There are certain times when we are not allowed to eat fish, turtle meat or eggs, wallaby, emu or other red meat. If we don't follow this rule our brothers or husbands might have an accident in the bush or out hunting in the sea. When women go digging for yams in the jungle they are careful to leave the bottom part of the yam in the ground so it will grow again. Then when they go back next year the yams will still be there. We are also careful about bushfires.
People burn the bush soon after the wet season.
They do this to make it easier to hunt animals and find honey and to help clear the bush for the new plants to grow. When people burn at the wrong time they can start big bushfires which make the landowners very upset. It was this inherited association with a particular country and its sacred sites, Dreaming tracks, stories, totems and other features, which in pre-colonial Australia provided Aboriginal peoples with their individual and group identities. The severing of that relationship to a particular country, as happened across much of Australia during the colonial period and into recent times, denied Aboriginal peoples a place in their kinship system, access to resources and their basis of spiritual belief. The importance of maintaining a connection with their traditional country continues to be of fundamental importance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' identity and wellbeing across much of Australia today.