Intergenerational Learning: Teachings of the Flame Tree

The Flame Tree teachings unfolded a culturally grounded journey that transformed the removal of a tree deemed unsafe into an exploration of intergenerational connection, storytelling, and reciprocity. By moving beyond institutional compliance, the project nourished a collaboration between Indigenous and Western knowledge systems. Situated within scholarship on Indigenous methodologies, more-than-human geographies, and Country-centered approaches, this paper examines how ceremony and embodied learning track a tree’s transformation into cultural practice and ecological renewal. Key themes include reciprocal relationships between knowledge systems, intergenerational continuity and reciprocity, imagination as perception, the responsibilities of protocol and permission, embodied learning through ceremony, spatial and cultural representation, and story as living. The study demonstrates how moments of loss can facilitate care and teaching, illustrating that caring for Country is carried through lived relationships. Flame Tree still gives through clapsticks, sculptures, and the reach of young saplings, creating new life and teachings for generations to come.