A northern iwi has invited Aboriginal fire experts to teach locals traditional fire burnoff methods next month..
Ngāti Kuri Trust Board member Sheridan Waitai (Ngāti Kuri, Te Rarawa, Tainui) has been championing Indigenous knowledge of te ao Māori fire burning practices in Northland for some time.
The trust board organised an International gathering in 2018 to discuss indigenous practices, and it has since built strong bonds between Māori and first nations Australians.
“We had the full burn team from Australia come up to Kapowairua and at that stage they were a full female burn team of Aboriginal traditional owners.”
She says the foundations for this cultural gathering goes back to 2016 when she started attending a few conferences and exchanging knowledge with dreamtime relations and other Indigenous groups.
Waitai says that got them thinking about what their own traditional practices were “in terms of our forest health and what some of the strategies our tupuna would apply just to mitigate risk and stuff like that.”