of generations of Aboriginal people. Cultural heritage officers work with communities across Victoria, helping to preserve this imprint through the application of the Cultural Heritage Act 2006. Marlon Parsons is a cultural heritage officer with the responsibility for the Laudan-Malley region. Well, these are the different site types found from CFA District 20. We've got one rock arched site recorded within the district and that's only one in our region. Mostly around the waterways and mostly in public land, that's where most of the surveys have been done, for archaeological surveys. So it gives you an idea like there might be stuff on the neighbouring property, which might give you an idea of the scar trees or some sort of dominant site types in that area. Fire, we come in boots and all and not necessarily conscious of other things going on. And so to understand, ultimately, at the moment we're trying to go from fire management to consequence management. So it's not just about putting the fire out, there's a consequence about putting the fire out and... These sites are registered. In my region we have approximately 9,000 registered Aboriginal places. It's important that the CFA members understand the Act and where they can go to get information. And also how the Act applies to the CFA's planning and fire management. That only in times of a declared state emergency does the Emergency Management Act supersede the Cultural Heritage Act. This means that the CFA cannot be prosecuted, should damage occur to significant cultural sites during an emergency. However, after the emergency is finished, the exemption is finished. CFA is not exempt if damage to significant sites occurs during training, during a planned burn or during other operational activities. Things like scar trees are becoming rarer and rarer. But working together with local traditional owners and people like Marlon, we can prevent damage to Victoria's Cultural Heritage. I think we have to understand what a sacred site is to start with. Because, you know, when we get out there in our fire trucks, we just maybe drive around, not being aware of where we are. We may not be aware that that particular tree may be of cultural significance to the Aboriginal community. We talk about asset protection. We have to consider that these cultural sites are an asset to the Aboriginal community. So we need to focus on protecting their assets as well. A cultural inside training day yesterday, where every single person in the room had learnt something. They don't have this knowledge about this beautiful culture, other than what they read in the paper or what they say on the news about Aboriginal people, which never, 99% of it isn't good anyway. It's always the bad things about Aboriginal people and they just don't know. So it's about sharing that information about each other's organisations and community and, you know, coming together where we can actually meet and participate with each other. The CFA has changed from when I joined back in 1954. The CFA of today is more inclusive. If you had told me that a group of women, especially Indigenous women, would be running their own brigade, I would not have believed you. I'm a cernite woman from Lake Highers, from country. Being a firefighter, it's really good. It's like you could have a really lazy day and then all of a sudden you've got to go. You get that hyped up to go and get ready. And then getting out there, meeting new people while you're out there, it's really brought a lot of people together. The firefighting and Aboriginal is in firefighting. There's a lot of us out there that do voluntary work, like Denise, and particularly the banana girls from Lake Tires. They've been well and truly supported through the CFA into continuing their role. They've never adversely affected those girls in their involvement in firefighting fires. OK, ready? We're always heading out to fires like Buckingham and other places, almost. OMEO is the main one, dinner plans that we always end up at. When we are on fire ground, we're watching one another's back because you're there to look after one another. So it's really brought a lot of people together. So, yeah. Everyone needs a sense of community. It doesn't matter where you are or who you are. It doesn't matter what colour your skin is. Everyone needs a sense of community. The CFA is a great opportunity for everyone to take up a role in the CFA, you know, and particularly Aboriginal kids. You can learn so much skill in the CFA, give yourself a lot of confidence. You have so many courses you can go on. You know, it's just a great way to build yourself a future. It does make me feel a leader. I would also use encouragement for the younger generation. I'm being a role model for my grandchildren. So, it's bringing out the best in everybody. If you're thinking of joining up, I'd say go for it. You learn a lot. You end up with leadership skills. You've got other certificates as well. So, yeah. So, while we're encouraging brigades to get involved in connecting with the Curie community for a whole multitude of reasons, we here at Headquarters want to support that. But encourage you to go on the journey. That's the exciting bit on this. And look, from our level, at Headquarters level, we'll be encouraging, I'm sure your regions and your districts will be encouraging that relationship as well. And I just encourage all brigades to get on board with building that relationship, because the benefits are just really exciting. Hey, Uncle Henry. Oh, yeah. What are you doing here? Good to see you again, Uncle Henry. It's good that you're coming in and just seeing what's going on. Look, I was in the area and someone told me you were doing the filming, so I just thought I'd drop in and say good-bye and see how it's all going. You're surprised you're coming down here and watching as having to sleep on the job. You looked as though you were hard at work. How's it all going? Oh, going great, great. You know, for you to come along and just checking on us, it's great. I don't mind a bus coming on, checking on me anytime. Actually, they told me there might be a company in the yard involved in it as well. We'll have one later on. All right.