Indigenous Fire Stewardship: Eco-Cultural Research for Wildfire Resilience in California and Beyond

In the Western United States, wildfire has become seasonal, altering ecosystems and setting records for acreages burned. For millennia, Tribes around the world engaged in fire stewardship, or cultural burns, as eco-cultural land tending responsibilities. However, removal of Indigenous Peoples and persistent “no burn” fire suppressive policies have contributed to the current wildfire predicament. State and federal agencies are now calling on Tribes to deploy “cultural burns”, as a wildfire mitigation and ecological restoration tool. This talk with synthesize the opportunities and barriers as well as policy-to-practice implementation of cultural fire, concentrating first on California, then offering examples throughout the U.S. With particular attention to policy and data gathering protocol, discussion will elucidate the significance of working with Tribes and state/federal agencies while offering research frameworks towards addressing the wildfire crisis.