Indigenous Land Degradation Report

The Australian Indigenous community hold extremely significant corrections to the land of Australia, of which they refer to as ‘Country.’ Indigenous people acquire deep meaning from the land, sea and the countless resources derived from them. This special relationship has formed for many centuries. To them ‘Country’ is paramount for overall wellbeing; the strong, significant, spiritual bonds embody their entire existence. Knowledge is continually passed down to create an unbroken connection of past,

Aboriginal land use practices centred on the sustainable use of the land. Aboriginal Australians practiced a form of agriculture known as ‘fire stick agriculture’. This involved utilizing fire to hunt animals, by setting fire to vegetation to draw prey into the open. Doing this also increased the availability of new grass and vegetation to feed animals. Minerals from the burnt vegetation are absorbed into the soil, increasing its fertility and therefore the abundance of vegetation in the area. Ensuring that there was enough feed for animals in the wild allowed Indigenous Australians to maintain population levels of the species they hunted in a sustainable manner for thousands of years.

The impact of British colonisation resulted in Australia being declared 'terra-nullius' 'land belonging to no-one' and Aboriginal peoples were subject to policies of dispossession and protectionism in a bid to the eventual demise of all facets of their traditional culture. (http://www.bookrags.com/essay-2005/3/2/5583/41950, 2005) The policy of 'terra

Outline the geographical processes relevant to the management of the Cronulla, Wanda and Kurnell area.

Prior to European invasion and settlement, Aboriginal Australians enjoyed a non-sedentary lifestyle that concentrated upon maintaining and sustaining their country, relationships and ecosystems. Anderson et al (2006) state that ‘Precontact health care systems’ were focused upon the inter-relationships of land, people, the living and non-living entities and creator beings. If the land was not cared for, it got sick, and so would all other beings related to the land, including the people (Anderson et al, 2006). Tenure of management was dictated by law, passed down through the Dreaming and Ancestors, and was practiced to ensure balance and to maintain health. The balance ensured a variable access to nutritional diets high in protein and

In the last 60,000 years Australian indigenous knowledge has advanced through generations. Unlike western culture where knowledge becomes known through written text 's,Indigenous knowledge is developed by images, words, patterns, sounds, smells and tastes on different canvases such as sand, soil, the body and rocks (Blair 2008). Furthermore, Since British colonisation in 1788 threats to traditional indigenous knowledge existed then and more now in modern society. Main threats include agricultural and industrial developments, territorial pressures including deforestation, social and economic pressures including assimilation, poverty, education, loss of languages,political pressures,the recognition and standing of indigenous traditional knowledge including involvement in policy and legislative development, cultural integrity and globalisation. It is important that these threats are resolved and Indigenous knowledge is contexulizised into our education systems as it can bring a better understanding to Australian indigenous history.It is important that teachers incorporate indiginoues knowledge into classroom as It can also give students the ability to think comprehensively when exploring social problems in the environment and the awareness of the relationship that people share with their environment and also increase understanding and respect of other cultures (Rahman,2013)

The aim is to identify and associate landforms, rock types and soils to the natural environment and its plants and animals and also to investigate the history of the local environment, comprising human impacts over the last 50 years. The impact of human alterations to the environment includes increased soil erosion and changes in river flows.

Many wetlands are beginning to die out. Look at the everglades for example they’ve been here for 5000 years! Back then they were pretty and all new, but now it is starting to look like the famous scene from the Indiana Jones movie "Raiders of the Ark" says the article "Are the Everglades Forever? My first reason is that Its majestic waters will turn into swampy waters filled with snakes and who knows what. Also if wetlands die out there will be habitat loss until they cannot find home and eventually dies out plus people are releasing animals out into the wild which is not a good thing because then animals start to compete for food The final reason we should care about wetland is that they provide thing for us to such as the everglades provides

Recently, the heap of pollution caused a massive drainage in the Everglades’ water quality. Tramontana and Johnson (2003) reported that “much of Florida’s early development was based upon draining and removing excess water from wetlands… and it was thought if drained, the land could be put to better use” (Human Development section, para. 2). Pollution destroys the cleanliness of the wetland leading to a decrease in restoration. Millions amount of cash produced to repair water quality leads to the consequences of continuous flow of freshwater.

In 1883, the colonial government granted Nathaniel Buchanan – Australian pioneer pastoralist, drover and explorer – 3000 square kilometres of the Gurindji tribe’s traditional land, (National Museum Australia, 2016). In 1884, cattle and bullocks were placed on the land, which disintegrated the environmental system that the Gurindji people had developed and sustained. “Basically, the land was stolen off them and if they wanted to stay on their land, and have that connection to country and that connection to spirit, they actually had to work for free for the person who stole it.” (Warwick Thornton, Aboriginal director).

Taming the fire was the first episode in a documentary series called ‘The Future Eaters’ which detailed the hypotheses laid out by Dr Tim Flannery regarding the ecological effect of early colonisers on the Australian continent. Tim Flannery is a palaeontologist who was a senior research scientist for the Australian museum at the time of the documentary’s release. The article summarised in this essay was a series of responses to key points from the documentary, submitted by other experts in the field of ecological effects of human colonisation. In addition to this episode, an article written by Dr David Bowman titled ‘The Impact of Aboriginal landscape burning on the Australian biota’ was reviewed to further discuss the points made by Flannery.

In more recent times, the interactions of people and the landscape have influenced the landscape and the life that depends on it. Swampland has been drained, cleared and cultivated, roads have been constructed, and homesteads established. Wildfires were stopped and non-native vegetation was introduced. Pollutants have also degraded water quality. Non-native

Although Magamarra is acknowledged as a protected sacred site of Australia, the effectiveness of its legal protection may say otherwise. Discuss the issues being faced by the site and the impact it may have on the sustainable environment of Magamarra.

Australian Aborigines believe that to destroy or damage a sacred site threatens not only the present inhabitants but also the spiritual inhabitants of the land. Broome described that "Each tribe believed that its boundaries were fixed and validated by the stories about the movements of their ancestors, and therefore there was no reason to desire or try to possess the country of another group: it would have seemed meaningless to them since their creation stories only related to their own piece of territory" (14). Australian Aborigines traveled around a land that was a symbolic and religious world. There were not simply rocks, trees, and watering holes but they were objects and places that the great ancestors had created and places where they still lived. The Aboriginal culture stressed continuity over change.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, land care was a major purpose in life for Aboriginal people and although their approach was entirely sustainable, they were actively intervening in the landscape. They involved activities such as damming creeks, fire-stick farming and sustainable harvesting methods. (Roberts, 2014) The damming of creeks created natural watering holes for their own use as well as attracting animals to the area, which incidentally resulted in a change in Australian landscape. Fire-stick farming was used to promote the growth of valued plants, with plant species unable to survive fire and declining in numbers, and more resistant species, such as grass trees, eucalypts and acacias, dominating. The Indigenous harvesting techniques were also quite sustainable in conserving resources. For example, women dug some varieties of yams in such a way that a portion which would regenerate was left in the ground. (Williams, 1986, pp. 93-94) Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Indigenous Australians managed their lands in a way that was sustainable and would ensure biodiversity for the future.