Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe: Indigenous care for country could rescue us all

In this extract from a new book, the co-authors look to lessons of the past to examine the best way forward in land management after the fires of Black Summer

In Aboriginal thought, Country is a term which embraces everything spiritual and material. In our book Country: Future Fire, Future Farming, we illustrate its range and power by showing how Australia's first peoples managed plants and animals, and how they managed and used fire.

We demonstrate the impressive and extensive skills and knowledge the First Australians, the people of 1788" used to manage land. Together - Bill writing about fire, and Bruce about plants and animals - we show how much those who invaded after 1788 ignored and degraded those skills.