Jared Dahl Aldern | Photo: KCET
Jared Dahl Aldern, PhD. is Environmental Protection Program manager for the Cold Springs Rancheria of Mono Indians. We spoke with him during our filming of Tending The Wild. This is a partial transcript of that conversation. For more by Jared Dahl Aldern, see his article Cultural Fire on the Mountain: An Introduction to Native Cultural Burning.
Why is fire important in the landscape?
Fire is a lot like electricity. Electricity is a dangerous force when its used improperly. Electricity can also accomplish wonderful things in the same way as fire. Although a wildfire is a tremendously dangerous thing, thats not all that fire is. Fire can be directed to these tremendously useful purposes in the forest, and it can course through the forest like electrons through a wire, and energize those circuits that the forest has. It can turn on the meadows, and encourage them to bloom at the right time of the year. It can create resistance to fire in certain places. Thats just one way to look at fire, as a force of nature thats a lot like lightning, but also like electricity in its other forms.
What is a cultural burn?
A Native American cultural burn is a burn that Native Americans who are experts at lighting these cultural burns use to accomplish purposes that are important to the culture of the community. In a way, its a double entendre, or maybe more than double, because a cultural burn is also a way of culturing plants in a certain way and of carrying on the culture of the community from generation to generation as people come in and learn how to conduct the burns and how to work with each other. Fire and the cultural burns become an integral part of the culture, a central part.
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What are the benefits of a cultural burn?
Native communities in California in the past have used fire for a whole variety of purposes, including increasing the fruit production of plants, berries, and acorns (the fruit of oak trees); burning plants in order to encourage a certain sort of plant growth that is useful, for instance, for basketry. One of the benefits of a cultural burn is also that it reduces the fuel, but it usually has whats termed light fire behavior or a creeping fire, where the fire creeps along the ground and under the trees and even some of the shrubs without burning them to a crisp. And that does reduce the fire danger, but it also allows some cultural interaction with those plants without destroying them.
Also, I think the general answer for how Native communities have used fire over thousands and thousands of years is to, if you want to sort of jump to the spiritual realm, maintain a relationship with the rest of nature. Its a gift of fire to the land, and then the land gives back in the form of fruits and plants.
What's the difference between a cultural and prescribed burn?
In a way, a cultural burn might be viewed as a certain kind of prescribed burn, but that word prescribed really comes from a certain view of the forest that says, We are the doctors, and we know how to prescribe this burn to take care of the forest, whereas a cultural burn is oriented more toward making the forest or allowing the community to become a part of the culture of the forest. Its generally smaller scale. Many prescribed burns today are on the order of 400-acre burns or 1,000-acre burns. Cultural burns generally occur in much smaller patches.
Watch the Cultural Burning segment of Tending The Wild
How do modern-day Native people go about organizing a cultural burn?
A tribe is a sovereign government, and so a tribal member who, as an individual wants to do a cultural burn would need to go through a procedure with the community to gain approval, and show that he, or she was qualified to conduct the burn. Certainly a tribe, once its made a collective decision to conduct a burn, may run into some push-back; some regulations and some resistance from other agencies that tribe has to work with in a government to government relationship.
Community fire crew does burn prep at the Cold Springs Rancheria of Mono Indians. | Photo: KCET
One of the main agencies that a tribe works with is the Bureau of Indian Affairs. If theres a burn to be conducted on reservation or rancheria land, the Bureau of Indian Affairs needs to be involved in that. The law states that the Bureau of Indian Affairs needs to be involved in that burn plan, and approving how that burn is going to be conducted. Depending on the location, various county agencies, and state air pollution control boards who are going to be concerned about the smoke emissions from any fire.
Then of course theres Federal land such as the National Forests, and land thats administered by National Park Service or the Bureau of Land Management, so all of these agencies, depending on where the burn is proposed, are going to have something to say about it.
How do you put out a cultural burn?
Its little like a campfire; its not that much bigger in scale than a good, big campfire bonfire. So, you wait until it burns itself out. You get the hot spots and actually douse them with water to make sure that theyre dead out before you leave for the day.
Related
Its All About Fire: A Talk With Lois Conner Bohna
How Forest Burning Could Have Become Federal Policy
Fire Suppression is Bad for Wildlife, And So is Post-Fire Logging
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Historically, why was there such a push for fire suppression?
Fire has been suppressed in California since one of the first Spanish governors located in San Diego, who issued a proclamation in the late 18th century prohibiting all fires from being lit. Essentially, the invasion of the Spanish disrupted the indigenous fire regime simply by relocating people, harassing people, killing people, genocide, and removal of people from the land. Since fire was so central to these peoples cul
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Jared Dahl Aldern | Photo: KCET 
