Indigenous organisations need more support to respond to climate change, and the disasters it causes

2025 is merely six weeks old, and yet multiple disaster events have unfolded, and continue to unfold, throughout Australia.

Fires in western Victoria have scorched hundreds of hectares of forests and resulted in the evacuation of residents and tourists. Flooding in North Queensland has impacted multiple communities, smashing roads and bridges, disrupting power supply and interrupting transport and logistics. Elsewhere, hikers were evacuated from Cradle Mountain National Park in Tasmania because of fires, and a slow moving tropical gave way to a severe cyclone in the Pilbara region of WA. As of publication of this piece, Tropical Cyclone Alfred continues to grow in strength off the Queensland coast, with prediction it will make landfall in central Queensland next week. 

As with previous disaster events – 2019-20 bushfires, the 2022 Lismore and northern rivers floods, and the 2022-23 Victorian and South Australian floods – these unfolding environmental disasters continue to disproportionately impact Indigenous peoples and communities.

Within the fires in Victoria, the flooding emergency in Northern Queensland, and the cyclone in WA, Indigenous communities have been heavily impacted.

The extreme flooding in Northern Queensland saw the power cut off to Palm Island. The isolated nature of the Island means that getting equipment to repair infrastructure, and delivering fresh produce to the Island remains difficult. Northern Peninsula area Seisia is also experiencing telecommunication outages for reasons unknown.

The fires in Gariwerd (Grampians National Park) in western Victoria have impacted areas of cultural significance to traditional owner groups. At the heart of the fire there were fears for the safety of the largest concentration of rock art in Victoria.

Beyond the immediate and observable threats and impacts, Indigenous community controlled organisations, ranger groups, and health services continue to respond, providing relief to communities, communicating to residents, caring for elders and families, and conducting needs assessments for both people and the Country.

Indigenous-led solutions

In Cardwell, the Girringun Aboriginal Corporation has been coordinating local responses, with ranger groups providing relief to communities. While in Victoria, Barengi Gadjin Land Council has been communicating with traditional owners and assisting authorities in the response to the fires. 

In Western Australia, local organisations such as the Ngarluma Yindjibarndi Foundation Ltd. supported culturally appropriate communication and provided important advice to emergency service agencies who were evacuating residents. This was particularly critical given the time of year when many groups are on-Country for ceremonial business. 

This work is notable and deserves to be recognised. It is time this recognition is met with adequate and appropriate funding and resourcing from governments and emergency service agencies.

In 2024, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) commissioned an independent review of commonwealth disaster funding. The authors of the review made extensive note of the role that Indigenous groups and the community organisations play in responding to major disasters. The Colvin Review recognises that Western frameworks dictate how major disaster events are managed, and these frameworks discriminate against Indigenous peoples: 

“To accurately describe and in turn, improve disaster funding outcomes for First Nations communities, requires acknowledgement that emergency response systems have been designed with Western frameworks at their centre.”

Indigenous people turn to their own organisations in times of crisis, and these organisations should be integrated into emergency management arrangements. This includes, the Colvin Review states, providing adequate and fit-for-purpose funding and resources: 

“Effectively integrating the needs, perspectives and solutions of First Nations communities is crucial for the Commonwealth to systematically identify the risk profile, active capacity and capability of communities; to then resource them appropriately to play a role in effective disaster management services.”

The events in western Victoria, north Queensland, and Western Australia, demonstrate, once more, how vital Indigenous organisations are in supporting communities during major environmental disasters.

There is an extraordinary capacity for leadership embedded into the cultural and governing fabric of Indigenous community organisations, and this is a strategic asset to emergency and recovery agencies whose resources are often overwhelmed in major catastrophic events.

As these events transition between response, relief, and longer-term recovery, it is vital that Indigenous groups are at the decision making table.

Indigenous values and interests, whether social, cultural, heritage, economic, or other, cannot be retrospectively applied to disaster recovery processes, they must be central and within them. 

Like all disasters there are opportunities in the recovery and rebuild, and these opportunities must be shared with Indigenous groups. Indigenous outcomes must be driven by Indigenous communities through their local organisations.

Talking about Indigenous communities is not the same thing as talking to them. 

As it has been in the past, so it is now in the present, that Indigenous peoples and Country are bearing the brunt of climate change.

It is time that Indigenous efforts to support communities, protect cultural heritage, and repair Country are centred in disaster recovery. To not do this would be to purposefully entrench Indigenous disadvantage, again, and miss important opportunities to harness the strengths of communities to support whole of Country recovery efforts.