Healing Butchulla Country

Land, Sea, Sky

Details

Healing Butchulla Country: Land, Sea, Sky documents a partnership where reciprocal healing flows in both directions - from people to place, and place back to people. Set across ten islands in Queensland's Great Sandy Strait, this film follows the collaboration between Burnett Mary Regional Group (BMRG) and Butchulla Native Title Aboriginal Corporation (BNTAC) as they restore landscapes that have been actively managed by Butchulla hands for millennia. Through cultural heritage monitoring, traditional cool burning, and pest management, the project reconnects Butchulla people - especially young people - with Country that their ancestors have called home for thousands of generations. This is not a story about fixing broken land. It's about remembering that these islands were never meant to be left alone, and that the people who belong to them are essential to their survival. As one Butchulla voice in the film declares: "When our people are healing, Country is healing."

CATEGORIES

Cultural Heritage

Place

Year

2025

Human Terrain spent two days in May embedded with the team during baseline monitoring across the islands, documenting what happens when Western science meets age-old science. Our cameras followed surveyors through woody thickets choking out native flora, captured the identification of stone tools marking millennia of occupation, and rode the waters of a strait where forest meets mangroves meets coastal heath in a stunning convergence. We filmed an archaeologist explaining how Butchulla dreaming stories serve as predictive models for finding cultural heritage, watched young Butchulla crew members experience their first boat trips to islands their ancestors knew intimately, and witnessed the patient work of collecting data that will guide upcoming cool burns and restoration efforts.

What emerged was a portrait of partnership at its most effective - not as a bureaucratic arrangement, but as a genuine meeting of knowledge systems. The archaeologist spoke of needing to "superimpose" his discipline over dreaming stories to truly understand Country. Scientists reflected on how Western approaches "remove the human element" from landscapes that have always been human. A Butchulla ranger explained how knowledge passed down from old people doesn't make sense until you're older, standing on the same ground they stood on. These weren't just conversations - they were demonstrations of a methodology, showing how intangible cultural values and hard ecological data strengthen each other when given equal weight.