Assimilating Nature
The Bunya Diaspora
Keywords:
Bunya pine, Indigenous peoples, traditional environmental knowledge, Western systems, assimilation, bunya diasporaAbstract
The bunya pine has a special meaning for Queenslanders, being endemic to the Bunya Mountains and Blackall Ranges in the South-East corner of the state, with a small stand in North Queensland. The bunya holds particular significance for local Indigenous peoples. They are bound to the tree through custodial rights and obligations and systems of traditional environmental knowledge that incorporate ‘classification …empirical observations of the local environment… [and] self-management that governs resource use’, built up through generations of interaction with the bunya forests. Indigenous groups celebrated their spiritual links to the bunya pine in large seasonal gatherings where they feasted on its edible nuts and performed ceremonies, adjudicated disputes and traded goods. The bunya's majestic height, striking unique silhouette, dark green foliage, unique botanical features and Indigenous associations held a fascination for colonial artists, natural scientists, entrepreneurs and gardeners. Over the years they assumed custodianship of the bunya pine, assimilating it into Western scientific, economic, legal, horticultural, environmental and symbolic systems, which replaced Indigenous custodial rights, obligations and knowledge. The spectacular bunya gatherings were mythologised in colonial writings as mystical, primeval ceremonies and barbaric rituals. Despite ‘fierce and actively hostile tribal resistance’ to colonisation of their lands, Indigenous groups were progressively driven out of the bunya forests. Empty landscapes left by the retreating forests – victims of timber felling and land clearing – came to symbolise the vanishing ceremonies and dwindling Aboriginal populations of South-East Queensland. While surviving Indigenous groups were swept into centralised reserves and settlements from the late nineteenth century, so too the bunya trees were cordoned off in 1908, for their own protection, in Queensland's second national park at the Bunya Mountains, where they stood ‘like the spirits of the departed original Queenslanders, mourning over the days which are forever gone’.
References
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22,500 acres of land in the Bunya Mountains were reserved as a national park in 1908, the second such declaration in Queensland.
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I am grateful to Dargavel, John, President of the Australian Forestry Society for suggesting this term.
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The Project has also published a collection of articles about the bunya pine edited by Anna Haebich, On the Bunya Trail Special Edition of Queensland Review, November, 2002. The On the Bunya Trail Project was jointly hosted by the Queensland Studies Centre at Griffith University which promotes research about the state through projects, seminars, conferences and publications, notably the Queensland Review, and Global ArtsLink, the award winning regional art gallery and museum in Ipswich that combines art, social history and new technologies to explore the region. The Project was funded by Queensland Heritage Trails Network, a joint initiative of the Queensland Government and the Commonwealth Government, established in 2000 thorough the Federation Fund and working partnerships with local government authorities and local councils to create and link 43 heritage places celebrating the state's unique history, culture, and natural features.
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[Canberra tree]
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The symposium was hosted by the Queensland Studies Centre and Global ArtsLink as part of the On the Bunya Trail Project. The papers were published in A. Haebich (ed.) On the Bunya Trail Special Edition of Queensland Review, (2002).
Jerome, P., ‘Boobarran Ngummin: the Bunya Mountains’, On the Bunya Trail Special Edition of Queensland Review, Haebich, A. (ed.) (2002): 4–5.
