After working on the issue of Native American fire use and it’s relation to prescribed burning policy for nearly two decades, there are three key elements that we all really need to understand:
1. Cultural Erasure. After Euro/American society engaged in the genocide of Indigenous Peoples, it (we) paved over the carefully tended landscapes where most of these people lived. The lands that were once burned to help support the needs of hundreds of cultures are now mostly under Walmart parking lots and corporate headquarter buildings. They are not the few wildlands we have left.
2. Nature Suppression. After exploiting ancient homelands to establish our own cities, we applied colonial techniques of natural resource exploitation to every square inch of land we could reach:
- turning/burning every accessible acre into vast, non-native landscapes filled with invasive weeds and grasses to support large populations of non-native livestock, causing further damage through overgrazing.
- the eradication of oak trees via state/federal programs, and the rich understories of sage scrub that one provided habitat in oak woodlands.
- clearcutting conifer forests, followed by grazing to arrest natural recovery (replaced now by herbicides), the naked land was filled with a checkerboard of countless artificial tree farms.
- eliminating all predators (wolves, mountain lions, bears, etc.) via federal programs in national parks and elsewhere, similar to programs to eliminate Native Americans.
3. A Different World. The current landscape and climate are far removed from where Indigenous Peoples developed their rich cultures. We now have:
- highly flammable, non-native weeds now filled every area disturbed by colonial activity.
- millions of people on the landscape igniting fires at a high-frequency unknown in the natural world.
- a climate racing towards increased dryness throughout California, threatening the loss of most native plant communities in the south, and dramatically reducing areas covered by forests in the north.
Attempting to apply past land management techniques on land that no longer exists is not logical.
So what do we have today? We have the same colonial system and its apologists pursuing yet another way to exploit what is left of Nature by doing what it does best – appropriating Indigenous culture to pursue economic gain and hiding the truth through strawman arguments.
Despite the fact that we have always gotten it wrong regarding land use policy and Nature, with the exception of National Parks, our enlarged egos have convinced us this time we’ve got it right – “our landscapes are unhealthy because of past fire suppression (the strawman), but we can fix it all by doing what we say Indigenous Peoples did (cultural appropriation) – burn it!”
This approach is now justifying one of the greatest threats to the natural environments we have ever faced in the West – the destruction of native habitat under the guise of fire protection. Millions of $ are now being allocated to burn, clear, log, and herbicide millions of acres of wild throughout the west, especially in California. And millions more are being promoted in a couple bills before Congress.
Personally, the scheduled destruction is overwhelming my soul.
The land is burning because we have destroyed the climate.
The forests are burning because what natural forests once existed, few remain – they are now mostly dense, highly flammable tree farms created by corporations and facilitated by the US Forest Service.
People are dying and homes are burning because colonial financial interests have convinced nearly everyone that we need to log the forest and clear the chaparral far from nearly any community that is at actual risk – just like they justified the genocide of Indigenous Peoples, the damming of rivers, and the slaughter of predators.
Past fire suppression, dead trees, and leaves on the forest floor have nothing to do with it. But the colonial establishment, personified by the Trump administration and corporate Democrats, have sure done an excellent job convincing most everyone that it does.
To learn more about the use of fire by Native Americans, please see our webpage here:
https://californiachaparral. org/fire/native-americans/
To read why prescribed burns are the surest way to destroy the wild Nature we all love:
https://californiachaparral. org/threats/prescribed-fire/
To learn the truth about fires in forests:
https://californiachaparral. org/forest-fires/
For solutions Governor Newsom, the California State Legislature, the US Congress, and prescribed burning advocates refuse to properly consider and actually fund:
https://californiachaparral. org/fire/protecting-your-home/
Rick Halsey, Director
