Colonialism and Fire Management in California

Sharing resources and reflection

This post is to share resources on Indigenous fire management and the links between fire and colonialism. If you have more resources to share, send them to me and I’ll update the post!

As fires rage in California, folks have made important and explicit links to the role of climate change and capitalism in creating the conditions for the fires to expand so rapidly. Overlooked, however, has been the role of colonialism and how colonialism transformed our relationship to the land.

The Blackfeet have had our own experience with this many times. When fires take off in Glacier Park, which borders the Blackfeet Reservation to the east, the park's response is to do essentially nothing: that fire is "natural." Fire then spreads from Glacier (where majority white tourists visit) to the rez (where Native people live, work, and play) quickly, which has deep cultural and economic impacts. But Indigenous people from all over the world have always had proactive, cultural burning practices that helped manage the landscape. Humans have never existed without fire and fire management.

Climate change and capitalism play an important and interlinked role when fires are able to spread like this. But we should also explicitly name colonialism, and call out the Western framework that throws "nature" into a binary: either a resource to be extracted or an "untamed, untouched" wilderness. Untouched wilderness has never existed. Indigenous peoples always managed our environments and had an intimate, scientific and cultural connection to the land. Indigenous fire management can help prevent devastating fires like the one in California.

To learn more, I thought I’d share some resources on Indigenous peoples, colonialism, and fire management. If you have any more resources, send them with me and I’ll add them to this post!

Here’s an article I wrote in 2020 (during bushfires in Australia) about the importance and revitalization of Aboriginal cultural burning practices.

In it I write:

“Aboriginal fire management, also called cultural burning, involves an intimate relationship to the land. It is not one specific technique, but a localized understanding of what is needed for the environment at the time. If the fire is too hot, it may harm seeds and nutrients in the soil. Cultural burners often avoid burning logs or trees where animals and insects live. While the Aboriginal fire management is proactive, Western-style controlled burning, also called hazard reduction burning, is reactive.

Hazard reduction burning is often done by dropping incendiaries from planes, making it more cost effective, but less controlled. There is growing evidence that this style of burning may not even reduce bushfires, especially in times of extreme drought. A 2015 study in 30 bioregions in Australia found that controlled burns only reduced the amount of land damaged by bushfires in four of the bioregions, but overall, the study concluded, Western-style controlled burning had very little impact.”

Here’s a 2019 article about the revitalization of Karuk tribal fire management in California.

Kari Marie Norgaard writes:

“One of the most powerful tools Karuk people have long used to enhance the Klamath region has been fire. Whereas the persistence of fire belies the myth that humans have control over nature, humans and fire have long co-evolved across North America. Fire suppression is a recent undertaking.

Studies of historical fire records in California clearly indicate that Native land management systems have significantly shaped the evolutionary course of plant species and communities for at least 12,000 years. Species composition and dynamics are a product of Indigenous knowledge and management in which high quality seeds have been selected, the production of bulbs has been enhanced through harvest techniques, and populations of oaks, fish, mushrooms, and huckleberries have been reinforced and carefully managed with prayer and fire. Indigenous knowledge and management generated the abundance in the land that formed the basis of capitalist wealth across North America. These activities on the landscape continue today, although they are often the site of intense political struggle.”

Here’s a 2018 article about how white settlers in California set the stage for vast fires today.

Louise Dunlap writes:

“In the panic, no one talks about another human factor rooted in our history: how we White Californians, in our earliest legislation in 1850—our first year of statehood—criminalized practices that Indigenous Californians had used for millennia to protect the land from catastrophic wildfire. The people who evolved with this land had learned to work with gentle, controlled burning at milder seasons of the year, supported by ceremony and traditional knowledge. Their burning killed pathogens, fertilized the soil, stimulated biodiversity and healthy creeks, and cleared tinder buildup—leaving a park-like ecosystem that our European ancestors found lovely and rushed to exploit.”

And here's a link to mutual aid resources to help those impacted by the fire.