“Sick Land Means Sick People”: How Healing Country Is Healing First Nations Futures

By the time she was 15, Rachel Steffensen, a proud Tagalaka woman, was waking up at 5am to fry 150 eggs for Elders, fire practitioners, and community members at the National Indigenous Fire Workshop, all preparing to head out on Country for a day of cultural burning. It was her first official job at the National Indigenous Fire Workshop, as a kitchenhand. And while it wasn’t glamorous, it was formative. “The year after I was promoted to Sous chef,” she laughs. “That felt good.”

But Rachel’s work with Firesticks — an Indigenous-led organisation reviving traditional practices — didn’t begin there, not really. “I’ve grown up around this since I was young,” she says. “I’d be on Country with my Dad, always ears open listening to the importance of land management, specifically with fire.” That listening never stopped.

Now, decades later, she’s the Fundraising and Community Relations Lead supporting a national network of communities. The job title may have changed, but the purpose hasn’t. “I was always eager just to immerse myself in this space in any job I was given,” she says. “They all taught me something valuable.”

At the core of Firesticks is an understanding that this work isn’t new, it’s ancient. “We didn’t build this idea,” Rachel says, referring to the belief that land and people heal together. “This is what has always been told through the landscapes for thousands of years, before colonisation.”

When cultural fire is used properly and that is carefully, knowledgeably, and respectfully, healing ripples out. “We demonstrate the practical role of Indigenous knowledge and practices, such as cultural fire, in restoring the health and resilience of landscapes,” Rachel explains. “We need to be activating this methodology to address the urgent environmental climate challenges we are all facing.”

But this healing isn’t just environmental, it’s spiritual. Cultural fire is not about control or conquest. It’s about listening. Reading the signs. Watching the animals. Understanding what the trees are doing. “We are reading Country and Country is telling us what it needs,” Rachel says. “The landscape has to be ready depending on time, weather, and what the animals are doing. That’s what my Dad taught us.”

It’s this deep relational knowledge — generational knowledge — that sets cultural burning apart from Western land management. “The Western approach can be very reactive,” she explains. “Always focusing on the aftermath after the fire has ripped through Country and burnt it all down. Cultural burning is a proactive approach.”

For Rachel, legacy is lived. It’s felt. It’s passed on in the kitchen, on the fireline, through laughter and listening. “It’s so incredibly important to me and our family,” she says of her role in carrying forward traditional knowledge.

“I look at my children and I hope when they’re older they can feel what I feel, not the hurting for Country part or the worry,” she says, “but the good stuff. All the happy feelings. Seeing Country healthy and resilient. Seeing mob on Country claiming back our identity with the landscapes…”

This is what generational knowledge really looks like: not just remembering but living and passing it forward. “When we’re back on Country, looking after it the way our old people taught us, something powerful happens,” Rachel says. “We start to heal. We bring language back to life. We practice ceremony. We pass on knowledge. We strengthen our communities.”

When First Nations people are disconnected from Country, it doesn’t just harm the environment. It harms spirit, identity, culture. "Sick land means sick people," she says. “When we take people away from caring for Country, it doesn’t just hurt the land, it hurts us too. Our wellbeing is tied to the land, always has been.”

That pain in the breakdown of culture, the effects of colonisation, the generational trauma doesn’t vanish on its own. “You can see the damage in the disconnection from culture, the breakdown of people and communities, and how that pain gets passed down through the generations.”

But connection is healing. And healing is reclamation. “It’s not just about looking after the land, it’s about the land looking after all of us.”

Rachel is generous with her knowledge, but firm in her call to action. Supporting First Nations healing isn’t about parachuting in with a project plan and a budget, it’s about changing the system itself.

“Now more than ever, Indigenous people need to be at the forefront and leading the way when it comes to healing Country, tackling climate change, and creating real, lasting benefits for both Country and people,” she says.

That means trusting thousands of years of knowledge and doing more than just ticking a box. “Too often, we’re still being boxed in. Stuck in funding models that only see us through a narrow lens. Tied to rigid grant rules, work plans that don’t let us adapt, and research frameworks that don’t respect our right to hold and protect our own knowledge.” So what’s the alternative?

“This is your moment to step up,” Rachel says to funders, researchers, policymakers and allies. “Advocate for systems that support Indigenous leadership, not just include it. Make space for flexibility, for self-determination, for true partnership.”

Because if there’s one thing we should all be listening to, it’s this: “If we’re serious about healing Country for our children, we need to start by listening to the people who’ve always known how.”