The recent development of a new sub-discipline of linguistics known as 'documentary linguistics' has placed a new focus on the recording of knowledge that speakers of endangered languages have across a range of semantic fields, including those in the natural sciences. The recording of Indigenous ecological knowledge is not new in Australia, but its application to land management has only recently been considered with any seriousness. The issue of Aboriginal burning practices is now (again) a rather poignant case in point. Part of the problem has been the reluctance of Western science to engage with the tools that non-Western world views offer in relation to how the natural world is conceived. An understanding of how Aboriginal languages encode ecological knowledge can make a contribution to the kind of land management programs which are continuing to appear and attract young Aboriginal people, especially in northern and central Australia. I discuss how the maintenance of Aboriginal languages and collaborations between linguists and land management or 'ranger' programs can be of benefit to Aboriginal people working in this field and potentially to the lands they are seeking to manage.

Murray Garde (School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne)