[Text on screen: Acknowledgement of Country

We recognise the Ongoing Custodians of the lands and waterways where we work and live. We pay respect to Elders past and present as ongoing teachers of knowledge, songlines and stories. We strive to ensure every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learner in NSW achieves their potential through education.

Image: 'A Flame Under Stars' created by Mikayla Kerestesi from Nepean Creative and Performing Arts on Dharug Country as part of the 2021 Schools Reconciliation Challenge.]

Dominique Higgins

Yiradhu marang mayiny-galang, Yuwin-dhu Dominique Higgins. Balladhu Bangerang Wiradjuri Yinaa. Hi everyone, my name is Dominique Higgins. I'm a proud Bangerang and Wiradjuri woman and an Aboriginal education advisor within the Department of Education. I would like to acknowledge the Burramattagal people of the Darug nation I am on today.

I've worked closely with the Secondary Science curriculum team to develop resources to support the teaching of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander protocols, and perspectives and to embed authentic voice in Science curriculum resources. Within each of the Science focus areas, we've included examples from Countries across New South Wales.

However, it's really important that you adopt and adapt these resources to suit your own context, embedding Place-based knowledge that is relevant to your local community. We strongly advise that you consult with your Community, including Elders or local knowledge holders, to ensure that any information shared and the examples used reflect the Country that your school is on and the places that your students live.

[Text on screen: Investigate techniques used by Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Peoples to separate mixtures]

Your school's families or local AECG's are a great starting point when beginning these conversations. Throughout the Science syllabus, there will be content statements that call for the specific inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander content. Some content statements ask for Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander perspectives, in which case the teacher can choose to include examples from cultural groups that are most relevant to their students and the local context.

[Text on screen: Identify examples of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples' application of Knowledge about forces]

When a content statement asks for Aboriginal AND Torres Strait Islander perspectives, NESA's expectation is that teachers must provide examples from both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community contexts. They are both distinct sovereign groups with their own histories, languages, protocols, and cultural practices.

This will therefore ensure students gain a full and rich understanding of the diverse Cultural groups that make up Australia. For example, our Environmental Sustainability topic includes examples of sustainable harvesting practices from both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. This ensures that students gain insight into the deep ecological understandings and connection to Country for different Cultural groups across Australia.

Some of the learning activities that we have planned include links to externally published resources. These resources may include terms like Indigenous or First Nations, and while these terms are common, it's best practice for teachers to use the terms Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander when referring to the appropriate Cultural groups in your teaching.

Each Cultural group across Australia is unique and has its own preferences, so it's important to check with your local community around the language that they would prefer in these circumstances. When appropriate, including language can be a rich learning experience for all students. This honors students' cultural roots and supports the revitalisation of First languages.

It's essential to consult with your local Community before, including language and learning. The Language and Culture nests, Language hubs, or Language centers if you have them, depending on where you are located, could be a great starting point for this.

[Image on screen: picture of a Galangara (Lilly Pilly) with information about the plant]

For example, in the Cells and Classification unit, we've provided information cards about the use of plants for food and medicinal purposes, and we've included direct names for each of these plants.

It would be a great opportunity to talk to your Elders or your local knowledge holders about including the language for these plants from your local area, if this knowledge still exists and is able to be shared. Teachers should know that some information about Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and practices may be sacred and therefore not be appropriate to be shared with a public audience.

This is why gaining permission from your Elders or Local Knowledge Holders to share this information with students is always recommended as the first step to teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in the classroom. The most important thing is to build and maintain respectful relationships with your local community members.

This is the best way to ensure communication channels remain open, and we build a culturally inclusive learning environment for our students.

[Text on screen: Acknowlodgement of Artist

"Truth Telling" 2024

The artwork used throughout this video was commissioned by the Department of Education, and created by Kayleb Waters, Artist and Cultural Mentor, Gomeroi Country.]

[End of transcript]

[Text on screen: We advise this resource may contain images, voice or names of deceased persons in photographs, film, audio recordings or historical content]

Taylah Gillmer

Wiyabu, ngatha Taylah. Ngatha Worimi Biripi galbaan. I just said, hello, my name is Taylah. I'm a Worimi Biripi woman.

I think it's important to know that this is my story of my experiences of cultural burning. Every mob group around Australia have their own experiences and their own methods and traditions.

[Video shows the community at a cultural burn]

For my community cultural burns, it's more than just burning Country.

Cultural burns are really significant for Country itself. Through colonisation, a lot of our practises and a lot of our traditions have been lost. Not following those traditional practises has resulted in a lot more destruction to the Australian landscape. We can see that through how many destructive bushfires we've had over the last 250 years.

[A graph shows an exponential increase in area burned by destructive bushfires since 1990]

How we conduct cultural burns is very different today as it would be traditionally. When we are looking at traditional methods and what this would've looked like pre-colonisation. We like to think that fires didn't really get destructive in the first place because cultural burns would've happened so often anyway.

Cultural burns are generally cool burns. It actually goes on the height, so cool burns are really low, whereas your hot burns, they get above that certain point and they're quite destructive. What we would cause disastrous fires.

[Graphic showing low height of cool burns compared to high height of hot burns relative to vegetation]

So a cool burn, there's little tufts of grass and you would have to actually pull the tuft of grass apart to find the dead aspects of the grass, and that's what you would light on fire.

Elder

There we go.

[Elder lighting a tuft of grass with sound of fire starting in a tuft of grass and spreading]

Taylah Gillmer

Then it will smoulder and then go into the next tufts of grass. As we burn that foliage, we are getting rid of it, and that's what feeds a lot of your destructive bushfires. So if we are able to reduce that completely, then we are able to reduce the amount of destructive burns.

A cool burn, they spread really slowly. That does give opportunity for a lot of your animals to escape, which also creates your sustainability within your environment. There's a lot of Australian plant species that rely on fire and they rely on heat to be able to reproduce.

In the Barrington Tops region, there is an endangered orchid that only grows, as we've noticed, with cultural burns. We did our first cultural burn and we went back up there and we have actually seen them starting to sprout and starting to flower.

Aunty Michelle Perry, who has organised the whole cultural burn for our mob, she has gone up after the burns and actually found a lot more of these orchids as well. So it's actually bringing back a lot of our endangered species.

When we do go back up, we do visit our old cultural burn sites so that we can see what has actually happened and what new rejuvenation has occurred before we go and do the burn on the new location.

When we go up, we actually go up as a mob group, but we also go up with National Parks and Wildlife Services and the Rural Fire Service. We are learning off them and they're also learning off us as mob.

The Rural Fire Service is getting an understanding of how important these cultural cool burns are and how those methods are very different to the way that they are currently doing a lot of their fire reduction, which aren't as successful.

Cultural burns, it's more than just burning Country. For our mob, it's actually more about getting everyone back together. The last cultural burn we did, there were over 60 community members there from all over New South Wales and all over Australia. We all meet together trying to rebuild those sustainable measures within that environment.

Our practises and what we're doing now is forever growing. These knowledges and practises are then being taught to different organisations and different communities to ensure that we are learning as a whole community, helping the non-indigenous community understand cultural burning.

[End of transcript]