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Country: Future Fire, Future Farming

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Bruce Pascoe and Bill Gammage need no introduction. Both have authored books that changed the conversation about pre-settlement history in Australia and speak to the importance of listening to First Nations wisdom: Bruce with his groundbreaking Dark Emu, which argued that Indigenous people did not follow a hunter-gatherer lifestyle at the time of colonisation, and Bill with his 2011 book The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, which explored how Aboriginal people have managed the land to their advantage for millennia.

Now, Bruce and Bill join forces to continue the conversation in Country: Future Fire, Future Farming, delving into the remarkable agricultural and land care practises of First Nations people. Country examines how, through complex seasonal burning programs, Aboriginal people managed the land to avoid the late season destructive bushfires we fear today.

Together they join writer Sophie Cunningham live on stage at the Wheeler Centre to discuss how employing Indigenous land management practises is critical to creating a more sustainable future for people and country. 

The bookseller for this event is The Paperback Bookshop.

Featuring

Bruce Pascoe

Bruce Pascoe is a Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian man born in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond. He’s the author of the best-selling Dark Emu, Young Dark Emu: A Truer History, Loving Country: A Guide to Sacred Australia and over thirty other books including the short story collections Night Animals... Read more

Bill Gammage

Bill Gammage AM is a historian, Emeritus Professor, Humanities Research Centre Australian National University. Bill was on the faculty of the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of Adelaide. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences. He was born in Orange, New South ... Read more

Sophie Cunningham

Sophie Cunningham is a non-fiction writer and novelist with a passion for trees, walking and broader environmental issues. Sophie’s most recent books are This Devastating Fever (Ultimo Press) and Flipper and Finnegan –The True Story of How Tiny Jumpers Saved Little Penguins (Albert Street Books)... Read more

Location

The Wheeler Centre

176 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne Victoria 3000

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The Wheeler Centre acknowledges the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Centre stands. We acknowledge and pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their Elders, past and present, as the custodians of the world’s oldest continuous living culture.