Tomorrow’s Country: Practice-oriented principles for Indigenous cultural fire research in south-east Australia

First Nations peoples are revitalising diverse cultural fire practices and knowledge. Institutional and societal recognition of these practices is growing. Yet there has been little academic research on these fire practices in south-east Australia, let alone research led by Aboriginal people. We are a group of Indigenous and settler academics, practitioners, and experts focused on cultural fire management in the Victorian Loddon Mallee region. Using interviews and workshops, we facilitated knowledge sharing and discussion. In this paper, we describe three practice-oriented principles to develop and maintain collaborations across Aboriginal groups, researchers, and government in the Indigenous-led revitalisation of fire on Country: relationships (creating reciprocity and trust), Country (working with place and people), and power (acknowledging structures and values). Collaborations based on these principles will be unique to each temporal, social, cultural, and geographic context. Considering our findings, we acknowledge the challenges that exist and the opportunities that emerge to constructively hold space to grow genuinely collaborative research that creates change. We suggest that the principles we identify can be applied by anyone wanting to form genuine collaborations around the world as the need for social–ecological justice grows.     

Metastatic carcinoma: palaeopathology and differential diagnosis

A 62 year‐old contemporary white female diagnosed with metastatic carcinoma of the breast was examined after skeletonisation. She never received chemical, hormonal or radiation therapy. Because of the confirmed clinical diagnosis, lack of medicinal intervention, and quality of bone preservation, this specimen provides a comparative standard for metastatic carcinoma and differential diagnosis of idiopathic dry bone pathology. We detail gross and radiographic bone response to this disease and differentially diagnose the skeleton against Langerhans cell histiocytosis and multiple myeloma, conditions capable of modifying bone in characteristic patterns that may mimic metastatic carcinoma. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.