Australians understand fire.
We know it as dangerous and destructive when it’s uncontrolled. We fear it, prepare for it and try to prevent it.
Those Australians who live in traditional Indigenous communities have a broader and more philosophical take on fire. Acknowledging its force, they also emphasise its essential role in regeneration and biodiversity, in preserving life as well as sometimes taking it.
When he spoke last weekend at the annual Garma festival, the first since last year’s referendum rejected a proposed Indigenous voice to parliament, Anthony Albanese drew on its carefully chosen theme: “Fire. Strength. Renewal.”
“I have not come back to this place of fire to rake through the ashes,” Albanese told those gathered at Garma. “I am here because my optimism for a better future still burns.”
He’d almost captured what his hosts meant with their fire reference – almost, but not quite. They’d already moved beyond the ashes and were talking about what good the scorching would deliver. Theirs was a statement of resilience and, yes, hope.
In his written welcome to Garma participants, the Yothu Yindi Foundation chair, Djawa Yunupingu, described fire as the foundation of life, giving strength, energy and power. He said it was in the people and of the land. Renewal, he said, was in both the land and the people.
“It is the goodness that rises in the country after fire has burnt the land and cleansing rains have come,” he wrote.
Yunupingu spelled it out further in a speech he gave just before Albanese gave his own, describing the pain of the referendum loss and the determination to renew and to rise.
“And Prime Minister we want you to rise with us,” he said. “You told us you were serious and you were. You stood with us. Like us, you are hurt by the loss. But you are here standing with us again.”
Both Yunupingu and Albanese focused their addresses on practical change, on economic development and the importance of remote-community infrastructure – housing in particular, roads and other “building blocks of a modern society” – in addressing the still-appalling Closing the Gap targets.
The prime minister spoke about helping the people of north-east........