Fire as Medicine: Learning from Native American Fire Stewardship

https://eos.org/features/fire-as-medicine-learning-from-native-american-fire-stewardship

Source: By Jane Palmer, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: In 2020, nearly 60,000 wildfires raged across the United States, burning a record-breaking 10.3 million acres. ...California and Colorado recorded their biggest fires ever, and in early October, 65 large fires were burning in California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and, in smaller instances, five other states. ...The year’s catastrophic fire season could potentially be the new normal, as climate change is bringing hotter and drier conditions, perfect for igniting forests laden with fuel after decades of fire suppression efforts. “As a tribal forester, I am always thinking about climate change,” said John Galvan, a forester for the Pueblo of Jemez, a tribe located in north central New Mexico. “It is so much drier, and we are getting so little precipitation.” The ancestors of the Native American community at Jemez Pueblo lived in fire-prone forests for centuries before European contact, often in densely packed towns. Nearly 2 decades ago, it struck environmental archaeologist Christopher Roos how those tribes learned to live sustainably in a highly flammable ecosystem. Indigenous peoples “are depending upon these landscapes for their lives and livelihood,” said Roos, who is now a professor of anthropology at Southern Methodist University in Texas. “Of course, they would have figured something out—some sort of accommodation.” To investigate further, Roos initiated a study in 2011 to analyze the dynamics of the region’s fire regime over the past 7 centuries, and also to learn more about the ancestral practices of the Jemez with respect to the forests and fire. ...“In the Indigenous worldview, people can be a force for good and regeneration on the land,” said Robin Wall Kimmerer, a professor of environmental and forest biology at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Kimmerer is also an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. “And I think that is a perspective we desperately need right now.”....