AustLit

'‘The sky was red, black ash fell like snow, and smoke choked the whole east coast – even New Zealand felt the effects of our fires. All while the government keeps selling our water and land,’ Bee Cruse said of last summer’s inferno. Cruse’s Monaro-Yuin Nation is one of the worst hit communities. Yuin man Warren Foster from Wallaga Lake said, ‘We need our country to be healthy so we can be healthy. We need the animals. If that is all lost, our spirits die when they die. This might be a wake-up call for them now to listen to us Indigenous people on how we do our cultural burning.’'  (Introduction)