Welcome everyone to 100 Climate Conversations. Thank you so much as always for joining us. The series presents 100 visionary Australians that are taking positive action to respond to the most critical issue of our time, the climate crisis. Today is number 50 of 100 conversations happening every Friday. This important conversation today marks the halfway point in our series. Thank you to everyone tuning into the podcast every week and our live audience for your support.

As always, I’d like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the ancestral homelands upon which Powerhouse museums are situated. We respect their Elders, ancestors, and we recognise their sovereignty was never ceded. To the Gadigal People whose land this talk is being recorded on. I acknowledge that the colonisation of this continent started here. I acknowledge your resistance and your resilience and that despite violence attempts, your cultures, land and people are still here.

We are recording live today in the Boiler Hall of the Powerhouse museum. Before it was home to the museum, it was the Ultimo power station. Built in 1899, it supplied coal powered electricity to Sydney’s tram system into the 1960s. In the context of this architectural artefact. We’re going to shift our focus forward to the innovations of the net zero revolution.

My name’s Rachael Hocking. I’m a Warlpiri woman from the Tanami Desert, so that’s right in the heart of this country, spinifex country. For the past eight years I’ve worked as a journalist, curator, mentor and editor. I like to call myself a storyteller. Sitting next to me is Rowan Foley. He’s the founder and chief executive of the Aboriginal Carbon Foundation, a nonprofit organisation that connects Aboriginal communities, supplying carbon credits with councils and businesses seeking to offset their carbon pollution. Foley was park manager at Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park from 2005 to 2008. He’s a member of the Wondunna clan of the Badtjala People, Traditional Owners of K’gari, known by some today as Fraser Island. We’re honored to have him here with us. So, please put your hands together and make Rowan feel welcome. Now Rowan, you’re Badtjala from K’gari, so how did you end up in the central desert near my Country?

Good question. I went out to Uluru when I was a young Ranger, a young man, when I was 20 years old. That was shortly after hand back. And I spent three years there living at Mutitjulu, working on the park, and I just got that desert Country in my blood. But what I think happened was two things. One, its Big Sky country, so it’s a big environment. And back home on the island, that’s a big environment. So, it sort of felt similar. I was actually talking to a guy, he’s on a boat in the ocean, but he also spends a lot of time in the desert. He said it’s very similar. He said that you’ve got this sort of little environment, but you’ve got this big space that you’re in. And he felt right at home. And it’s a very spiritual Country. And so, there’s a lot of spirit to it, I suppose. Because I spend a lot of time at Uluru, that attracts you.

So, you’re a ranger and I know you did that for around 20 years, working and as a ranger. Your first job was actually at Uluru-Kata Tjuta and then you did a stint – did you do any ranger work on K’gari?

Yes. From Uluru, that was my very first job as a ranger. And then I went back to working on the island. To actually work the island, I think I was fifth generation to actually work on the island. So, my grandfather was a bullocky. He used to have a bullock team and used to cart the logs from the forest. My uncle, he worked in the forestry, department of forestry and was a fisherman as well. So, working the island is very different to holidaying on the island. Like when you work and live on the island, it’s a very different experience. You get to know Country very well when you’re working Country.

What did you learn about your own Country being a ranger on it?

You’ve got to respect it. It’s a very dangerous place. I think I just recently saw that the beach on K’gari was voted as one of the most dangerous beaches in the world. You just got to always be paying attention. When we’re were growing up, so for one month of every year, for the first 18 years of my life, we’d go camping on the island. So, my mother would cook over a fire every night for a month solid. There was no ambulance, no police, no rangers. We got rangers towards the end of that time, but it was very remote and people died regularly. And we grew up in that environment where you had to be very careful all the time. It’s a very beautiful and it’s a great holiday place. I’ve never been swimming there in my whole entire life and we’re surrounded by water. My kids have never swam there, we go down to our knees. But that’s it.

My mother is also very spiritual and if someone said the word shark when we were in the water, she’d just say alright all you kids, out. You just mention the word shark and she’d make us all get out of the water because our island is surrounded by sharks. We would go to very remote and dangerous places, but she was always very, very careful. And people say when you go out on Country, you are having a great time, but your parents are also very mindful. They’re always watching out always on guard. Because there was no help and we had accidents happen to us, but also things like brown paper I used to think that brown paper had magical qualities to it because we never had Band-Aids. We just used to use brown paper. And it was only later I realised it was just like a bandage. But I still think growing up until quite recently, that brown paper had this magical quality to it because that’s –

Maybe it does.

Yes, because you always have brown paper in case you cut yourself and you can’t get medical assistance. So, you have got to put brown paper on it. So, that’s how we grew up. Mum would cook over a fire, and we go fishing every day, but also exploring. So, things like that. Lots of ghost stories, seeing Junjaris, these little fellas, Min Min lights. When my mother passed away the fishermen in the paper reported seeing a Min Min light from around where we lived going over to the island. But you are just brought up with these stories. The island is a very magical place. It’s a very dangerous place. And so, Central Australia is also a very magical place and a very dangerous place. So, you sort of get used to that environment a little bit.

As a black person you’re walking on Country, but you know what not to do. And I think it’s such a different approach to the way that visitors can often respond to Country. I remember you talking about when you were a ranger at Uluru and having to do all those rescues from the rock from beautiful Uluru because people felt they had a right to go up there, not respecting, knowing the advice from Traditional Owners about how dangerous it is and you would be up there, what how many times?

When I was a ranger, when I started off for the first three years on average, we did 26 rescues a year. So, that was one a fortnight. Now they’d come in spates. So you wouldn’t do a rescue for like two months and then you’d do like three or four in two weeks. I remember one time I was duty ranger, and the alarm went off at 6 o’clock in the morning at sunrise, and a tourist had passed away halfway up the climb. And so, I’m the first one there and doing all the reports and you get you ranger crew to come up and you have lots of ropes and it’s a proper rescue. But just watching the sunrise and this tourist had just passed away and just trying to be at peace and then going home and then having breakfast, then going and going to work. So, we were doing rescues all the time. And eventually we called a union meeting.

We wrote to the board of management and then that’s when the board of management brought in the climb closures at 38 degrees, which were then subsequently changed to 36 degrees. But there’s a lot of politics. When the rock was first handed back to the Traditional Owners. There was a lot of politics about the climb. And now since the climb has been closed – and that was a 34-year campaign that many people played a very active role in. We eventually got it closed and now you can barely get a booking there, it’s very popular. One of my problems now is actually being able to book into the resort because it’s all booked out. Because people used to say, mate if you close the climb, it’s going to be a disaster. The tourists are going to stop coming. Nothing’s going to happen or you’re going to lose all those jobs. And in the back of my mind, I always thought, no, I just – it’s such a spiritual place and such a special place that people will come here for that. Not because I came, I saw climbed, I got a t shirt. And I said, look, there’s a million of those places. Special places like Uluru are very rare. And if you allow that to speak for itself, people will get it. And they do. And they’ll want to come, and they do.

I know, I mean, who would have thought? We knew all along how sacred that place was and that the people would come, and it just took them listening. So, let’s talk about the Aboriginal Carbon Foundation. How did you first hear about carbon farming?

Back around 2009, 2008 I first started hearing this concept called carbon farming, and I was looking for an industry that was not exploitative. So, not mining, not cattle, not tourism, where you could develop an economy on Aboriginal lands that supported traditional knowledge and practices, looking after Country and making a dollar. You could have an effective economy on Aboriginal lands that supported the Traditional Owners, and you know, I had been looking around I suppose because of my background of parks and being a ranger and I came across this concept of carbon farming. And then we started to speak to a few people about it, it was Alan Cooney who’s a white guy. He was head of Centrefarm in Alice Springs. We both went to the same meeting and he was talking to me after and he said, ‘What do you think about this?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I think there’s something there.’

Now he was the head of Centrefarm, which was the economic development arm of the Central Land Council. So, we had David Ross, we had Rossie and Tracker, Tracker Tilmouth, influential leaders. So, Alan and I were talking, and I said, ‘I wonder if Rossie and Tracker would back this concept around carbon farming? It’s pretty new.’ Back then it was embryonic. So, we spoke to them, and they could see that there was something there. The way I put it is that they could see that there was a waterhole on the other side of the mountain. They didn’t know exactly where, they didn’t know exactly what it looked like, but they could vision a water whole being on the other side. And so, they lent their name, and they are serious leaders to this new concept. Anyway, so we went on this journey and we found that there is a water whole there that they were right, that you can have a serious carbon economy on Aboriginal lands that’s not reliant upon the government or anybody else. You can have a free and independent income from carbon farming. And the way that we put it is that it’s the environmental, social and cultural values that are the cake and the carbon credit is the icing on the cake.

So, how did you explain what a carbon credit is when you were going around to communities to try and tell them about this idea?

Well, we talk about burning Country. So, Savanna burning is the methodology that we use. And so, we talk about when you are burning Country early in the season as little fires you, carbon emissions are that high, the big bushfires are that high and it’s in between is your carbon abatement. So, if we’re not doing anything, then you are going to have the big fires, big masses of smoke pollution, carbon emissions, greenhouse gas coming through – all that pollution going up into the sky. Or if we can get in and burn it according to traditional culture and the way that you fellas do it, they know what I’m talking about, they go, yes Rowan we know that. And I say you’re only giving you a little bit of smoke. And I say, well, what’s the difference? And they go, well, little fires are when you’re standing beside, a big fire is one that you’re running away from.

And so, if we get those little fires and you get that little pollution, then we’re saving or abating greenhouse gases, if you want to use the technical term, from going out into the atmosphere and people will pay you to do that. People will pay you for those carbon credits. And they’re like, ah. So, the very first one that we did, we did the full loop and it was $612,000. So, when we established the Aboriginal Carbon Foundation, we didn’t make a profit for the first couple of years, you know, we were just chugging away at it. But the very first deal that we ever did was $612,000 to the Traditional Owners bank account, not to my bank account. And when you say to them, well check your bank account, see if it works. That’s the full loop. When people actually get paid. And I think Rossie and Tracker and Alan were like, Oh, it actually works. I think they were like, Okay, we understand the theory, but we didn’t know – I said, well, yes it actually worked. And they actually got paid $600,000 –

For doing the work on Country that they would have done anyway.

And it’s about building that economy to suit Traditional Owners saying, look, this is the economy we’re going to bring the economy to suit and to wrap it around what the Traditional Owners are doing, as opposed to taking the Traditional Owners and trying to get them to move to the economy. Like saying you have got to go into town, you have got to get a job in the mine, you have got to get a job in tourism, you know that’s where the jobs are over here. We’re bringing that to people where you can be on Country using your traditional knowledge and skills, looking after Country, and people will pay you to do that. And so, now we’re in that position where we have viable carbon economies on Aboriginal lands.

It’s incredible. And so, you talk about the carbon credit as the co-benefit.

Yes.

Break down for me those core benefits. You’ve got the social, environmental and cultural benefits that come with it. How are they achieved? What do they look like?

Well, one of the things that in the verification of those benefits –

And this is the verification you helped develop?

Yes. So, it took us two years to develop the verification framework. So, we use a peer-to-peer strength-based approach. So, we don’t use any eco-colonial models. So, peer-to-peer, blackfella-to-blackfella. So, we provide the tools, a bit of guidance, but it’s peer –to-peer. So, it’s like, well, what do you think happened before 1788? People were working with each other. So, I like to say, look, this is a brand-new approach. It’s only 65,000 years old. And then a strengths-based approach. So, the traditional approach is always a deficit model. It’s never building on your strengths. It’s always looking at your weaknesses. And it took us a couple of years to figure this out because there’s just no – so we don’t use the French, German, English, Portuguese, Spanish models. We use the Indigenous model and there’s not many around. And that’s why it took us a couple of years to figure it out, because it’s a very strong decolonial approach that we have. And you’ve got to decolonise your own brain and you go, look, we don’t accept those Western values. And so, when you use a peer-to-peer strength-based approach, you’re decolonising the whole approach.

It’s now been accepted by the Chubb Review, by the Australian Government and the Queensland Government. But it’s taken a period of time to get there and a lot of smart people – but you know, Lisa McMurry, she’s non-Indigenous. When she first started working with us, she said, ‘Oh look, I love working with First Nations.’ And I said, ‘Look, that’s great, but your job is to work with whitefellas. You have to push back. You’ve got to deconstruct your own white culture to enable this to take place.’

So, one of the ways I sort of put it sometimes is that if you look at Custer’s Last Stand with the First Nations when they were fighting, they used Winchesters. It wasn’t just spears and bows and arrows. They used Winchesters. They used white man’s technology. Or somebody had to trade them the rifles. Somebody had to show them how to use them. Somebody had to say, look, this is a rifle. This is a bullet. This is where you put it. This is how you maintain a gun. This is how you use it. And it would have been a white fella. If you want to protect your family, you want to protect your lands. Here’s a white man’s tool. And if you use that white man’s tool, your family will be safe. You know, like, yes, have a spear with you. Bullets do run out. But, if you want to look after your family, use this white man’s tool and you will look after your mob. We’re using that technology to look after Country and to look after families. So, it’s a very interesting process.

And measuring it based on our values. When you talk about that decolonisation, looking at your framework, you value the passing down of knowledge from Elders to young people. You know, that’s actually one of the measures. And then you also have employment framework, being able to stay on land and not leave. Has that been hard to get support for?

Yes, it is, because when you say it’s a peer-to-peer approach, blackfellas working with blackfellas, it’s automatically dismissed. You haven’t got any whitefellas in there so therefore it’s inferior. And then when you start to look around for other models which are not colonial, they’re very, very few and far between. We get phone calls from First Nations in Canada who say, ‘Mate, we’re looking at your models. We don’t have anything like this in Canada, but we’re very interested in what you guys are doing because you just don’t see it.’ And I asked that same question, I was talking to Lisa my officer, saying ‘Why do you think that is?’ And I said, ‘Surely other people are thinking about this stuff as well. It’s not just us.’ And they’re going, ‘Yes, but Rowan, in all their models they’re the white savior, they’ve come in to save people, they are at the center of that model. We come in to help you, to save you, bringing in that external values.’ That’s why they’re not thinking about this, is because that’s their deficits approach. You are really challenging their reason for being. If they can’t come in here and be that sort of – I don’t know if you want to call it missionary, that they’re coming here to save the poor natives. And this is what a lot of conservation organisations do, a lot of green organisations, they’re coming in to save people. That’s very challenging for them on a very deep personal level. I think that’s part of the rationale where you don’t often see these approaches. Like eco colonial thinking, you just don’t hear that word. You just don’t hear that –

The acknowledgement that it exists.

We had to really research it to figure this stuff out. I was in parks for 20 years, never heard that term once. You just don’t hear this stuff. It’s almost like there’s this oh, we don’t talk about that. And you just go, why, what what’s going on there?

And it’s ignorant to our history as well. As you’ve mentioned before, we have a long history of trade, pre-colonisation.

If you look at the Makassans, we were trading with Makassans for a couple of thousand years but also pearl shells were traded throughout Central Australia. So, Warlpiris would have had pearl shells traded from the coast. That happened for thousands and thousands of years.

And that’s a beautiful thing as well is just to acknowledge that a lot of these things, while you had said we’re using the white man’s technology. It’s not a new way of being for our people. You know, you’re making sure that at the centre of it is First Nations values. In terms of that exclusion that you’ve spoken to, what other challenges have you faced in that? Because you mentioned the Chubb Review briefly. And so, I thought it’d be important just to unpack that. The Chubb Review into the carbon market, looking at some of the criticisms that were made last year in particular. You actually had a positive response to the Chubb Review, in particular to the 16 was it, recommendations that were specifically around First Nations engagement in this industry and your knowledge?

4 out of the 16 were specific recommendations for First Nations. Chubb Review was a very big win for First Nations and has been broadly welcomed by First Nations that a lot of people have said this is a fantastic outcome for First Nations and it is. We made a submission, we got nine out of our ten recommendations got up and the others made submissions and they really listened to First Nations.

What were some of those recommendations?

On the industry body there’s going to be a First Nations position for the very first time. So, there’s a new industry body being established. Normally it’s just all white. So, for the first time they’ll have a First Nations person on there. Verification of environmental, social and cultural outcomes is now broadly going to happen, which is what we talk about high integrity carbon credits, where those values are verified. Free prior informed consent is now taking place. Consent before registration of projects, because you could do it mid-way before, but you now need consent upfront.

Yes, there’s a whole host of outcomes that First Nations have recommended, were adopted and are now being implemented, and are now going to strengthen the carbon industry throughout the whole of Australia. Ironically, the conservation sector has come out and just criticised it. And we’re going through an analysis at the moment with Melbourne Uni to see how many groups in their submissions, actually talked about First Nations and were supportive of First Nations. And so, these are primarily organisations on the left, I’ll put it that way, left leaning, green in some sort of manner and it’s almost been like in Johannesburg in 1975. Blacks do not exist. The issues that blacks talk about do not exist. We are not going to talk about them, and we are certainly not going to be supportive of them.

I think, I’ve only read a handful, I’ve read one submission that there’s a very light touch in passing made a reference to the fact that Aboriginal people even existed in Australia. So, you just read this stuff and you just go, do you actually understand that 54 per cent of Australia has either Indigenous rights or interests? Traditional Owners are the majority landholder in Australia and if you want to achieve climate outcomes or biodiversity outcomes, you need to be working with Traditional Owners. And this concept of working with First Nations is something that a lot of organisations on the left, a lot of green organisations, just don’t get. They will pay lip service. They will do an Acknowledgment of Country and they’ll go, great, glad that’s out of the way and now we can forget about blackfellas and we get straight into talking about conservation. And blacks do not exist. And you just go, guys, what’s going on here, fellas? Like, it’s almost like this schizophrenic approach to it. You read what they write, you read what they recommend to the Australian government, you read the criticisms in the media, and they will never support First Nations.

And it’s really telling to have no acknowledgment of not just the land, but the fact that there is this verification framework that has been developed. We’ll talk in a second about those high integrity carbon credits that you have mentioned. But in terms of that criticism that major emitters of greenhouse gases have been criticised for relying on carbon credits as a way to reduce their harmful practices as sort of their sole motive rather than branching out into other areas. Has that been an issue for ACF?

No, because we have a lot of companies that come through us because they want to deal with their reconciliation action plan, corporate social responsibility goals. They want their shareholders and their investors to know that they support First Nations, they want the public relations, they want to be able to talk to their clients about us. And the last thing is they want to be carbon neutral. So, they might be buying 200 tonnes of carbon credits. So, we have an extensive clientele list of companies that – and we don’t advertise. But every second day I’ve got people ringing me up wanting to buy carbon credits and we sell at the top of the market too I might add, which goes back to Traditional Owners because we’re not for profit.

And look, there are some companies that want to try and get out of their carbon commitments by not reducing their footprint, but by just buying carbon credits. And that’s going to be picked up in the safeguard mechanism where if you’re over 100,000 tonnes, you have to reduce your carbon emissions. It will be picked up. It’s at the tail end of the process. So, we’re at the front end of the process. So, if I go to Traditional Owners in Cape York and say fellas, you’ve got to stop burning Country because we’re generating carbon credits and some people in the cities are misusing them. So, stop burning Country, stop doing traditional fire practices. People would literally think I’d had a mental health problem. People think you’re mad, Rowan you’ve spent too much on the sun. What’s going on here, bro? And I would say, oh, but some people down south, they misuse carbon credits, and they would go, well, mate –

We’ve been doing this anyway.

Well, look, we’re here looking after Country, Rowan. This Country is beautiful. We’re going to keep on looking after Country. Now, most people will do the right things with a carbon credit. Some people will misuse a carbon credit. You know, look, that’s on them.

So, when you are in this marketplace where there is a for profit mindset a lot of the time, are you seeing a willingness to adopt your model?

Increasingly so. Where we now talk about high integrity, carbon credits. So, that’s become a bit of a thing people talk about these days. People misuse the word integrity. They’re confuse it with compliance. Some people go, oh, I’ve got a carbon farming project and we have got all the ticks in the boxes from Canberra. We have integrity. It’s like, no, you’ve got compliance. The department has said you need to do A, B and C, you’ve done A, B and C. You’ve complied with the methodology as what Canberra has said. High integrity means that the values that you’re espousing are also verified. So, there’s no greenwashing and there’s local benefits to what you’re doing environmentally, socially, culturally, economically and that’s all verified.

The way that we verify them is through a peer-to-peer strengths-based approach. There are other ways of doing it. We don’t use any eco colonial thinking or models, and the Queensland governments picked that up. So, that’s integrity. So, we’re doing the right thing, we’ve complied, and our values are true and correct and there are local benefits. That’s high integrity. The other way I put it is, it’s a bit like I’ve got two teenage sons and they got their driver’s license, and they came home and said, ‘Dad, I’m a really good driver now I’ve got a driver’s license.’ I said, ‘Look, it’s great you got your driver’s license son, but no, you’re a compliant driver, you’re a legal driver. You can legally drive on the road. You’ve got your driver’s license. It doesn’t mean that you’re a good driver. I want you to become a good driver. But being a good driver, the department, the transport ticket, your driver’s license doesn’t – there are plenty of bad drivers on the road that are licensed.’

Show us a track record first.

Yes. You become a good driver. You know, drive with integrity, you might say. And that’s got nothing to do with the Department of Transport. Being a good driver is having good road ethics.

That’s right. So, let’s talk about one of your most recent new partnerships, which is really exciting with the Firesticks Alliance. Who are they and how did they become involved?

Our sister or brother organisation, I’d say very close to us is Firesticks Alliance. So, Victor and I have been good mates for a long time and Pete also in there. So, when we are combining our knowledge and experience in the carbon industry with their knowledge and experience around cultural fire, we put those two together and we’ve come up with something called the Cultural Fire Credit that people can invest in that supports local, Traditional Owners burning Country.

How is that different to a carbon credit?

We’ve got nothing to do with the government, nothing to do with Canberra, nothing to the clean energy regulator. This comes from our experience, and we’ve got a program, we have a 63 page cultural Firesticks philosophy and manual. The philosophy guidelines manual took 18 months to write. It’s been peer reviewed. The concept around cultural fire credits took 2 to 3 years to develop. We did some national workshops, so we talked to Traditional Owners throughout Tasmania, to Cape York, over in Noongar Country in WA. So, it’s very community based and it’s drawing upon our expertise and it’s well documented. We have a trading platform. And it’s really designed to address the cultural fire, primarily in Victoria and New South Wales as a consequence of the 2019, 2020 devastating bushfires.

My view is that all fire is cultural. What we’re doing at the moment is a fire management based on a European set of cultural values. Europeans – this is the way we burn. We do hazard reduction burns. The bush is a hazard. It’s the way you view Country. They do hazard reduction burns. They have a European style of management and as a consequence of that European style of management, I believe that significantly led to the 2019 and 2020 bushfires. Now, yes, climate change did impact on that. It exasperated the situation, but the main driver was a European style of management where they believe seeing green, seeing forest is good. I was actually in a conservation meeting, and they had a photo of this forest and this guy standing up and they said, this is beautiful. And I looked at it – because I sort of at first you look at the forest and you go, oh yes, it’s forest. And then half I say, oh, hang on, go back to that first photo. I said, look, that’s rubbish Country. It’s orphaned Country because of the no signs of fire management. No one is there looking after Country. I cannot see where there’s been any burns in that Country.

Those charcoal trees and stumps that are actually really good for it.

So, in a northern Australia Country that is not burnt, it’s called either rubbish Country, it’s just rubbish, you just haven’t been looked after it. It’s just like a place that hasn’t been looked after. Or orphaned Country, where’s its mum and dad? This Country has been orphaned. No one’s looking after it, no one’s burning that Country. And so, when you see a green forest, that’s rubbish country because no one is looking after it. You should be seeing signs of maintenance, which is burning. But it’s that concept which is so prevalent within Australian society and the way that we burn Country in Australia. And it’s based on that European system of management that when you go look fellas, that’s actually not quite right and in fact there’s a better way of going about it. And in Cape York we’ve had a 50 per cent reduction of bushfires through cultural burning. And when you present that argument to people that it’s based on their culture, they just can’t believe it. You can present as much information as you want. It’s like the anti-vaxxers, you can present as much medical information as you want. They will just not believe you.

And that’s choosing to be ignorant at that point because they have all the knowledge in front of them. But Firesticks Alliance, they shot into the media a little bit after those devastating bushfires. Have you noticed a shift in the conversation since then? I have, for the first time I think my life, saw traditional burning actually mentioned in mainstream reporting regularly.

It’s starting to happen. The way I look at that is that guys on the ground, people who live and I people with houses, people who actually are in the original rural fire services, people who are on the ground, they get it. But it’s middle management within the bureaucracies that are very resistant to it. And it’s also some of the decision makers who are interested in that. But you look at the outcomes of the Bushfires Royal Commission report. There was two, there was an inquiry in New South Wales and there was a Royal commission nationally. Cultural fire, I think one was recommendation 2021 and the other one was 1718. Cultural fire didn’t even make it into the top 10 in both the inquiry or the Royal Commission, they were right down the list. And they said you should have a look at this. There’s nothing about you should actually implement it. You should actually have a program.

There’s something about the Canberra bushfires, 20 years after the Canberra bushfires. Nobody from Canberra is ringing us up saying, ‘Hey, let’s do cultural burning. We’ve had a taste of the other way. We know it doesn’t work, we want to try your way.’ Nobody from the ACT is ringing us up saying, ‘Can you guys come down here and do some cultural burning?’ And when you look at the official reports, the official recommendations, it’s right down the list. And it’s like, look, there’s some blackfellas doing something here you might want to have a look at, you can investigate this.

The guys on the ground get it because they work with Traditional Owners and the residents get it because they want their homes safe. They don’t care whether it’s black or white. They just want something that works, and they go, well, what you’re doing works. Come here and do that. There was a story on the ABC about a First Nations guy. He [was] undertaking cultural burning, lived in the forest. His house was under threat four times. He evacuated his family on two separate occasions, and he got through. Now, I’m not saying that it wasn’t touch and go. It was. It was the closest thing to his house burning down, but his house did not burn down. And the only difference was, and this story is on the ABC, was that he put in cultural burning. And so, it’s not a silver bullet. It’s not a panacea for everything, but it’s the best thing you can do. It’s not some wonder thing, but looking after Country the way that Traditional Owners have been burning Country, it’s the next best thing you can do. It’s the safest thing you can do. It’s the most logical thing you can do. But you’re up against European culture and it’s very difficult to change that mindset. Look, it’s starting to happen only through the fact that we’ve had these wildfires. We know it doesn’t work, but it’s a challenge.

It’s interesting because your motto is ingrained in the traditions of our people caring for Country for thousands of years, and then you’re in the system that makes us reliant on money. And so, you talk about the importance of having this economic empowerment alongside traditional solutions to the climate crisis. How hard is that to get people to understand?

It’s a new relationship. So, I look at it like a pyramid. So, if you’ve got blackfellas in government, that relationship is 220 years old, now we have corporations. So, it’s the corporates that are buying the carbon credits. And so, we have a number of partnerships with NIB Health, Investment Corporation, Carsales, Australian Insurance Group, Sydney City Council. They’re very good to us. They’re really good. So, we have these corporate partnerships, and you say to them, ‘So you’ve done a lot of work with blackfellas, have you? This is something that you’re doing?’ And they’re going, ‘No, mate. No we’ve never done this before Rowan. You guys are the first.’

So, in terms of economics, because they’re our clients – well, partners, but we have a lot of clients. It’s all new. They’re just not used to doing business with blackfellas. And so, it’s a new framework, it’s a new situation. But at the same time, money loves authenticity, so we don’t really care about them. It’s like, well, look, we’re just doing our own thing here. You know, we’re not taking – we’re not doing the eco colonial model, we’re not doing this, we’re not doing that. This is what we’re doing. And they’re like, yes, great. We want that. We want the real McCoy. We want authenticity. We don’t want Mickey Mouse. We don’t want pretend. We don’t want plastic. We want the real deal. And I say, well, look fellas, this is what we do. This is how we go about it. This is the way it is. And they’re like, yes, okay, can we get can we get a slice of that? You don’t have to please people. You don’t have to pretend to – you just go, look, this is what we’re doing –

This is what we’re doing. We’re not changing it if you want in.

Yes. If you want to walk with us, walk with us. This is what we’re doing. And so, then you get that economy, and you’re bringing it to people. We have philosophical touchstones. So, Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, written in 1975, changed the world. Frantz Fanon, he wrote Wretched of the Earth. So, we do read the – people who’ve gone before us, who looked at colonising models, looked at economies, looked at poverty. Poverty is a manmade thing. It’s not a natural thing. We do look at these things and then we go, Okay, well, how can we apply that to what we’re doing? So, our philosophical touchstones in terms of the stuff that we read and the Indigenous leadership that has been very – so Marcia Langton is our patron. So, we are very respectful of the Indigenous leadership in that world. That’s how we go about it.

That’s it.

Yes.

So, what’s next? How does the next 12 months look for ACF?

Looks good. I’ll be in East Timor in a week’s time looking at developing a carbon economy for the Timorese people and government. So, high integrity. We’ve had contact with First Nations in Canada. So, there’s a bit more international interest in what we’re doing. We’re helping the Pilbara in three to four weeks’ time, working with 10 PBCs, prescribed body corporates, Traditional Owner groups. Busy. We’ve got some cultural burns coming up down the south coast of New South Wales.

We are working with a conservation group who get what we do. So, Ken Henry is chair of that group. They’re very good to us, so they want to talk about cultural burning. We’re going to bring them along to a cultural burn. They’re on side, but that don’t quite get it. They want to do this roundtable on fire. And I’m like, yes, that’s fine, but we’re doing it out bush on Country with the Traditional Owners and we’re doing a cultural burn. We’re not doing it in Sydney with a bunch of whitefellas because they’ll dictate the argument, and you’ll lose the argument around cultural burning. You get people out on Country with blackfellas putting in the burn, you will win the argument. Seeing is believing and also the stories that come out. So, you can tell the same story, but if we tell it in Sydney, we’ll lose. We tell that story on Country with people doing it down south coast we will win the argument.

At the beginning of our conversation, you said it took around 34 years to get the climb at Uluru finally closed. What do you hope for ACF in 34 years from now?

Fire will ostensibly be under control within Australia. That bushfires will be an anomaly. That fire is our friend. Fire is something that we welcome. Fire is something that we rejoice in. That viewpoint where burning Country is a very normal thing, it’s a very natural thing and that bushfires are – you might get the occasional bushfire, yes – but it’s pretty much something in the past. So, 20 years ago, yes, we used to have bushfires. But look we had 10 years ago but nothing like 2019, 2020. So, where the next generation sees bushfires as being very much something of the past where it just doesn’t happen. You might get the occasional one, but you know, we need to really change that practice where fire is welcomed, and the fire is something that we rejoice in.

That’s beautiful. Thank you so much for your time, Rowan.

Thanks, Rachael.

Can we please have a round of applause for our Rowan? To follow the program online you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And visit the 100 Climate Conversations exhibition or join us for a live recording, go to 100climateconversations.com.

This is a significant new project for the museum and the records of these conversations will form a new climate change archive preserved for future generations in the Powerhouse collection of over 500,000 objects that tell the stories of our time. It is particularly important to First Nations peoples to preserve conversations like this, building on the oral histories and traditions of passing down our knowledges, sciences and innovations which we know allowed our Countries to thrive for tens of thousands of years.