A new bush tucker book educating people on the plants of Birriliburu will hit the shelves soon.
The Birriliburu Traditional Owners are the Martu People, whose traditional, ecological and cultural knowledge stretches back more than 40,000 years.
The Birriliburu Indigenous Protected Area covers an area of 6,600,000 hectares in the Western Desert region of Western Australia
Rangers are determined to continue to protect and preserve the plants, animals and landscape of the culturally and ecologically significant region.
Sisters Lena and Caroline Long have been working as Birriliburu Rangers since 2013 and have seen immense growth throughout the decade.
They travelled to Perth for the Biodiversity Conference 2023: Listening To Country to speak on right-way science projects and the Birriliburu Indigenous Protected Area.
"In the plan we talk about things we care about and the things we worry about and what we are going to do," said Caroline.
"Our plan is as a part of our Birriliburu program, we decided to make a bush tucker book, we've planned it since 2013 to make our bush tucker book, so that we can sell in the future."
The sisters presented a book that the Birriliburu rangers had been working on for the past 10 years, in the book it has a collection of information and photos during ranger trips in the country, recorded traditional uses for the 60 plants, Martu names, stories and quotes.
"We do the right way science from Birriliburu, We work together as one, We bring together Martu way and white fell away," said Lena.
Working closely with scientists the rangers took plant samples to Perth to get the formal scientific names for them and which were later uploaded to the online database.
Over the years ranger groups of the country started to focus on the book, workshops both big and small were held in Wiluna and the surrounding area. More than 80 Martu people contributed to the knowledge in the book.
"We had other people involved in some of the book... we had kids from the school come to listen to what we do and help them to know the names of the each plants that we have in our program to make the bush tucker book," said Lena.
Another feature to the book is on the Birriliburu website where through the code in the book people can listen to the correct pronunciation of the words from the Martu language, spoken by Martu people.
"We have been working for 10 years on keeping this book together. Pretty soon it'll be had on sale for anyone who wants to go look and see what we've been working on," said Caroline.
The sisters said they learned a lot about the maintenance of this book, making sure they worked closely with Martu people and taking their time to get things right.
