Climate Exchange

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Indigenous stories and climate services

David Griggs, Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University; and Lee Joachim, Yorta Yorta Nation

he history of indigenous people in Australia is thought

to go back 40,000 to 45,000 years, although some esti-

mates have put the figure at up to 80,000 years before

European settlement. These people can claim to be the oldest

continuous living culture. The traditional aboriginal way of life

was nomadic, following the seasons and the food. With incred-

ible skill, aboriginal people became extremely well adapted

to the highly variable and often extremely harsh Australian

climate, learning to take care of sparse natural resources

whilst maintaining limited population growth suited to the

scarcity of those resources.

While aboriginal people only make up about 2.5 per cent of the

Australian population, they own or control about 20 per cent of the

land in Australia. Much of this land is located in remote parts of

the country, making indigenous Australians living there particularly

vulnerable to climate change. But equally, there are unprecedented

opportunities for indigenous people to offer climate services in

support of climate mitigation and adaptation through carbon

sequestration activities and changing land use practices.

Vulnerability to climate change

Indigenous Australians experience high levels of social disadvan-

tage and poor health compared to non-indigenous Australians,

making them disproportionately vulnerable to climate change.

Many indigenous communities, especially those in remote parts

of the country, have inadequate health and education services,

deficient infrastructure and housing and limited employment

opportunities. It is widely agreed that indigenous people will

be adversely impacted by increasing heat stress,

extreme weather events and increased disease. There

is also growing evidence that indigenous exposure

and sensitivity to climate change will be increased

because of these people’s high dependence on

climate-vulnerable economic activities connected to

the land, and that already inadequate infrastructure

and services will be adversely impacted by temper-

ature increases, sea level rise, storms and floods.

Thus the development of climate services targeted at

reducing the vulnerability of indigenous Australians

to climate change and increasing their capacity to

adapt should be a high priority.

Learning from indigenous connections to country

“To understand our law, our culture and our relation-

ship to the physical and spiritual world, you must begin

with land. Everything about aboriginal society is inex-

tricably woven with, and connected to, land. Culture is

the land, the land and spirituality of aboriginal people,

our cultural beliefs or reason for existence is the land.

You take that away and you take away our reason for

existence. We have grown that land up. We are dancing,

singing, and painting for the land. We are celebrating the

land. Removed from our lands, we are literally removed

from ourselves.”

Mick Dodson, former Aboriginal and Torres Strait

Islander Justice Commissioner

Aboriginal people have a fundamental spiritual

connection to the land, often expressed as ‘connec-

tion to country’. For aboriginal people the health of

land and water is central to their culture. Land is

their home and their mother and is imbued in their

culture. It gives them the responsibility to care for it

and its connections.

Land sustains aboriginal lives in every respect: spir-

itually, physically, socially and culturally. Through

this connection to country, aboriginal people have

developed a deep care for the land, only taking what

was necessary to support themselves and making

sure there was always enough left for the future.

In modern terminology this could be described as

sustainable land management in a highly variable

climate. This is in marked contrast to some of the

extremely unsustainable land management practices

that are currently commonplace across Australia and

worldwide, such as the destruction of forests in the

Amazon and Indonesia.

cosystems

Spiritual song of the Aborigine

I am a child of the Dreamtime People

Part of this Land, like the gnarled gumtree

I am the river, softly singing

Chanting our songs on my way to the sea

My spirit is the dust-devils

Mirages, that dance on the plain

I’m the snow, the wind and the falling rain

I’m part of the rocks and the red desert earth

Red as the blood that flows in my veins

I am eagle, crow and snake that glides

Thorough the rain-forest that clings to the mountainside

I awakened here when the Earth was new

There was emu, wombat, kangaroo

No other man of a different hue

I am this land

And this land is me

I am Australia.

Hyllus Maris, Yorta Yorta woman