Indigenous stewardship of forests topic of Feb. 7 Oregon State Science Pub
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Indigenous stewardship of Pacific Northwest forests as a way of increasing forests’ climate resiliency, particularly related to wildfires, will be the topic of Oregon State University’s Science Pub on Feb. 7.
Cristina Eisenberg, a community ecologist and associate dean for inclusive excellence and director of Tribal initiatives in Oregon State’s College of Forestry, and Ashley Russell, a faculty research assistant who works with Eisenberg, will give the talk at 6 p.m. at the Old World Deli in Corvallis. It can be viewed in person or online.
Sunriver summit focuses on Indigenous knowledge of forest health, responsible use of fire
Inside the Homestead Conference Hall at Sunriver Resort on Wednesday, six Native Americans chanted and drummed at decibel levels so high, the windows shook.
The powerful performance by the Mountain Top Singers of the Paiute-Shoshone Tribe kicked off two days of panel discussions, networking events and cultural celebration for tribal and nontribal guests at a learning summit.
Leaders and youth representatives from 17 tribes in the Pacific Northwest were involved in the event. Participants focused on ways to improve the ecological health of Pacific Northwest forests, mainly with the responsible use of fire.
Federal money will support Native American burn practices in Oregon’s oak habitats
A project incorporating traditional Native American management practices for oak habitat restoration in Oregon has been awarded $9.23 million. The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service awarded the money, which will go to the Oregon Agricultural Trust and its partners.
The traditional management practices include setting fire to the landscape in order to rejuvenate certain plants, eradicate pests, and reduce slash and debris, commonly known as “cultural burns.”
Fire as medicine: Using fire to manage forests, prevent catastrophic wildfires in the Northwest
Indigenous communities in the region, including Reed’s, hope in turn that the tribal approach of setting beneficial fires will become a major facet of the Northwest Forest Plan’s update – and a way for people to reconnect with the land they inhabit.“We as humans have a responsibility to the landscape,” Reed said. “We’ve had a disconnect with the reciprocal relationship with the landscape and now we’re starting to feel the consequences.”
FireGeneration wants young people to help shape wildfire policies
The FireGen cohort believes that getting more young and Indigenous people involved in developing wildfire policies can increase support for proactive tactics like prescribed burns. It’s a shift that Tim Ingalsbee, an instructor at the University of Oregon and a former wildland firefighter, said he’s noticed among his students in recent years.
“Young people want to get involved in putting good fire on the ground,” said Ingalsbee. “Thirty years ago, no one asked me that. They all wanted to be firefighters.”
What if Indigenous women ran controlled burns?
It was Saturday, a hot one. In the remote mountains of Northern California, a group of mostly Indigenous women took a break from conducting prescribed burns. Some sat on mats in the early October shade, pounding woodwardia fern, splitting maidenhair ferns and weaving the stems into baskets, while others stood at a stump by the fire pit, using a wooden paddle to stir hot rocks into a big pot of acorn soup, steaming it from within. Salmon heads and fillets smoked on stakes around a fire pit. Children ran and shrieked until scolded by elders, who were listening to cultural presentations about prescribed fire and weaving. This was the midpoint of the two-week inaugural Karuk Women’s TREX, or prescribed fire training exchange — the first-ever such training tailored specifically for Indigenous women.
Historically, in Káruk society, women were responsible for maintaining village areas with fire. Men burned, too, but farther away, usually on remote hunting grounds. But cultural fire was suppressed in 1911, when the Weeks Act outlawed igniting fires on public lands. Today, that colonialist law is still considered a conservation landmark.
Karuk leader Bill Tripp appointed to new federal wildfire commission
A Karuk leader who has been among those leading the charge to bring managed fires back to the landscape has been appointed to a new federal wildfire commission.
On Thursday, the Biden-Harris administration announced that Bill Tripp, the Karuk Tribe’s director of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy, was one of 18 experts appointed to the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, established by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The commission is expected to provide recommendations to the federal government on how to address catastrophic wildfires.
Tripp said it was “quite the honor to be selected.”
“I think that we are in a new time where people are ready to listen to the perspectives that come from Indigenous communities on this subject matter,” Tripp said.
Indigenous fire practices can help Oregon wildfires, land management
As fires appear to haunt Oregon’s imagination of summertime, we sit to reflect on the need to define our collective relationship with fire through an engagement with Indigenous science or ways of knowing and understanding the world.
Native American communities in western Oregon have been tending the land with fire since time immemorial. This practice, known today as cultural burning, offers many lessons on the value of fire to care for land and water. Cultural burnings are an ecological practice grounded in Indigenous science that prevents disastrous fire seasons, nourishes watersheds, sustains traditional food sources and maintains cultural practices and keeps memories alive across generations.
In western Oregon, Native communities have carefully burned to maintain oak groves for acorns, used mindful fire in meadows for camas and other foods and pruned and burned hazel patches for basketry materials. These practices, among many others, require the use of fire as a transformational element — fire to clear grassland, maintain forest health and encourage new growth, while rejuvenating springs and water tables.
Prescribed Fire: Why We Burn
Fire has long been used in Oregon for a variety of purposes. Native Americans have used fire to influence landscapes across the state for millennia. Some goals of cultural burning include:
Increasing the vigor and abundance of important plant species.
Creating habitat for wildlife.
Easing travel along important trails.
Aiding in ceremonial purposes.
Early settlers learned about the use of fire from Native Americans and adopted the practice to manage rangelands and forests. Ranchers in some regions use fire to keep woody plants from invading pastures and to improve forage quality. Fire has also been used in timber harvesting and forest management. In the western part of the state, fire has been used to reduce fire hazards created by slash left after logging. Underburning was reintroduced in the eastern Cascades as a forest management tool in the 1960s and 1970s.
Rekindling with fire
Wearing deerskin leather gloves dampened with drops of diesel and gasoline, I tilted my drip-torch down toward the earth and ignited the dry blackberry bush below. With a flick of my wrist, I made a C-shaped movement and the fuel followed my gesture, lighting the vines and leaves quickly. Aside from the faint crackle of the fire, it was silent where I stood on a hilltop at Andrew Reasoner Wildlife Preserve near Eugene, Oregon. I paused to look at my surroundings. Hundred-year-old Oregon white oaks, draped in old man’s beard — a lichen called Usnea — reached toward the crisp blue sky. Yarrow leaves poked through the bunches of invasive crabgrass, and sword and bracken ferns dotted the landscape. The hairy yellow leaves of a hazel plant next to me indicated the changing seasons.
Good fire: Indigenous fire management
After the heat of the day has passed and the cool evening arrives, Colby Drake, burn boss for the Grand Ronde tribe, gathers with tribal members as they tame and manage the burn unfolding before them. Wearing full protective gear, Drake helps manage the burn for the acorn and hazel, carefully watching to ensure the flames don’t scorch the crops.
Drake conducts prescribed burns to protect Oregon’s vibrant forests containing lush natural beauty since the uptick in wildfires across the state have put it at risk. After decades of ineffective fire suppression, Oregon forests are fighting back. Suppressing wildfires by prematurely putting them out causes a dangerous buildup of flammable debris on the forest floor. This, combined with rising temperatures and decreased precipitation, creates the perfect conditions for large-scale fires to break out.
Groups Seek Liability Reforms to Fight Wildfire
According to Karuk Natural Resources Director and traditional fire practitioner Bill Tripp, "My ancestors practiced cultural burning for millennia along the Klamath and Salmon Rivers. Low intensity burns at the right time of year reduce wildfire risks in our communities and promote forest health. We must enact policies to enable and encourage rural communities to do this important work."
Reading the Landscape for Fire
In the aftermath of the extensive fires that burned across California and the West in the 2020 fire season, there is a lot to reflect upon. People grappling with the trauma of disaster. Communities trying to recover and plan for future fires. Ecosystems responding to fire within the landscape. More carbon dioxide released through combustion and thus further contributing to our already troubling atmospheric conditions. Fires that reinforce the likelihood of more fire by decreasing forest cover, damaging the soil’s health and moisture retention, and contributing dead and dying vegetation to the landscape. These are just some of the cycles that are perpetuating fire until we make change.
Hands on the land, heart in community: Returning cultural fires
It was a California Summer. I was working in a plant nursery tucked into the Cascade Mountain Range—blue mountains in the distance and rivers and creeks to splash in.
But I couldn't clearly see my hand outstretched in front of me. It's the smoke. Like almost every summer of my childhood, a wildfire raged in a nearby forest.
Looking back, what was most disturbing was not the smoke or the thick layer of ash on my car after work, it was how normal this was. Evacuations and high severity forest fires are an almost annual occurrence. California's forest fire problem now routinely makes international news as entire cities are destroyed.
Now more than ever California forest fires have become synonymous with death, destruction, and long-term economic depression.