The Bunya Cloak project: understanding the role of Culturally Modified Trees (CMT) on Yung Balug Djandak, central Victoria

While bunya (possum) and macropod (kangaroo and wallaby) skin cloaks have been made and worn by First Nations people in south-eastern Australia for millennia, we know very little about how and when they were physically produced, or if the cloaks were traded and exchanged
with other Nations prior to colonisation. For the Yung Balug First Nations people, who are the caretakers of the spiritual and sacred trees in Boort in central Victoria, bunya cloaks represent a significant ongoing connection to their stories, their Old People, and Djandak (Country). In this preliminary paper we introduce the Bunya Cloak Project and discuss how we are connecting
contemporary cloak-making with deeper histories, by weaving together Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), ethnography, and archaeology. Through working together, we are developing a framework that combines Indigenous knowledge systems and western archaeology. This is important in helping to decolonise Australian archaeology and enabling us to better understand the important relationship between people, animals, and Yung Balug Djandak. While this collaborative project is ongoing, preliminary research indicates that bunya cloak production has always been culturally significant, and in precolonial times involved large ceremonies that likely went for several weeks, with strategic forward planning required to hunt and harvest the bunya and prepare their skins.
Another important aspect of this project is to develop a methodology which will enable Yung Balug to record the CMTs in high resolution detail, so that they will have a permanent digital record of these important but vulnerable, cultural trees.