Tag: Indigenous Knowledge

Cultural Burning is About Culture

Cultural burn practitioners work with volunteers to create fire breaks and set prescribed fires

Cultural burning is about culture. And it is not about restoring the landscape. It is not about enhancing or restoring the resources. It is about the sustainability of the culture and the practitioner, the traditionalist, and the traditional way of life of the tribal group, their culture. —Ron Goode, Chair North Fork Mono Tribe

The devastation from the August Complex, Dixie, Mendocino Complex, SCU and LNU Lightening Complex wildfires weigh heavily upon the hearts and minds of Northern Californians. The loss of lives, homes, and communities. The tireless efforts of fire fighters, first responders and volunteers. Fire, for many of us, only represents destruction. Tribal Chair, Ron Goode of the North Fork Mono Tribe, however is asking us to also recognize fire as an integral part of the ecosystem. “Fire can be good” he asserts.

To help broaden our understanding of fire, Chairman Goode, invited folks from universities and state agencies to join the North Fork Mono Tribe and other tribes in the area to participate in a cultural burn at the Jack Kirk Preserve in Mariposa. Due in part to the devastation wildfires have wreaked in California, state agencies are more amenable to exploring alternative fire management strategies such as cultural burns. Gathered in a circle, we were led in prayer to give thanks to the ancestors and the other-than-human relations for their guidance and gifts from the land. Respect for fire was emphasized in a brief history of cultural burns following the prayer. Chairman Goode also noted that cultural burns help manage resources vital to traditional practices as part of prescribed fire regimes. The intent of the tribe’s removal of underbrush, shrubs, and the dense canopy is to open up space and promote germination and the rebirth of culturally relevant flora and fauna. Wildfire suppression is merely one of the beneficial externalities.

Removing bark from sourberry bush stems harvested last season

On this occasion we worked in teams to clear the meadow of dry sourberry bush to enhance its regeneration next season. Sourberry is one of the tribe’s vital cultural resources. Basket weavers harvest the stems to make infant baskets. Clearing the meadow also increases water abundance through the reduction of flora competing for water resources. Creeks and streams not only provide vital drinking water but also serve as an important food source of fresh fish.

For three days we used cultural burns to manage the land. Not to mitigate wildfires, but rather we worked collaboratively to care for soil, brush, grass, canopy and creeks intricately linked to the cultural practices of the Mono tribes. Three days is a short time to change our perceptions of fire. Yet, the short time spent working with the tribes was long enough to allow us to imagine fire being more than a tool of destruction.

Indigenous Ontologies: Gullah Geechee Traditions and Cultural Practices of Abundance

ABSTRACT

Western epistemologies on race defined blackness and indigeneity through scales of poverty, or more precisely, in frameworks privileging economic deprivation. Indigenous fishing communities are typically constructed as subsistence fishers whose practices only served to exacerbate resource scarcity as a result. In this article I use the case study of the Gullah Geechee, self-defined as culturally indigenous and racially black, to explore how consciousness, indigenous knowledge and cultural practices open up resources that enable them to achieve a level of autonomy. I draw on the livelihoods of three fishers, ranging from familial to commercial, to examine how the power of giving, through the cultural practices of reciprocity, sharing and cooperation, yield abundances vital to building a sense of community. This article suggests that indigenous ontologies offer alternate ways to conceptualize indigeneity in the Americas.

Human Ecology Journal

Click here to read