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10 AUGUST 1, 2002
Smoke Signals
Conference Describes Benefits of "Cool Burning"
Traditional use of fire moves Native culture to the front lines.
By Ron Karten
The Confederated Tribes of
Grand Ronde recently hosted rep
resentatives of the Confederated
Tribes of Siletz Indians, govern
ment agencies and labor unions for
a two-day conference last month
that focused on the traditional use
of fire by American Indians and
America's two-year-old National
Fire Plan, which is now beginning
to acknowledge the wisdom of that
practice.
Speaking from the front lines of
the wildfires sweeping across Colo
rado early in what promises to be
another devastating fire season,
Interior Secretary Gale Norton told
the nation, "We cannot fight
Mother Nature." What she didn't
tell the nation is that Indians had
this problem solved for thousands
of years before the U.S. govern
ment took over the operation.
In introducing the conference,
Tribal Council Chair Cheryle
Kennedy said, "There's something
to be said for practices given by the
Creator for all of us, and burning
is one of these."
Or as Tony Farque, President of
National Federation of Federal
Employees Local 457 and emcee of
the event, said to close the first day
of the conference, "Think globally.
Burn locally."
The burning process, known as
"cool burning," was employed both
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Tribal member Connie Schultz, CTGR Cultural Protection Specialist, sitting
at Camas Prairie. Pictured in foreground is a traditional camas oven that
was built in 2001 by the Tribe and the Willamette National Forest staff.
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Tribal Elder Merle Holmes enjoying the Traditional
Salmon Bake with camas bulbs, and huckleberry
cobbler. The camas and huckleberries for lunch are
from the restoration projects at Camas Prairie and
Cougar Rock.
descent, a Ph.D. candidate in the
Environmental Science program at
Oregon State University and au
thor of The Role of Indigenous
Burning in Land Management,
"but for all of the resources. Na
tives used fire; he said, in crop, pest,
and range management, for fire
proofing, clearing areas for travel
and collecting basket materials and
to make hunting easier - both for
tracking and for corralling animals.
In fact, far from
destroying or dam
aging plant and
animal life, said
Robert Kentta,
CTSI Cultural Di
rector, "many
plants and animals
have adapted to fire
and some are de
pendent on it."
The practice con
tinued for some 80
centuries, Baker
Pilgrim said, until
the early part of the
20th Century when
"your rangers
showed up and told
us we couldn't do it
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spring and fall when Indians knew
that rain was coming to stop run
away flames, said Aggie Baker-Pilgrim,
a Tribal Elder of the Confed
erate Tribes of Siletz Indians
(CTSI). The fires could be as small
as a few acres or much larger on
the prairies, and would keep the
forest or field floors clear of debris.
"Afterwards," Baker-Pilgrim said,
"deer would come in closer and ber
ries would grow larger."
And like so many Native endeav
ors, everybody was involved.
Women decided where to set the
fire and started it, often with men
surrounding the area to keep the
fire from getting out of hand.
"Children were involved, too," she
said.
Members of the conference de
scribed the benefits of integrating
fire into daily practices.
"You're managing not just for
trees," said Frank Kanawha Lake,
of Native American and Mexican
anymore.
For 90 years up to today, "fire
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management has been the primary
land management activity on
much of our land base," acknowl
edged Neil Sugihara, Ph.D., a fire
ecologist with the US Forest Ser
vice. And a follow-up interview
with Pete Wakeland, CTGR's Natu
ral Resources Director revealed that
those 90 years of fire suppression,
along with more recent restrictions
on forest management have al
lowed a deadly amount of wood fuel
to pile up.
Fire fuel is waist-high in many
places, Sugihara said, setting the
scene for forest fires that burn for
months each summer and destroy
millions of acres of timberland,
threaten homes and lives and can
cost $1 million a day to fight. Cli
mate changes making drought
more prevalent across the country
also make forested areas more sus
ceptible to devastating fires,
Wakeland said. In 2000, the year
the nation finally was forced to face
up to how destructive its practices
have become, the U.S. spent $2 bil
lion on fire suppression and suffered
multiple forest fire-related deaths.
Maybe even more daunting than
fighting these blazes, the solution
in the form of the National Fire
Plan is asking as many as two
dozen federal, state,
and Tribal participants
to work together on
the plan. Making so
lutions still more diffi
cult to come by, the
plan will adhere to
what Rich Fairbanks,
forester for the Wil
lamette National For
est, called the "most
restrictive" assessment of the prob
lem. The Tribes of Grand Ronde and
Siletz have already been involved
in pilot projects in recent years, ac
cording to June Olson, Cultural
Resources Director for the Confed
erated Tribes of Grand Ronde and
one of the driving forces of this con
ference. Camas burning, for ex
ample, has been going on for three
years. In addition, the Tribes of
Grand Ronde and Siletz have iden
tified areas in the Willamette Na
tional Forest where "cool burning"
might profitably be used.
The conference raised challenges
beyond the issue of fire. Work is
sues exist for those who fight fires,
said Cece Headley, a board mem
ber of the Alliance of Forest Work
ers and Harvesters and the Na
tional Network of Forest Practitio
ners. In the same way that the
overall conference looked at ways
to restore forests to sustainability,
Headley and others were concerned
about low pay, intermittent and
dangerous work, and perhaps more
important, the lack of any track to
higher wage jobs in the industry.
Traditionally, Natives who de
cided how to manage the land also
did the work. Again today, said
Chris Van Daalen, of the Alliance
for Social Justice and the Environ
ment, "we need to connect labor
with knowledge."
Times have changed since tradi
tional practices. For one thing, said
Gary Bower, a U.S. Forest Service
researcher who attended the con
ference, "they didn't have to con
sider people jumping up and down
about air pollution issues every
time they burned."
The issue is politicized today. Sci
ence has taken the place of tradi
tion. And the earth is no longer
more important than the sum of its
parts. Each product from the earth
has to pay its own way. But change
is upon us again.
"The values we're hearing today,"
said Jon Stewart, the U.S. Depart
ment of Agriculture Forest Service's
representative on the National Fire
Plan, "are the values we need."
According to Olson, the purpose
of the conference was "to bring an
awareness of the traditional use of
fire to more people who are respon
sible for public and private lands."
Additionally, the Tribe is looking
for ways to make profitable use of
accessible National Fire Plan dol
lars. Assessing the event, she
added that it was more successful
on the first count than on the sec
ond. B
A Traditional Salmon Bake hosted by the Siletz
Tribe at Camas Prairie on day two of the Conference.
Day two participants of the Traditional Fire
Plan Workshop at Camas Prairie patiently wait
ing for traditional salmon bake lunch. (Salmon
cooking in foreground).
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