Wreck Bay Bherwerre Rangers and Wreck Bay Cultural Heritage Team are all Traditional Owners of the Jervis Bay Territory. We are working with our community to collect, protect and share our language and knowledge for plants and animals by collecting yarns across the generations. This is building skills and confidence in knowledge sharing for all ages, and builds the succession pathways for these stories for our future knowledge holders.
Wreck Bay has been contaminated with “forever” chemicals used for fire suppression - Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in the 1970s and 80s. This has a long term – forever - impacts on Wreck Bay people, Country, plants and animals. It has restricted Wreck Bay people’s access to their own lands and means they have had to adapt to new way of teaching and sharing. Stories from now on will be important links to Culture and Country that can no longer be accessed because of contamination, and collecting stories across the generations will reflect the state of Wreck Bay before and after the contamination.
Wreck Bay Ranger and Cultural Heritage Team are collecting and sharing language and knowledge across four age demographics – kids (9 to 12) youth (13 to 18), adult (19 to 49), and Elders (50+). They are accessing kids and youth through schools programs, adults through community consultation and groups such as men’s, women’s and Elder committees.
These stories reflect pre and post Wreck Bay contamination and are important tools for continuing inter-generational caring for Country, land and sea.
We are working with the Atlas of Living Australia’s Indigenous Ecological Knowledge Program to link our language and knowledge to western science, as a collection of online and hardcopy resources to carry our stories into the future.