As spring passes, I’m filled with excitement for the long days of summer relaxing in the rejuvenating bodies of water on the West Coast. Sadly, that excitement is paired with dread of the inevitable wildfires and potential days stuck inside trying to keep smoke out of my lungs. After living in Chico, California, I’m left with memories of raining ash and community distress during the deadly 2018 Camp Fire and the weeks of hazy, hazardous air during the deadly 2020 fires. It’s saddening to think how many people are deprived of the ability to escape the toxic smoke, like our unhoused neighbors and agricultural workers unable to skip work. It’s infuriating to know that many people have lost, and will lose, loved ones, homes, and sacred land due to climate, corporate, and colonial fueled wildfires.
Northern California communities are far too familiar with these devastating wildfire realities. Many in this region have a fear of fire for its associations with death, destruction, and chaos. While this fear is valid given the fires of the recent past, Indigenous peoples remind us that fire is not inherently bad nor something to fear completely. What is to fear is the frequency and the severity of today’s wildfires, the results of climate change, corporate greed, and the US’s abandonment of Indigenous land management practices.
Wildfires are a natural part of the landscape in western forests, but as the Mechoopda Tribe’s Ali Meders-Knight recently told Congress, land management decisions will determine whether we have “a little bit of fire or a lot of fire”. Indigenous peoples have privileged knowledge of the human management required in native ecosystems. Before colonizers arrived, they routinely used fire to maintain the health of forests and mitigate wildfires. They understand how fire cleans the ground to allow certain species to grow and reproduce, how smoke can naturally fumigate trees, and how certain Indigenous trees can create more water than existed before. As Ali puts it, “there is good fire and good smoke which brings rain, sequesters carbon in the soil, and makes healthy plants that have been adapted to good fire for thousands of years”.
Through the Chico Traditional Ecological Stewardship Program, Ali and the Mechoopda Tribe are helping to bring this good fire back to Northern California’s forests. The program’s overall focus is teaching Indigenous-led land management to build community resilience and shared prosperity. She explains that “Indigenous methods and approaches of tending forest ecosystems have objectives to cultivate biodiversity based on long term place based observation and well known outcomes. From a climate change perspective, biodiversity is an insurance policy for resilience. If one species is impacted, another species will step up and take its place to keep the system going.”
The program is preparing an ecologically trained and certified workforce to restore native ecosystems and encourage locally based livelihoods all while mitigating the effects of climate change. The program is so promising that it even has the US Congress rethinking forest management. Last month, Ali was one of three panelists at the Congressional Environment Subcommittee hearing to speak on the necessity of traditional ecological knowledge and Indigenous practices in reducing catastrophic wildfires.
The Chico Traditional Ecological Stewardship Program is an inspiration at a time when politicians, companies, and agencies have proven themselves incapable of protecting our communities. It reminds us that solutions to today’s biggest problems existed well before colonizers arrived. It shows us that the path to a just and livable future is through Indigenous leadership. You can learn more about the Chico Traditional Ecological Stewardship Program at tekchico.org.
