Fire Country is a powerful account from Indigenous land management expert Victor Steffensen on how the revival of cultural burning practices, and improved 'reading' of Country, could help to restore the Australian landscape and manage the environmental challenges it faces.

Cultural burning has been drastically restricted by western-influenced fire management around the world, with the role of Indigenous peoples in shaping healthy ecosystems being downplayed or even dismissed. Written in the context of extreme wildfire events raveging the Australian hinterland, Fire Country calls for a critical revision of Australia's land management policies, and their role in the erasure of indigenous led management across Country. The book charts Steffensen’s life journey, learning and subsequently spreading traditional ecological and cultural knowledge, as a descendent of the Tagalaka people from Northern Queensland, Australia.

Steffensen’s account of First Nations led cultural burning practices is one that fundamentally challenges western ontologies and historical approaches to environmental management. Throughout the book he addresses notions of healing (what western knowledge systems refer to as restoration), treating environmental damage and distress through the prism of animism. In turn, shining light on the epistemological shifts made possible through a First Nations led green transition, beyond the immediate and well tested ecological benefits.

This text was the result of online research and a reading of the publication, borrowing from the publisher's official description and a report written by Paulo M. Fernandes.