The group started seven years ago under the name ‘Wanyarra Woka’, a Yorta Yorta word meaning active country, which targeted the idea of taking action in looking after country.
It was founded by First Nations leaders Michael Bourke, Amos Atkinson, Kalun Atkinson, Kayla Baksh and Neil Morris.
The name was recently changed to Wulumbarra and its meaning embodies the vision of the community group and gives young people an opportunity to work on the land, Mr Bourke said.
“Wulumbarra means large communal fire bringing everyone to the fire, talking and yarning and managing different issues,” he said.
“We have highly incarcerated young people, high suicide and we provide them with different opportunities to manage them by looking after the country.
“We provide young people an opportunity to be closing the gap where we’ll be stopping certain young fellas going to jail.
“They can come out and do land management, and work on country with us to help maintain the country.”
Mr Morris also said the reasoning behind the group was also about re-establishing their rights to the land as Yorta Yorta people.
“Part of the reason why Wulumbarra exists, is because it’s about sovereign identity as well, and that sovereign identity didn't stop just because different constructs of ways of living came upon this land,” he said.
Mr Bourke said that a big part of Wulumbarra was about teaching First Nations youth good land management skills using various traditional practices to help create a sustainable future.
“We have people within our landscape that conduct these different ways of managing country through reading the landscape, looking at what's the right time, you know, what birds are breeding,” he said.
“The country was made this way, in a sustainable way and it’s up to councils and governments to support Indigenous-led projects and communities to bring all that back to life and hopefully we can be here for another 60,000 years.’’
Often group members meet at Kaieltheban Park on land that was once theirs.
The park area holds a rich history of the Yorta Yorta people, their way of living and managing land.
It is here they have been given the space for their first dance ground where they often engage in cultural song and dance.
The group runs various activities such as tree planting, picking up rubbish, cultural burning, artefact and song and dress-wear making and cultural dances but is hoping to expand this in the future.
Revegetation programs and further cultural burning are just some of the practices that Wulumbarra is aiming to work on with the hope of receiving back the land at Kaieltheban Park one day.
“Some of the barriers for our group is access to country and for cultural ceremony and land management activities is that we have no land to do this,” Mr Bourke said.
“If the council or government could donate a parcel of land back to our group to do some of the work we do, it would be beneficial for all the community, for cultural eco-tourism and to share one of the oldest cultures in the world such as a place like the sandhills in the Mooroopna Gemmill Swamp KidsTown area.”
Being connected to the land is what fuels the need to look after it, according to Mr Morris.
This is one of the reasons why as a First Nations person, he feels strongly about environmental conservation and why he encourages others to reach out and work with his group.
“We just encourage everybody to think about what that would mean for them living in this country and if they're already interested, they can reach out to Wulumbarra to further have some of these discussions and investigate ways that we can possibly build some really beautiful things together and collaboratively,” Mr Morris said.
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