Pang-ngooteekeeya weeng malangeepa ngeeye (remembering our future: bringing old ideas to the new)

Jack Pascoe; Marcus Clarke; Ebony Hickey; Laura Prentice; Vicki Couzens; John Clarke

doi:10.1071/WR24068

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

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Pang-ngooteekeeya weeng malangeepa ngeeye (remembering our future: bringing old ideas to the new)

Jack Pascoe

^A ^* , Marcus Clarke ^B , Ebony Hickey ^B , Laura Prentice ^B , Vicki Couzens ^B ^C and John Clarke ^B

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Vic, Australia.

^B Eastern Maar Aboriginal Corporation, Warrnambool, Vic, Australia.

^C RMIT, School of Media and Communication, Melbourne, Vic, Australia.

^* Correspondence to: jack.pascoe@unimelb.edu.au

Handling Editor: Sarah Legge

Wildlife Research 51, WR24068 https://doi.org/10.1071/WR24068

Submitted: 26 April 2024 Accepted: 31 July 2024 Published: 30 September 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

In this paper, we highlight the poor health of the Australian environment and propose a new framing for how we care for Maar Country. We identify the basis for our Law/Lore of the Land and describe six guiding principles for our proposed biocultural landscape restoration approach. We also explore the way that our ancestors used cultural stories to guide the management of Country and we reflect on how we are adopting these same approaches today by giving culturally significant entities primacy in our approach to caring for Country. Finally, we extend an invitation to non-Aboriginal scientists, conservationists, and government agencies to work with us to care for Country, in a respectful and holistic manner.

Position statement

We, the authors of this paper, are all either Aboriginal Australians or employed by the Eastern Maar Aboriginal Corporation. We are all actively participating in the Pang-ngooteekeeya weeng malangeepa ngeeye project.

Keywords: biocultural landscapes, caring for Country, cultural burning, culturally significant entities, ecological restoration, ethical research, ethnozoology, indigenous cultural intellectual property, indigenous knowledge, traditional ecological knowledge.

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