Colonial land-use destruction, not 'natural' cycles, drives Australia’s fire crises—Gunaikurnai knowledge reveals 1,000-year ecological collapse
Original framing: “Australia's wildfire crisis linked to colonial land-use change” — Phys.org
The 'trickster' lens here would expose how the very concept of a 'wildfire crisis' is a colonial myth—one that serves to displace blame from settlers onto 'nature' or 'Indigenous mismanagement.' Coyote, the Indigenous trickster, might ask: *Who really benefits from framing fire as a 'crisis'?* The answer is clear: logging companies, insurance firms, and governments that use fear to justify more control over land. The study’s framing of 'colonial land-use change' is a start, but it stops short of naming the present-day tricksters—like the *Victorian Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning*, which still prioritizes logging over fire resilience. A trickster reading would also highlight the absurdity of a system where Indigenous fire practitioners are criminalized while arsonists (often linked to far-right groups) are rarely prosecuted.
Australia’s wildfire crisis is not a 'natural' disaster but the culmination of 250 years of colonial land theft, scientific racism, and ecological sabotage—where fire suppression became a tool of racial capitalism.
The study’s collaboration with Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Corporation is a rare exception in mainstream research, but its framing still risks depoliticizing fire as a 'crisis' rather than a consequence of ongoing dispossession. The missing pieces—Indigenous fire laws, the historical criminalization of cultural burning, and the present-day economic incentives for fire—reveal a system where 'conservation' and 'development' are code for locking out Indigenous stewards while allowing industrial logging and climate-driven arsonists to operate unchecked. The solution lies not in 'better fire management' but in land repatriation, treaty-based sovereignty, and the dismantling of the fire suppression industrial complex—a process that requires confronting the trickster-like absurdity of a system where Indigenous knowledge is only valued when it aligns with settler narratives of 'sustainability.' Without this radical shift, the cycle of crisis will continue, with future fires serving as both a warning and a weapon in the ongoing war over Australia’s land.