First Knowledges - Country - by Bill Gammage & Bruce Pascoe

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. For millennia, Indigenous 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. 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.

This book gives another perspective to how balance in the environment was achieved in the past by First Nations peoples in Australia. An open mind can begin or continue the conversation about the protection of the stories and actions of First Nations people.
The book is easy to read with many examples of how the balance worked in the past. First Nations people have so much knowledge and logic in their approach to use and protection of the land (Country) , if only we could listen and learn without judgement. 

Paperback, 224 pages, published October 2021.