Leeton Lee is a Thungutti Bundjalung Mualgal man. He’s spent years learning about his indigenous culture and is now on a mission to ensure this knowledge is passed on to future generations.
“It’s a bad thing for us to pass away holding knowledge that isn’t shared,” he explained.
“I’ve spent 15 years learning and building my cultural knowledge and if I die with it, it’s all for nothing.”
In 2018 Leeton went to his first cultural fire workshop at Tabulam in NSW which became the start of his journey into working as a cultural fire practitioner.
“It was a big eye opener. It was the first time I heard someone speak about our landscapes in such depth and understanding,” he said.
Since then, he’s been honing his skills in this complex area through his work at Firesticks Alliance, a national organisation working with traditional owner groups around Australia and the world to help rebuild their cultural fire knowledge.
Leeton said historically people were stopped from practicing cultural fire burning and, as a result much of the knowledge was not handed on.
“Cultural fire burning is crucial to our country. It makes the landscapes more resilient but separates each of the places according to their soils and vegetation and prevents the build-up of flammable fuels,” he said.
“With the change of management techniques and practices now, our landscapes are very sick.”
He believes many of the fires that rage yearly around the country could be prevented if cultural fire burning was widely adopted.
“We are at a critical point where if we don’t start to see some changes on our landscape, we will see extinction rates at a scale people have not seen before,” Leeton stressed.
In 2012 a spinal injury led him to look for a change. He stumbled upon Tamborine Mountian, as where a young boy in foster care he was helping lived and began exploring the area.
“We knew immediately it was the place to be when we walked from one section of Main Street to the other and within that time four people said ‘G’day’. You don’t get that community at Mt Gravatt,” he smiled.
“I’ve seen the community go through a lot of events: the storms and bush fires; seeing how the community comes together in those times.
“We are our own isolated community, and I like that. We are not just another suburb of a continuous stream of houses.”
Leeton was instrumental in the Chainsaw Warrior clean up following the Christmas 2023 storms.
For close to eight weeks he gave up his days to help people desperate to restore their properties.
“I have the mindset that if something needs to be done then I’ll just do it myself if there’s no action where there should be,” he said.
In 2018 after his first cultural fire workshop, he joined the Tamborine Mountain Rural Fire Brigade and following the 2019 fires did some cultural fire burning in Guanaba with them and traditional owners.
Leeton fears fires are still a risk around the mountain, particularly in the national parks because of the fuel loading left from the storms.
“In January/February and March last year we should have been burning all over the mountain,” he said.
“I don’t want to scare people, but I think it’s a reality of not cleaning up.”
The limited spare time Leeton has he uses to increase his traditional knowledge and admits he loves to tinker.
“I ride my bike and go hunting and have begun doing more with traditional medicines,” he said, explaining that he hopes this can be used to support indigenous communities to make landscapes financial and sustainable.
“I want to help people to connect and respect landscapes to leave our grandchildren an environment will not an environmental ill.”
