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Emily
Burgueno calls them “sovereign burns.”
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It’s
the subversive act of simply identifying
a need in the landscape or the community
— maybe the community garden could use
some soil revitalization, or the oak
trees plagued with weevil pests could
use some fumigation — and tending to it
with cultural fire. No need for
permission.
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California
has made supporting Indigenous fire
stewardship a priority in recent years
to help address the state’s growing
wildfire crisis. But burning freely
across the landscape (with perhaps only
a phone call to the local land manager
or fire department to give them a heads
up) is still a dream, a long way off.
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California
outlawed
cultural burning practices at
statehood in 1850 and in most cases,
burning freely without permits and
approvals is still illegal. Even
recently, Burgueno, a cultural fire
practitioner and citizen of the Iipay
Nation of Santa Ysabel in San Diego
County, has seen local authorities
arrest an elder on arson charges for
using cultural fire in tending the land.
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It’s
a practice far older than prescribed
burning, the intentional fires typically
set and managed by U.S. government fire
personnel.
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With
the tradition comes wisdom: Through
joint trainings and burns, fire
officials versed in prescribed fire are
often delighted by the detailed
knowledge of fire’s role in an ecosystem
that cultural fire practitioners can
nonchalantly drop — for example, the
benefits of burning after bees
pollinate.
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While
prescription burns carried out by the
Forest Service often focus on
large-scale management goals, cultural
burns are an elegant dance, deeply in
tune with the individual species on the
landscape and the relationships they
have with each other and fire. Burning
is one of many tools tribes have to
shape the ecosystem and help it flourish
through the years.
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“It
is grounded in our creation stories, our
sacred beliefs and philosophy,” Burgueno
said. “It helps us understand how to be
a steward of the land, which requires us
to be a steward within ourselves — to
have a healthy body, mind, and spirit.”
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For
Don Hankins, a Miwok cultural fire
practitioner and a geography and
environmental studies professor at Chico
State, it’s this fundamental tie to
culture that makes the practice unique.
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The
way willows grow back after fire, for
example, “they’re long; they’re slender.
They’re more supple than if they were
not tended to with fire,” Hankins said.
“As a weaver, those are really important
characteristics.”
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The
state now sees its prohibitions,
enforced with violence, as wrong and has
taken significant steps in recent years
to address the barriers it created to
sovereign burning. In order to freely
practice, tribes need access to land,
permission to set fire and the capacity
to oversee the burn. But the solutions,
so far, are still piecemeal. They only
apply to certain land under certain
conditions.
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Hankins,
who started practicing cultural burning
with his family when he was about 4, has
made a practice of pushing the state and
federal government out of their comfort
zones. He, too, dreams of a day when a
burn is defined solely by the needs of
the land and its life.
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“The
atmospheric river is coming in, and we
know that once it dumps the rain and
snow ... we close out the fire season —
but what if we went out ahead of that
storm, and we lit fires and worked
through the ecosystems regardless of
ownership?” he said. “That’s the
long-range goal I have. In order to get
fire back in balance, first we have to
take some pretty bold steps.”
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More
recent wildfire news
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At
an October town meeting in Topanga, a
fire official with the Los Angeles
County Fire Department told
residents that, during a
wildfire, the department may order them
to ride out the blaze in their homes.
It’s part of an ongoing debate in
California about what to do when an
evacuation could take hours, but a fire
could reach a town in minutes.
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The
Los Angeles City Fire Department is
requesting a 15% increase in its budget
to support wildfire response, my colleague
Noah Goldberg reports. The
request includes funding for 179 new
firefighter recruits and a second hand
crew specializing in wildfire response.
LAFD’s union is also
proposing a ballot measure
for a half-cent sales tax to raise funds
for new fire stations and equipment.
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The
U.S. Forest Service completed prescribed
burns on more than 127,000 acres during
the government shutdown, the Hotshot Wake
Up reports, despite fears
the disruption would severely limit the
Forest Service’s ability to burn during
optimal fall weather conditions.
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A
few last things in climate news
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A
proposed pipeline could end California’s
status as a “fuel island,” connecting
the golden state’s isolated gasoline and
diesel markets with the rest of the
country, my colleague
Hayley Smith reports. The
state is grappling how to balance
consumer affordability with the
transition to clean energy, with the
upcoming closure of two major
refineries.
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The
Department of Energy is breaking up or
rebranding several key offices that
support the development of clean energy
technologies, Alexander C.
Kaufman reports for Heatmap News.
It’s unclear how the restructuring will
impact the Department’s work.
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During
the COP30 climate conference in Brazil —
which produced a last-minute
incremental deal that did
not directly mention fossil fuels — the
South American nation recognized 10 new
Indigenous territories, the BBC’s
Mallory Moench and Georgina Rannard
report. The hundreds of
thousands of acres they span will now
have their culture and environment
legally protected. Although, the
protections are not always enforced.
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This
is the latest edition of Boiling
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more wildfire news, follow @nohaggerty
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