Fire Country with Victor Steffensen

Delving deep into the Australian landscape and the environmental challenges we face, Fire Country: How Indigenous Fire Management Could Help Save Australia, is a powerful manifesto on how the revival of cultural burning practices, and improved 'reading' of country, could help to restore our land.

Victor Steffensen is an Indigenous writer, filmmaker, musician and consultant. He is a descendant of the Tagalaka people through his mother’s connections from the Gulf Country of north Queensland. Much of Victor's work over the past 27 years has been based on the arts and reviving traditional knowledge values – particularly traditional burning – through mentoring and leadership, as well as on-ground training with Aboriginal communities and many non-Indigenous Australians.

He is a co-founder of Firesticks, an Indigenous-led organisation that aims to re-invigorate the use of cultural burning. Victor's first book, Fire Country, was published in 2020 in the wake of Australia's worst bushfires and has sold over 13,000 copies since its release.

*Image credit: Gerry Turpin