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JUNE 15, 2022
21
NATIVE
AMERICAN
WATCHLIST
Watchlist: ‘To stop uncontrollable
wildfires in California, look to this
once-outlawed Indigenous practice’
(Editor’s note: It is estimated that there are approximately 149
billion videos on YouTube, and the number continues to grow.
Grand Ronde Tribal member and Social Media/Digital Journalist
Kamiah Koch sifts through those myriad videos twice a month to
recommend a worthwhile Indigenous video to watch. Follow her
bimonthly recommendations and enjoy!)
By Kamiah Koch
Social media/digital journalist
Summer is almost upon us, which means wildfire season is looming.
The Grand Ronde Tribe’s Silviculture and Fire Protection programs
work throughout the year to prevent extensive widlfires. They do so
through a traditional practice called “prescribed burns.”
Or, as a University of California’s Fig. 1 video calls them, “cultural
burns.”
Fig. 1 is the university’s YouTube channel where experts answer
various questions. This video was published in April 2022 and explains
the history of cultural burns and why they work.
The video starts by comparing two photos of Yosemite Valley from
1872 and 2020. The mountains remain the same, but changes in the
tree density and foliage below are obvious. Instead of thick forests
we see today, the valley once had meadows and trees spread apart.
“The settlers assumed that this is just what nature looked like on
its own,” the narrator of the video says. “But really they had walked
into a garden that was thousands of years old and sustained by Na-
tive Americans.”
The video explains that fire is actually part of a healthy ecosystem.
It “renews” the land by removing overgrown vegetation and releases
new seeds, making room for new plants to grow.
However, as many aspects of Tribal history goes, colonization at-
tempted to exterminate this practice.
The narrator states that by 1770, Spanish missionaries prohibited
prescribed burns and when Tribes were forcefully removed from their
homelands in the 1850s, burns in California were outlawed.
Wildfires became rampant, leading to the smoky summers we have
today.
Luckily, by 1970, the National Park Service realized its mistake
and looked to the knowledge of Indigenous Tribes.
Ron Goode, chair of the North Fork Mono Tribe, is shown practicing
cultural burns in California. The National Park Service now practices
low-intensity fires.
“Your primary focus is ‘I’m burning for acreage and to reduce fuel
load.’ That’s exactly what you do,” Goode says. “But then your land
is not restored.”
Goode says the National Park Service’s burn and leave practice
isn’t fulfilling engagement with the land. Native American traditions
with cultural burns also involve raking the ashes back into the soil
to start the process all over again.
To see the rest of “To stop uncontrollable wildfires in California,
look to this once-outlawed Indigenous practice” video you can go to
www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6kKwsA1B3U or find the video linked
in the Smoke Signals Watchlist playlist on our YouTube channel.
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