The Fire Commons

This book explores the multispecies dimensions of First Nations burning practices and shows how these integrate with Aboriginal ontologies to resist the ideological and structural violence of colonization.

Under the shadow of climate-driven catastrophes, cultural burning is undergoing a resurgence as a tradition-based remedy to contemporary ecological breakdown. However, while colonial states offer support for cultural burning programmes, they simultaneously threaten to undermine their ideological foundations. This book describes a world of relational, multispecies land management in which Indigenous relations with land challenge the colonial triumvirate of modernity, state, and capitalism. By telling the stories of these human/animal entanglements it suggests pathways towards democratizing fire so that land management can be truly decolonized.

Serving as an intervention in contemporary environmental discourse, advocating for a more holistic and relational understanding of fire in the Anthropocene, this book will appeal to policymakers, conservationists, and researchers in the fields of environmental sciences, ecology, human geography, Indigenous studies, and posthumanism.