Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's that incense that reminds you of freshman
Speaker 1: year so much that you can only smell it sometimes
Speaker 1: because you don't want the nostalgia to fade. Ali Ward
Speaker 1: back with a follow up as promised episode of Ologies
Speaker 1: that serves as a companion piece to last week's fire
Speaker 1: Ecology episode. So perhaps listen to that one first, come
Speaker 1: here from more context, or don't. Ultimately, none of my beeswax. Okay,
Speaker 1: so just a little behind the scenes on this one's format.
Speaker 1: Format is a little different than what you're used to.
Speaker 1: I spoke with this ologist while she was up in
Speaker 1: the wilderness of Canada on vacation, and the internet was spotty,
Speaker 1: So the first ten minutes or so, it's not the
Speaker 1: finest quality audio we've ever had on Ologies, but we
Speaker 1: did our best, and then she sent some standalone recordings
Speaker 1: answering more questions, and then after the break, we're featuring
Speaker 1: excerpts from her own indigenous fire ecology podcast, Good Fire
Speaker 1: with Matt Christoph, making this a real community effort and
Speaker 1: a fire mosaic episode. Indeed, so this ologist got her
Speaker 1: master's and PhD and hazard management and fire science and
Speaker 1: works as a fire social scientist for the Canadian Forest Service.
Speaker 1: She is a Metea woman from Treaty six territory on
Speaker 1: land now known as Canada, and has authored papers such
Speaker 1: as social science Research on Indigenous wildfire management in the
Speaker 1: twenty first century and future research needs, so she is
Speaker 1: well schooled on this. And then I saw she has
Speaker 1: a podcast called good Fire recorded with Matt Christoff, who
Speaker 1: also hosts the Your Forest podcast. So this ologist was
Speaker 1: on vacation. I desperately wanted to chat with her the
Speaker 1: one week she was trying to relax, but she luckily
Speaker 1: was very up to take a little break and chat
Speaker 1: amid spotty internet and some techtifs. Huge thanks to Matt
Speaker 1: for getting us in touch and for lending us excerpts
Speaker 1: from Your Forest and good Fire at the Future. Also
Speaker 1: thank you to everyone at patreon dot com slash ologies
Speaker 1: for making the show possible. This episode was informed by
Speaker 1: the questions you left about indigenous fire stewardship, and thanks
Speaker 1: to everyone who rates and reviews podcasts. It matters more
Speaker 1: than you will ever know, and I read them all
Speaker 1: so I can prove it with a fresh shadow out
Speaker 1: for one left this week, such as Sarah ib who
Speaker 1: wrote I started listening to this podcast and got to
Speaker 1: the gynecological episode and decided to make my first Obgian
Speaker 1: appointment after turns out I have endometrial cancer. I had
Speaker 1: a hysterectomy and I'm currently doing radiation therapy. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Dad Ford for this informative podcast. Sarah, what what sending you?
Speaker 1: The biggest, biggest hugs and the best vibes for a
Speaker 1: speedy defeat of that, and thank you for getting checked out. Okay,
Speaker 1: onward to the episode. Etymology is Simple Indigenous means native
Speaker 1: fire has a root meaning fire and ecology the study
Speaker 1: of where we live. So we'll be covering cultural burns,
Speaker 1: dripped torches, forest debris, healthy trees, the legality of indigenous
Speaker 1: fire stewardship, fighting fires with strategy, napping on the fire line,
Speaker 1: evacuations and more with Fire Scientist Advocate podcast host Canadian
Speaker 1: Forest Service employee, scholar and Indigenous fire ecologist doctor Amy Christiansen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no problem at all. It's great too to have
Speaker 2: so much like attention on this topic as well.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's wonderful, wonderful to have you. So now, are
Speaker 1: you at the top of a mountain right now trying
Speaker 1: to get cell service?
Speaker 2: No, I'm actually at my parents' cabin, but they do
Speaker 2: not have great internet. But does it sound okay?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds great so far.
Speaker 2: Literally they're at like the very north end of a
Speaker 2: lake called Shoeshwap Lake and currently we're actually surrounded by
Speaker 2: three fires as well.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. And is that an area that you're
Speaker 1: pretty familiar with? Has your family been there for a
Speaker 1: long time?
Speaker 2: Yeah, my parents have this cabin that we've had in
Speaker 2: our family, I think for about thirty years now.
Speaker 1: Have you seen a change at all in how the
Speaker 1: summers go in terms of say, being surrounded by fire.
Speaker 2: So the area that we're in is actually kind of
Speaker 2: a rainforest area. We always kind of jokingly refer to
Speaker 2: it as that, and we used to get so much
Speaker 2: rain out here in the summer. In probably the last
Speaker 2: ten years, we've noticed it's been getting warmer in this
Speaker 2: area and we've been getting less rain and even the
Speaker 2: cedars are really starting to not look as healthy. And
Speaker 2: then the last probably five years, we've had more summers
Speaker 2: of smoke. So it's really been Yeah, I've really noticed
Speaker 2: a change just even in my lifetime.
Speaker 1: And how long have you been studying fire? How long
Speaker 1: had you been a fire scientist?
Speaker 2: I grew up in northern Alberta. There's always kind of
Speaker 2: fires around my family, although we didn't kind of have
Speaker 2: the connection. We were disconnected from cultural burning practices, but
Speaker 2: my family was kind of always you know, I've been
Speaker 2: involved in fire and my husband's a wildland firefighter, and yeah,
Speaker 2: just growing up it seemed like kind of a normal
Speaker 2: thing in the north. And when I moved down south
Speaker 2: to an urban center, that was when I really realized,
Speaker 2: you know, that other people didn't have that, or you know,
Speaker 2: we're weren't so used to that. I guess I started
Speaker 2: actually as a geologist, but I always loved hazards, but
Speaker 2: more volcanic hazards and things that I was interested in.
Speaker 2: So I did two years actually in New Zealand, where
Speaker 2: I did my masters on volcanic hazard management. But you know,
Speaker 2: I always kind of feel like bound to the forest
Speaker 2: in Alberta. So I ended up kind of coming back.
Speaker 2: And I even said to my PhD supervisor, like, you know,
Speaker 2: I'll study anything but fire. You know, I don't want
Speaker 2: to have fire in my life because I just, you know,
Speaker 2: it was around it all the time, and wanted something different.
Speaker 2: But yeah, kind of slowly got pulled back into the
Speaker 2: field and yeah, I've been at the Canadian Forest Service
Speaker 2: now for about ten years.
Speaker 3: Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, what is your what is your work like?
Speaker 1: And have you grown to appreciate it all? Are you
Speaker 1: still like fire? Here we are again, you and me fire?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I think yeah, it's kind of one of
Speaker 2: those things you have to realize that maybe you're just
Speaker 2: like I don't know, No, I don't want to say
Speaker 2: destined to be, but you know, I think that living
Speaker 2: in the North, it's just you know, I think that
Speaker 2: you have that experience with fire and seeing it around you.
Speaker 2: And that's one thing I always find interesting is when
Speaker 2: I meet, you know, other fire scientists who aren't, you know,
Speaker 2: from areas that experience fire, and I think sometimes it's
Speaker 2: maybe hard for them to relate, especially when we're talking
Speaker 2: about fire risk and kind of how people act during
Speaker 2: a fire event.
Speaker 1: So one of doctor Christensen's areas of research and work
Speaker 1: is studying evacuations, so when to leave your home with
Speaker 1: just a few possessions and your life for what might
Speaker 1: be the last time. And it's something that she says
Speaker 1: fire scientists who haven't grown up around fire and had
Speaker 1: to themselves evacuate. Might not understand, and if you listened
Speaker 1: to last week's episode, I mentioned that my parents lived
Speaker 1: in the remote Sierra Nevadas for years and coercing them
Speaker 1: to evacuate during the King Fire was not easy, even
Speaker 1: with the promise of a night or two at the
Speaker 1: fantasy end with a mirrored ceiling.
Speaker 2: When I first started at the Canadian for Service, there
Speaker 2: was like no interest really in indigenous fire management or
Speaker 2: cultural burning practices or indigenous firefighters. So I would say
Speaker 2: it was like a very lonely kind of first five
Speaker 2: or six years. And so most of my colleagues are
Speaker 2: actually international folks, so mainly folks from actually California and
Speaker 2: Australia who are in this field as well. But I
Speaker 2: think like pretty much since we've started having the big
Speaker 2: fire events in Canada, that's really what's forced people to
Speaker 2: kind of look at maybe a different way of looking
Speaker 2: at fire off the landscape. My interest in fire is
Speaker 2: also tied to like my own family's history. So my
Speaker 2: family's Mayti, so we're from northern Alberta, the Cardinal and
Speaker 2: labcan families, and we kind of had like a weird
Speaker 2: kind of disconnection from culture, which most Mayti families in
Speaker 2: Canada actually experience during colonization, and so it's basically we
Speaker 2: weren't allowed to practice any of our traditions and other things.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to be because it almost parallels fire in
Speaker 2: a way. So when settlers, you know, first came to Canada,
Speaker 2: one of the first things that they brought with them
Speaker 2: was actually fire suppression. And as they moved kind of
Speaker 2: west across Canada, they basically just put into place fire
Speaker 2: suppression policies wherever they went. And the big reason for
Speaker 2: that was, you know that they saw the forest of
Speaker 2: this wilderness is this kind of natural place. But really
Speaker 2: now we know, like and lots of scientific studies now
Speaker 2: are pointing out the that wasn't natural, Like many of
Speaker 2: those areas were actually stewarded by indigenous people to look
Speaker 2: that way. Actually, the first fire suppression campaign was in
Speaker 2: sixteen ten in Newfoundland in Canada, where that was like
Speaker 2: kind of the first you know, enactment of you know,
Speaker 2: thou shelt not light fires on the landscape.
Speaker 1: Amy says that she's from northern Alberta and there were
Speaker 1: only two fire rangers for the entire province.
Speaker 2: So even though they had like a fire suppression policy.
Speaker 2: You know, those guys couldn't be everywhere obviously, so there
Speaker 2: was still a lot of cultural burning that went on.
Speaker 2: So I would say that in where I'm from, it
Speaker 2: really only kind of stopped or halted around the sixties
Speaker 2: or the seventies where fire really stopped being allowed on
Speaker 2: the landscape in the north. And what we've seen with that,
Speaker 2: you know, is just a massive increase in fuel loading
Speaker 2: and also kind of these like monoculture forests where there
Speaker 2: are the stands are you know, all one speci these
Speaker 2: like all similar age, and they're really vulnerable to pests.
Speaker 2: There's other disturbances like fire, and so we're getting these massive,
Speaker 2: big fire events that have come through. And so for
Speaker 2: indigenous people, you know, like my family and others, they
Speaker 2: my family were actually buffalo hunters, and they used fire
Speaker 2: in the buffalo hunt, but also afterwards to improve the
Speaker 2: habitat for buffalo and other things that to help them
Speaker 2: in their hunting. When the settlers started coming across and
Speaker 2: saying like no, you can't do this, like you don't
Speaker 2: know as much as us, like, you know, it really
Speaker 2: devalued indigenous people and their knowledge and then when you
Speaker 2: add into that, you know, we had residential schools in
Speaker 2: Canada where indigenous people you know, were sent there and
Speaker 2: basically told you know that, you know, it said they
Speaker 2: were savages, that their way of knowing their family, of
Speaker 2: knowing the earth wasn't proper, and you know that they
Speaker 2: had to learn this new way that was much better.
Speaker 2: So we, like my colleagues fives a mula. He was
Speaker 2: telling me that they called that like a cultural severance activity,
Speaker 2: where basically you're just told that, you know, suddenly you know,
Speaker 2: you cannot practice your culture anymore. And so the impacts
Speaker 2: of that are just massive on people, not only on like,
Speaker 2: you know, their ability to use fire, but also just
Speaker 2: on who they are as a person, their pride and
Speaker 2: their family and other things. And so I too, like
Speaker 2: even now I still have a lot of anger about that,
Speaker 2: and you know how I wasn't able to learn from
Speaker 2: my elders about landscape, stewardship and other things because of that,
Speaker 2: you know, like kind of dominant Western worldview.
Speaker 1: Do you know or has there been research into how
Speaker 1: much of that knowledge is lost?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So actually Henry and Lewis, who is a researcher,
Speaker 2: he actually started in California, but then was at the
Speaker 2: University of Alberta.
Speaker 1: Doctor Henry T. Lewis aka Hank was an anthropology professor
Speaker 1: at the University of Alberta and was one of the
Speaker 1: first researchers to really document indigenous fire stewardship and its
Speaker 1: role in shaping the landscape. And he wrote the paper
Speaker 1: A Time for Burning. It was published in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: two and a PDF to it is linked on my site.
Speaker 1: It's typewritten on a typewriter, it's wild and it details
Speaker 1: all of the different biomes and how indigenous cultures shaped
Speaker 1: them with fire and if you're like no reading, need visuals.
Speaker 1: He also made a sixteen millimeters documentary titled The Fire's Spring.
Speaker 4: All of this was managed by people who had developed
Speaker 4: a complex technology of fire to assure a continued successful
Speaker 4: adjustment to the northern ural forest.
Speaker 1: Somehow this ended up on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Hank god he went up and worked with the woodland
Speaker 2: kreen Denny people in northern Alberta, so actually kind of
Speaker 2: where my family's from as well. And what he was
Speaker 2: saying within the nineteen seventies when he did his work
Speaker 2: that he thought that between ninety and ninety five percent
Speaker 2: of that knowledge had been lost, So I mean that
Speaker 2: was now like as hard to believe it almost fifty
Speaker 2: years ago, right when that was happening. So for me,
Speaker 2: like I often hear people say in meetings like you know,
Speaker 2: oh well, indigenous knowledge is inapplicable to today and cultural
Speaker 2: burning practices because you know, now we have climate change,
Speaker 2: like now there's more values on the landscape in terms
Speaker 2: of thinking about structures and other things. But I always
Speaker 2: argue against that because for me, like, it's not about
Speaker 2: like indigenous people, like we're alive today, we're part of society,
Speaker 2: like we see all these things, like indigenous people are
Speaker 2: on the front lines of climate change, like of course
Speaker 2: we don't if that's occurring. And you know, indigenous knowledge,
Speaker 2: the most beautiful thing about it is how adaptable it
Speaker 2: is to the local environment. So like for like, because
Speaker 2: you know you're living in that environment, you're dependent on it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So Amy's internet cut out again, so we tried
Speaker 1: a new way of recording just via the phone and
Speaker 1: her laptop, and it sounds much better, which is great.
Speaker 1: So clear in fact, you may even be able to
Speaker 1: discern the pitter pattern of children's footsteps on the cabin
Speaker 1: stairs as her family vacationed around her.
Speaker 3: Hi, maybe this will work. I can hear you great
Speaker 3: at home. It's funny because I have a pretty good
Speaker 3: setup with a podcasting microphone, headphones, and of course I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's this week when I'm gone, But no worries.
Speaker 1: But where were we? Yes that indigenous fire knowledge is
Speaker 1: starting to get more attention as climate change worsens and
Speaker 1: larger fires erupt. And as a fire scientist, what is
Speaker 1: her workday?
Speaker 3: Like? Sure, yeah, So with my job with the CFS,
Speaker 3: I most fire research scientists, I say, kind of do
Speaker 3: the same thing. So we have our research projects that
Speaker 3: we run or that we're a part of. So a
Speaker 3: lot of my day is actually kind of meeting about
Speaker 3: research and other things that are going on. So really
Speaker 3: similar to like you know, an academic researcher for me university.
Speaker 3: But then as well, we also kind of have the
Speaker 3: policy or the government side, So I said, on a
Speaker 3: lot of like national or international committees or working groups,
Speaker 3: you know, looking at fire and trying to direct policy.
Speaker 3: We just recently in Canada finished the blueprint for Wildland
Speaker 3: Fire Science for twenty nineteen to twenty twenty nine. So
Speaker 3: looking at you know, topics that we should really be
Speaker 3: spending money basically in time doing research on. And one
Speaker 3: of those the themes from that was actually on indigenous fires.
Speaker 3: So we also have an evacuation database actually with the
Speaker 3: Canadian Forces, where we've tracked wildfire evacuations in Canada since
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty. So during this summer, like that's one thing
Speaker 3: is that we have like lots of our staff working
Speaker 3: on that doing data entry into it. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 3: big job this summer. Like in twenty twenty, I think
Speaker 3: we only had twenty different evacuations in Canada, but this
Speaker 3: year I think we're already at one hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: five different evacuation events. So it's a huge job.
Speaker 1: So this Blueprint for a Wildland Fire Science in Canada
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen to twenty twenty nine outlines, in its own words,
Speaker 1: a business case to increase investment in wildland fire science.
Speaker 1: And it is fifty seven pages of really great strategies
Speaker 1: covering themes like understanding fire in a changing world, recognizing
Speaker 1: Indigenous knowledge, and enhancing knowledge exchange mechanisms to improve the
Speaker 1: ways in which wildland fire science and technology are shared, understood,
Speaker 1: and implemented. So Amy's team had been working on that,
Speaker 1: and for the curious, I will link to the full
Speaker 1: pdf on my website. Now, as far as the increasing evacuations,
Speaker 1: that issue gets more personal as this episode unfolds, even
Speaker 1: more personal than my parents in an hourly motel in RightNow.
Speaker 1: And this is something I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: have trouble wrapping their brain around, and maybe they're there
Speaker 1: is no good answer. But is it climate change? Is
Speaker 1: it human ignition and carelessness? Is it not letting the
Speaker 1: forest burn? Is it naturally would how do you scientists
Speaker 1: come up with plans to tackle this issue if it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a trifle problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree with you. It's just such a complex issue.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's also the fact that people are just
Speaker 3: building more in you know, areas that are of higher
Speaker 3: risk to fire. You know, as communities get larger and
Speaker 3: kind of expand out into what you know, some people
Speaker 3: call the wildline urban interface, it's really increasing fire risks.
Speaker 3: I think that that's the hard thing too, is that
Speaker 3: there's no magic bullet solution, right like even with cultural burning,
Speaker 3: Like you know, I'm such a strong proponent of getting
Speaker 3: that back on the ground, but that doesn't at all
Speaker 3: tackle you know, how vulnerable some homes and other things
Speaker 3: are to fire at the moment.
Speaker 1: Climate change, she said, is also a pretty big frickin deal.
Speaker 3: But the one thing you know that I think locally,
Speaker 3: like you know, in our towns and stuff, that we
Speaker 3: can control is the fuels that are available to burn.
Speaker 3: And so that's why, you know, I think that cultural
Speaker 3: burning or landscape level fuel management as well as the
Speaker 3: community wildfare mitigation is so important to do in combination.
Speaker 3: And lately too, I've been seeing I don't know if
Speaker 3: you are seeing it in the States as much, but
Speaker 3: in Canada there's a bit of a movement to just
Speaker 3: kind of you know, fireproof communities or you know, keep
Speaker 3: homes or you know, structures safe from fire. But to me,
Speaker 3: that's really missing the point of like the landscape around
Speaker 3: your home. Like for me, I don't want to be living,
Speaker 3: you know, if my home is standing in like the
Speaker 3: middle of you know, a black and landscaping. In Canada,
Speaker 3: it can take a long time for the force to regenerate,
Speaker 3: sometimes you know, twenty thirty forty years, and even then
Speaker 3: they're finding up north in the Boyal forests, the burns
Speaker 3: are just so hot that they're basically kind of killing
Speaker 3: the soil and any vegetation around. So, yeah, it's quite
Speaker 3: a complex issue. But I think when I think as
Speaker 3: an indigenous person, I look at the forest, I don't
Speaker 3: just see it as trees or timber values or other things.
Speaker 3: You see it as like part of who you are,
Speaker 3: right like your relations So you want to be able
Speaker 3: to you know, steward and protect that area as much
Speaker 3: as you do you know, your own home or structure.
Speaker 1: And can you describe a little bit about prescribed fires
Speaker 1: and indigenous fire stewardship versus cultural burns. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people maybe want to lump them in together,
Speaker 1: but can you describe a little bit about how they
Speaker 1: work or what they are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's a bit of a danger of that
Speaker 3: this whole thing now where we're seeing prescribed fire and
Speaker 3: just kind of throwing cultural burning into that. So prescribe
Speaker 3: fire is you know, you know generally what agencies do,
Speaker 3: so where they're setting fire on the landscape, but in
Speaker 3: many cases they're setting you know, high severity fires. It's
Speaker 3: burning really fast and they want to burn a lot
Speaker 3: of land in a little bit of time. So we
Speaker 3: see like lots of aerial ignition of fires we see
Speaker 3: them using, you know, basically like helicopter ignition, and in Canada,
Speaker 3: like lots of times, people put that together as you know,
Speaker 3: being a crown fire being these big, bad, kind of
Speaker 3: out of control fires that are burning up you know,
Speaker 3: mountain sides. That's generally the media that we see in
Speaker 3: Canada about prescribed fire, But it really differs from cultural
Speaker 3: burning because cultural burning is more about achieving a cultural
Speaker 3: objective around the forest around where you live, So you
Speaker 3: don't really want to have these big, large, stand replacing
Speaker 3: fires that go through and and can kill everything in
Speaker 3: a prescribed fire event. That sometimes is what happens in Ca. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So for cultural fire too, the thing is that most
Speaker 3: fires are actually pretty low intensity. In Australia they call
Speaker 3: them like slow burns or cool burns, and they generally
Speaker 3: move through the understory and they're done it certain times
Speaker 3: of year where the potential fire behavior is very low risks,
Speaker 3: so you know where you're not getting, you know, potential
Speaker 3: of crown fire. There's lots of natural fuel breaks around
Speaker 3: the fire. In Canada that's usually snow still on the ground.
Speaker 3: For indigenous people, cultural burning too is like a family
Speaker 3: a community activity, so like when I'm doing burns and
Speaker 3: things like I take my daughters. My mom was on
Speaker 3: the last one that we did.
Speaker 1: There's a great photo that's run in a few news
Speaker 1: articles about Amy's work, and she's standing in a golden
Speaker 1: grassy field. It's hazy with smoke as a cultural burn
Speaker 1: grass fire she's overseeing lurches behind her, and there's a
Speaker 1: husky wolfy dog sitting to her right staring off. And
Speaker 1: Amy's wearing black leggings and a red flannel shirt and
Speaker 1: is pregnant with what would be her second daughter. So
Speaker 1: the mood is very calm, unlike what most people's experience
Speaker 1: of land on fire might be.
Speaker 3: Lots of times, you know, we don't wear personal protective equipment,
Speaker 3: you know, like the kind of gnomes that you usually
Speaker 3: see firefighters wearing, because usually the fires are honestly just
Speaker 3: so slow and most people find them I think a
Speaker 3: bit boring too, because it can take a really long
Speaker 3: time to burn a really small piece of land, and
Speaker 3: so for agencies it doesn't really work well, right because
Speaker 3: that for them means more staffing, dollars and other things
Speaker 3: to achieve, like you know, a smaller area burned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when it comes to how much fuel is in
Speaker 1: some of the forests. Now that would be too much
Speaker 1: for say a prescribed burn maybe to tackle. I'm reading
Speaker 1: like there's so much you know, dead timber and fallen
Speaker 1: timber because we've suppressed fire for so long. Like, where
Speaker 1: does fire management even begin to kind of tackle that issue?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it is a big issue, and I think
Speaker 3: people often get overwhelmed, Like I just hear you know
Speaker 3: all the time. Oh, it's so complex, there's so many
Speaker 3: things and so many people's competing values. But I think
Speaker 3: that we often lose the focus on like local communities.
Speaker 3: So in Canada, our first nations have reserves, and so
Speaker 3: if you go on to a reserve, many times, like
Speaker 3: when you speak to the elders and other people, like
Speaker 3: they know what needs to be done in their area,
Speaker 3: Like they know if certain areas are too fuel loaded,
Speaker 3: and you know, they want to go in there and
Speaker 3: kind of mechanically treat the forests, so you know, by
Speaker 3: using machines and labor to go in and do thinning
Speaker 3: and other things before they can burn to kind of
Speaker 3: keep the fuel load low in those areas. So I
Speaker 3: think for me, that's the biggest thing is that we
Speaker 3: really need to go back to kind of these local
Speaker 3: solutions to fire. And that's really kind of what our
Speaker 3: research is showing that, you know, local people want to
Speaker 3: be involved. So you know, I talk mostly about indigenous peoples,
Speaker 3: but you know, ranchers, farmers, other people who you know
Speaker 3: use the landscape for their livelihood, they also you know,
Speaker 3: really want to have a healthy forest and environment around
Speaker 3: them and they know the areas too, and even forestry
Speaker 3: companies like the one nice thing about cultural burning is
Speaker 3: that because we're doing kind of these low understory burns,
Speaker 3: like we don't want to burn the nice, big, healthy trees,
Speaker 3: right because those are so important for cultural activities and
Speaker 3: for other other like our relations other animals. It's actually
Speaker 3: really nicely works together because you kind of can get
Speaker 3: cultural burns going through and really removing some of that
Speaker 3: deadfall and promoting those healthy big tree growth that like
Speaker 3: the timber companies love.
Speaker 1: And obviously this is something that is a family issue
Speaker 1: for you two, having you know, being married someone who
Speaker 1: is a firefighter. At what point did you decide to
Speaker 1: spread the word about good fire? And the term good
Speaker 1: fire too is something that I'm I kind of just
Speaker 1: learned too. Can you talk a little bit about what
Speaker 1: good fire is?
Speaker 3: Sure, So if good fire I think comes just from
Speaker 3: the idea that you know, it's very obvious that we
Speaker 3: can have good fires on the landscape. You know that
Speaker 3: fire is something that is helpful to the environment and
Speaker 3: to people. And so I think Indigenous people lots of
Speaker 3: times see fire almost in a dichotomy, so kind of,
Speaker 3: you know, these bad fires and then the good fire
Speaker 3: that we can use as a tools. But before colonization,
Speaker 3: indigenous people would use fire on the landscape in good ways.
Speaker 3: But then also we did have lightning fires obviously back then, right,
Speaker 3: but they would come across the landscape and kind of
Speaker 3: enter into this mosaic landscape that these indigenous ferns and
Speaker 3: other lightning cause fires like, and so as they enter them,
Speaker 3: then the fire behavior would change. So as you know,
Speaker 3: it entered a meadow, the fire intensity might decrease, and
Speaker 3: then it would go back into the forest and maybe increase,
Speaker 3: and then it would hit like a deciduous stand of
Speaker 3: trees and go down again. And so this mosaic or
Speaker 3: patchwork on the landscape was actually really helpful for fire
Speaker 3: to kind of decrease the intensity of these fire events.
Speaker 3: But what we're seeing right now is because we've been
Speaker 3: suppressing those fire events, there's just so much fuel in
Speaker 3: the forest that we're seeing these bad fires. So even
Speaker 3: like I'm thinking like the Dixie Fire in California right now,
Speaker 3: or we have like multiple fires in Canada at the
Speaker 3: moment too that are bad fires. Like lots of times,
Speaker 3: you know, we look at and say, oh, fire's natural,
Speaker 3: there's good ecologic benefits. But for me, there's nothing good
Speaker 3: about these current fires happening right now.
Speaker 1: So at this point, our FaceTime call cut out because
Speaker 1: of spotty internet, so Amy recorded a clip answering a
Speaker 1: few more questions because she is the best and knew
Speaker 1: that we only had a few days until this went up,
Speaker 1: and she's once again the best.
Speaker 3: I also just wanted to mention the importance of Indigenous
Speaker 3: people in fire in Canada but also in other countries.
Speaker 3: You know, we often think about indigenous people in fire
Speaker 3: management as something that happened in the past, but we
Speaker 3: have a lot of amazing indigenous firefighters in Canada, Indigenous
Speaker 3: fire managers and other people who are really you know,
Speaker 3: on the front lines trying to bring back good fire
Speaker 3: and indigenous fire stewardship and really out there every summer
Speaker 3: kind of protecting our communities from these bad fires. And
Speaker 3: especially in Canada, lots of times there we don't give
Speaker 3: enough attention, I think to those indigenous firefighters. Lots of
Speaker 3: times they're kept kind of from progressing in their careers
Speaker 3: because they might not have the appropriate Western education levels,
Speaker 3: you know, a degree or a diploma or something, but
Speaker 3: they have you know, might have twenty three forty years
Speaker 3: experience of being on the fire and so knowledgeable and incredible,
Speaker 3: and I think, you know, a lots of times we
Speaker 3: need to look at where Western science as well got
Speaker 3: some of its ideas. Like I've spoken to many elders
Speaker 3: who've told me about drip torches and how they would
Speaker 3: use tree limbs and sap to create their own drip torches.
Speaker 3: That's what their ancestors did and how they would spread
Speaker 3: fire across the landscape was in doing that. So now
Speaker 3: you know, it's a metal canister with fuel in it,
Speaker 3: but it's kind of the same idea that indigenous people's
Speaker 3: had about how to use fire properly on the land,
Speaker 3: and just this incredible knowledge base and people in the communities,
Speaker 3: you know, had roles in Canada, sum nations actually had
Speaker 3: families that were fire keepers. There were many people who
Speaker 3: knew about fire and had knowledge about fire activity.
Speaker 1: After the break, you'll hear a clip from Good Fire
Speaker 1: podcast hosts Amy Christensen and Matt Christoff talking about Indigenous
Speaker 1: firefighters experience on the fire line, and I admit I
Speaker 1: found this discussion hilarious. But before that, remember Henry T.
Speaker 1: Lewis Hank the anthropologist who wrote A Time for Burning
Speaker 1: and made that Fires of Spring film, So the retro
Speaker 1: sixteen millimeter film aesthetics are far from the coolest thing
Speaker 1: about his fireworks.
Speaker 3: One of the coolest things I think from Henry Lewis's
Speaker 3: work was when he was speaking to woodland Crean Dana
Speaker 3: elders about how they would use fire to melt the
Speaker 3: frost in the ground. And I've seen actually a few
Speaker 3: kind of Western science studies lately on that, but that's
Speaker 3: actually an older technique that the communities would use. So
Speaker 3: you get kind of all the dry grass on top
Speaker 3: of a meadow or something, and they would go and
Speaker 3: burn that in the really early spring. Because that's the
Speaker 3: most important thing about indigenous burning is the time to burn,
Speaker 3: when it's safe to do a good fire and they
Speaker 3: would that would then turn that level that grass into
Speaker 3: you know, black, and so the black would absorb the
Speaker 3: heat of the sun and then start to melt the
Speaker 3: frost out of the ground in the early spring, and
Speaker 3: that would give you much like earlier green shoots and
Speaker 3: green grass coming up that then moves deer other things
Speaker 3: could come in and eat in that area, so it
Speaker 3: would make your hunting or other things a lot easier
Speaker 3: to do. So yeah, I think that that's those are
Speaker 3: things you know that and there's probably so much more
Speaker 3: out there that we don't even know that communities use
Speaker 3: and how they would use fire in a good way.
Speaker 3: And I mean if people are interested as well. You know,
Speaker 3: Frank Lake, I think is probably one of the first
Speaker 3: kind of fire ecologists who also is an Indigenous man
Speaker 3: who you know, saw very early the importance of indigenous
Speaker 3: fire knowledge and bringing it. And he's written some really
Speaker 3: great publications that I think for people who are eye opening,
Speaker 3: you know, about how we can use fire in a
Speaker 3: good way on the landscape and.
Speaker 1: To hear an earload of other incredible Indigenous voices in
Speaker 1: fire ecology, you want to subscribe to Goodfire. It's a
Speaker 1: podcast series by Amy and Matt, and we are featuring
Speaker 1: audio from a discussion as they launched Goodfire in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: They were gracious enough to let us steal some clips
Speaker 1: to round out the conversation amid our tech issues this week,
Speaker 1: and as it turned out, Amy and I had further
Speaker 1: trouble connecting because those three fires that she mentioned around
Speaker 1: her family cabin got bigger and they were forced to
Speaker 1: evacuate from their vacation. So yes, her work is timely
Speaker 1: and personal, and she literally wrote the book on this,
Speaker 1: a volume titled First Nations Wildfire Evacuations, A Guide for
Speaker 1: Communities and External Agencies, alongside Tara McGee and First Nations
Speaker 1: Wildfire Evacuation Partnership. So I'm going to link to that
Speaker 1: in the show notes as well. Now in her name,
Speaker 1: we're donating this week to a cause of her choosing,
Speaker 1: and she asked her to go to Indigenous Residential School
Speaker 1: Survivors that's IRSSS dot CA. For over twenty years, they've
Speaker 1: assisted First Nation people in British Columbia to recognize and
Speaker 1: be holistically empowered from the primary and generational effect of
Speaker 1: the residential schools by supporting research, education, awareness, establishing partnerships
Speaker 1: and advocating for justice and healing. And the society assists
Speaker 1: survivors with counseling, court support, information, referrals, workshops and more.
Speaker 1: And you can find out more at IRSSS dot Ca.
Speaker 1: There's a link in the show notes. And in Canada,
Speaker 1: consider participating in Orange Shirt Day on September thirtieth. It's
Speaker 1: also known as National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that donation was made possible by some sponsors of
Speaker 1: the show, and so many of you patrons asked about
Speaker 1: indigenous fire management, namely, and I'll list you all off
Speaker 1: at once, very quickly, Cameron Brown, Doug potential future fire ourcologist,
Speaker 1: Ronan Jackie, Crisperhoer, Kimberly Hoffman, Ellen Skelton, Thomas n Wyndham,
Speaker 1: Breonna Freeman, Justin Roberts, Anthony Willis, Donnell O'Neil, and Alexandra Quetul.
Speaker 1: And because our time chatting was cut short again, we're
Speaker 1: so on and lucky to feature relevant clips from a
Speaker 1: conversation with The Good Fire podcast host Amy Christensen and
Speaker 1: her co host Matt Christoph. Okay, here Amy is talking
Speaker 1: to Matt about fears of.
Speaker 3: Fire even in our indigenous communities, like lots of people
Speaker 3: are now worried about fire and scared of fire, and
Speaker 3: I think so for me, when I come across people
Speaker 3: like you know that kind of have that tendency to
Speaker 3: think of fire as bad, I always say, you know,
Speaker 3: well there's good fire, and that's kind of you know
Speaker 3: the name from the podcast, So you know, when we're
Speaker 3: doing these kind of good fires, it's basically it's not
Speaker 3: a wildfire. It's totally different. Most Indigenous people want to
Speaker 3: bring back burning right and bring back that cultural practice
Speaker 3: to their landscape because most elders, when they look at
Speaker 3: the forest, the first thing that they say is that
Speaker 3: it's unhealthy and that it needs cleaning up. When I
Speaker 3: first started working a bunch of elders, I'd always hear
Speaker 3: this cleaning up phrase, cleaning up. And you know, it
Speaker 3: took a while till I realized that you know, that
Speaker 3: meant fire, that they want it, because you know, you know,
Speaker 3: don't normally think of that. You think like I'll go
Speaker 3: out with a rake or something like Donald Trump thinks
Speaker 3: that we're doing. But you know, it was actually, you know,
Speaker 3: that they wanted to use fire to kind of clean
Speaker 3: up all that dead litter on the forest for so
Speaker 3: they just want to do that again in their territory.
Speaker 3: But I think they also realized that because of the
Speaker 3: fire suppression that we've had over the last you know,
Speaker 3: fifty to three hundred years, depending where you are in Canada, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that it's not that easy just to bring back our
Speaker 3: burning practices, right because we burned on intervals, So depending
Speaker 3: on where you were. You know, if you were burning
Speaker 3: a meadow, you might burn the meadow every three years.
Speaker 3: If you're burning like, you know, an old growth forest,
Speaker 3: and you might burn every twenty years. Like you know,
Speaker 3: it just depended on what you were burning or what
Speaker 3: objective you are trying to achieve. So you know, and
Speaker 3: now we've excluded fire, so I mean the litter and
Speaker 3: the build up of fuel is crazy. So I think
Speaker 3: like now most of the elders I talked to, if
Speaker 3: they say, like if we went and tried to do
Speaker 3: this now, like we would basically burn down the forest
Speaker 3: because we'd be trying kin to start a low intensity burned,
Speaker 3: but there's just too much fuel on the on the floor,
Speaker 3: so it would immediately like escalate.
Speaker 1: So how do indigenous fire scientists and wildlands firefighters approach
Speaker 1: these really different schools of thought. Any explains to me.
Speaker 3: We call it like two eyed seeing. So that's kind
Speaker 3: of the new concept that's come up. So that's like,
Speaker 3: you know, where as indigenous people or even as non indigenous,
Speaker 3: like you know, you're looking at the world through one eye,
Speaker 3: through your Western perspective, right, because we're all trained in that.
Speaker 3: You know, like there's not there's very few people that
Speaker 3: you know are born and raised in the bush and
Speaker 3: have that kind of only subsistence lifestyle. But then out
Speaker 3: of the other eye, you know, you can see with
Speaker 3: your indigenous eye, right, so you can see, you know,
Speaker 3: how you know where things could be better. And I
Speaker 3: think for me that's where fire management comes in because
Speaker 3: you know, I'm trained from the Western perspective, but I
Speaker 3: think you know, from like culture then like you know,
Speaker 3: there's things that indigenous people do or know better. And
Speaker 3: you know, for me, part of my job is you know,
Speaker 3: advocating for that trying so you know, it's not saying
Speaker 3: like drop all Western science around fire, right, we need that,
Speaker 3: we need that too, But then indigenous people and our
Speaker 3: cultures also no ways you know for making the forest healthy,
Speaker 3: so to me. If you bring those two together, it
Speaker 3: makes like, you know what I mean, it's then you
Speaker 3: have like an incredible knowledge base that you're coming from.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Ah, the firefighter stories I promised you.
Speaker 3: One example is like talking to firefighters. So there's this
Speaker 3: one guy who is a non like a non indigenous firefighter.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of funny up on the you know,
Speaker 3: the fire crews, there lots of that. There's like thirty
Speaker 3: or forty year indigenous firefighters that have been on the
Speaker 3: fire line a long time and they say, you know,
Speaker 3: these new kids, like university grads come up and start
Speaker 3: telling them what to do. So this one guy was
Speaker 3: actually telling me that he, you know, he started out
Speaker 3: of university as kind of a fireboss and went up
Speaker 3: on the one line and he had these native crews,
Speaker 3: and he said he was that he thought they were
Speaker 3: the laziest people in the world because he's like, they
Speaker 3: would get up in the morning and work a little bit,
Speaker 3: but then he's like, then they nap all day and
Speaker 3: then like in the in the bush, you know, and
Speaker 3: then he's like, but then you know, they would get
Speaker 3: up and kind of work all night, and then he's
Speaker 3: like and then I started like really looking and watching
Speaker 3: what they were doing. And he said that. Then one
Speaker 3: of the guys came up and told him, like, we
Speaker 3: fight the fire when it's the weakest, because we see
Speaker 3: fire as a living being. And why would you fight
Speaker 3: something at the height of its day, you know, like
Speaker 3: at two pm on a really sunny, hot day with
Speaker 3: high winds, right, Like, why would you do anything? Right,
Speaker 3: Like the fire can just jump or yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: but if you, you know, fight it in the morning
Speaker 3: when it's the weakest, or in the evening or overnight.
Speaker 4: High and the temperature is low, and so the activities, yeah, decrease.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and everyone, well I should say generally now with
Speaker 3: climate change, who knows, but generally fire activity decreases at night, right,
Speaker 3: So Sony's but these guys have got that not from
Speaker 3: textbooks but from years of being out and watching fires,
Speaker 3: so I think. And so he was saying, like to me,
Speaker 3: like this non indigenous kid that that it was just
Speaker 3: amazing to see that because he didn't learn any of
Speaker 3: that in school. And so for him, he said, he'd
Speaker 3: learned more that summer working with the native crews about
Speaker 3: fire than going to school. Basically not to say, you know,
Speaker 3: don't stay in school kids, but like because that's important too,
Speaker 3: but you know, there's other ways and other things to
Speaker 3: learn as well about about fire. Lots of the indigenous
Speaker 3: fire guys they'd always tell me. One of the funniest
Speaker 3: things is like the when the fire season first starts
Speaker 3: in like in Cree, the word for white boy or
Speaker 3: whatever is moonew. So they say, like, oh, it's so funny.
Speaker 3: One like the mooneal come on the fire because he's like,
Speaker 3: they're all just doing selfies with the fire in the background,
Speaker 3: and he's like and we're all like, you know, actually working,
Speaker 3: and he's like and you look and all the moonya
Speaker 3: are just lined up way away from the fire take itself.
Speaker 3: And then it was funny because then I started seeing
Speaker 3: on Facebook, like.
Speaker 2: Lots of people on Instagram.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I think that that's like just maybe a
Speaker 3: bit of and it's kind of more of like because
Speaker 3: for Indigenous people it's more of a lifestyle, right, so
Speaker 3: they're they've been doing that that so it's it's a
Speaker 3: great career for Indigenous people because they can go out
Speaker 3: in the summer, make money, be on the land, and
Speaker 3: then in the winter they can go and like run
Speaker 3: their chaplines or hunt, be with their families and like
Speaker 3: kind of participate in their their culture.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I think that that's why it's become like kind
Speaker 3: of a nice lifestyle for certain people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, sure.
Speaker 1: So how do agencies and nations work together. How can
Speaker 1: ecologists and fire keepers spark those collaborations?
Speaker 3: People always say, oh, you need to engage with the
Speaker 3: indigenous communities and and well, like to me, that's a
Speaker 3: nice concept. I know that lots of non indigenous people
Speaker 3: or companies get frustrated because you know, they go to
Speaker 3: these communities and try to engage and nobody turns up
Speaker 3: or you know, they can't get a hold of anybody,
Speaker 3: nobody returns their calls. And so I think for me,
Speaker 3: like the thing to remember with that is, you know,
Speaker 3: for people to remember that like first, nations are under
Speaker 3: the Indian Act, right, so basically all their resource and
Speaker 3: and you know how their capital for how they're run
Speaker 3: all basically is decided in Ottawa almost you know, and
Speaker 3: how much money comes down to them. So most of
Speaker 3: the times, you know, even though the communities have high capacity,
Speaker 3: you know, for forestry, your other things, it's often very
Speaker 3: underfunded because of what comes down the stream from Ottawa.
Speaker 1: Ottawa is an eastern Canada in Ontario, and did you
Speaker 1: know that Ottawa is the capital of Canada. I didn't
Speaker 1: until right now. So if you feel the same, it's okay.
Speaker 3: Basically there's not enough money, right so they you know,
Speaker 3: might not have a forestry coordinator, they might not have
Speaker 3: a lands person or you know, or the chief might
Speaker 3: be like that. You know, the chief has to manage housing,
Speaker 3: healthcare like you know, everything like you get so, I
Speaker 3: know people get frustrated. But at the same time, I think,
Speaker 3: you know, there's it needs to be a bit of
Speaker 3: patience and understanding there that lots of the nations are
Speaker 3: trying as much as they can, and some are great.
Speaker 3: Like there's some nations you know that have really gone
Speaker 3: into forestry there, you know, the community forests in BC.
Speaker 3: I think that those are a really great example of
Speaker 3: things that are working well. Or I know there's been
Speaker 3: partnerships like between different like forest industries and indigenous nations too.
Speaker 3: Most forestry people don't go into forestry because they want
Speaker 3: to you know, kill all the trees and everything, right.
Speaker 3: They go into because they love being in the forest, right,
Speaker 3: so they want to sustain that most indigenous people love
Speaker 3: being in the forest, right, so right there you have
Speaker 3: a match of you know, so then it almost goes to, well, then,
Speaker 3: you know, if these are our shared values, how then
Speaker 3: can we you know, move forward together. But I think
Speaker 3: one of the problems is that there's a real lack
Speaker 3: of trust because there's been a lot of people that
Speaker 3: have taken advantage of indigenous communities. So you know, come
Speaker 3: in and said good things, said all the right things,
Speaker 3: and then you know, ended up taking money and you know,
Speaker 3: not involving the nation, and so it take it can
Speaker 3: take a while. I think like a helpful thing too
Speaker 3: is employing indigenous people. So you know, when you make
Speaker 3: or want to work in a certain nation or with them,
Speaker 3: you know, to employ people from that band and give them,
Speaker 3: you know, a sustainable you know career. And there's lots
Speaker 3: of indigenous people that actually have forest tech diplomas and
Speaker 3: other things yep, that that can do that. So I think,
Speaker 3: you know, and I know it's not easy either. I
Speaker 3: don't want people to think like, oh, yeah, you just
Speaker 3: sit at a table and decide your values and then
Speaker 3: everything goes away.
Speaker 1: Amy explains that over the many years, promises have been
Speaker 1: made and broken, and outside collaboration has seemed to come
Speaker 1: with a price tag.
Speaker 3: You know, I think you need to recognize, you know,
Speaker 3: if you want to do this kind of work, that
Speaker 3: there has to be some kind of benefit for the
Speaker 3: community as a whole as well, whether that's you know,
Speaker 3: monetarily or you know, supporting like a recreational forest or
Speaker 3: you know something. Yeah, to kind of come to that,
Speaker 3: I don't like, there's not I think an easy answer
Speaker 3: for you know, like just do this one step and
Speaker 3: you know Indigenous people will love to work with you.
Speaker 3: But for me, I think that forestry really has an
Speaker 3: advantage over say like the oil and gas industry because
Speaker 3: I think that there's many more share values or like
Speaker 3: I think the worldview of an Indigenous person in a
Speaker 3: forester is much more similar. So yeah, I think that
Speaker 3: that's kind of exciting almost, and you know, something kind
Speaker 3: of a future And I've seen like a bunch of
Speaker 3: nations now you know, are opening their own little sawmills
Speaker 3: and other things, and to me, that's like exciting. So
Speaker 3: because it has to do with the housing crises we have,
Speaker 3: right so they want to be able to you know,
Speaker 3: harvest their own wood to build their own homes, which
Speaker 3: I mean, why we aren't doing that. I have no idea,
Speaker 3: you know, instead of shipping in the wood and timber
Speaker 3: and stuff. So I think, yeah, there's unfortunately there's not
Speaker 3: like a really easy answer, but I would say, like
Speaker 3: the biggest thing is, you know, to be genuine and
Speaker 3: patient and then understand that history. You know, that the
Speaker 3: situation that you're coming into, because lots of people get
Speaker 3: like a I don't want to say white savior because
Speaker 3: that sounds really bad, but you know it's kind of like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm going to go to the community and help them
Speaker 3: or you know, like yeah, and I think the problem
Speaker 3: is that there's a revolving door of these you know,
Speaker 3: white saviors or people that you know are coming to
Speaker 3: save them. And like even like if you go to
Speaker 3: a First nation conference, like there's just kind of business
Speaker 3: people all over the place trying to sell the chiefs
Speaker 3: on different ideas and different different things. So yeah, it's
Speaker 3: almost kind of being becoming trusted in the community and
Speaker 3: then also working long term. And that's something that you know,
Speaker 3: are especially in government, like we don't really support because
Speaker 3: you know, everyone kind of wants to climb the ladder
Speaker 3: in government whereas you know, the most trusted people are
Speaker 3: generally the ones from the community who've been in the
Speaker 3: community the longest, and that's generally who like an Indigenous
Speaker 3: person would trust. Yeah, so yeah, it's almost like doing
Speaker 3: these relationships long term too, And I think there's some
Speaker 3: great examples out there of things that are going really well.
Speaker 1: So, yes, trust and incentives really matter, as does plain
Speaker 1: old money.
Speaker 3: And I would say lots of that does come from
Speaker 3: like that funding issue. You know that sometimes they just
Speaker 3: don't have enough money. And then also other times, you know,
Speaker 3: we're dealing with lots of issues that have been brought
Speaker 3: on by colonization, right, So like if you're dealing with
Speaker 3: a suicide crisis in your community, you're not really going
Speaker 3: to care about forestry, right, And so I hear people
Speaker 3: say that too, like to me sometimes about you know,
Speaker 3: when I talk about how we're stewards of the environment,
Speaker 3: they'll say to me, like, have you ever been on
Speaker 3: a reserve and looked at like you know, there's garbage
Speaker 3: everywhere and you know, and people don't care about their houses,
Speaker 3: and like that's hardly an environmental steward And to me,
Speaker 3: that's colonization, right, Like that's where where we've gone and
Speaker 3: where we've been pushed.
Speaker 1: So reminder that cultural burning practices were criminalized, but now
Speaker 1: they're becoming of interest to Western scientists, and Amy says
Speaker 1: that we're turning to that fired stewardship could be really
Speaker 1: healing for forests, for people who love the forest, and
Speaker 1: for the people who have been kept from doing it
Speaker 1: for so long.
Speaker 3: Moving forward, it's kind of like re like regaining our
Speaker 3: culture back. And so that's like where to relate it
Speaker 3: to burning. That's we're burning in those things. It's burning
Speaker 3: for us is a cultural practice, right, And so I
Speaker 3: think by getting fire back on the landscape by kind
Speaker 3: of making our forest healthier, you know, than that promotes
Speaker 3: a healthier community. So you know, instead of kids sitting inside,
Speaker 3: you know, they're out on the land and like what
Speaker 3: kid doesn't like fire, right, So they're out with their
Speaker 3: elder like burning. And then it's those neat things like
Speaker 3: even just showing kids like how smart their ancestors were.
Speaker 3: Like the one elder that I was talking to was
Speaker 3: telling me about how drip torches actually came from First
Speaker 3: Nations people, which I didn't know, but I think, like that,
Speaker 3: to me, that's neat because you take kids out there
Speaker 3: and you show them like, well, you know, drip torches
Speaker 3: came from you, you know, and and and even like
Speaker 3: kids had jobs on fires, right, So oh man, I
Speaker 3: actually heard this fantastic Well that also made me cry
Speaker 3: the other day from this guy in Australia and he
Speaker 3: was saying for them, burning is such a family affair.
Speaker 3: And actually that's what I hear too from all of
Speaker 3: our that people I've talked to here, is that you know,
Speaker 3: it wouldn't just be the men that would go out
Speaker 3: and burn, it's the entire family and the kids. Like
Speaker 3: one thing they would do is pick up like pine
Speaker 3: cones and you know, light them on fire and then
Speaker 3: from the fire and then throw them.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: It's so like awesome for kids. And I know, like
Speaker 3: there's fire managers probably listening to this saying, oh my goodness,
Speaker 3: they're going to burn down.
Speaker 4: The Please do not do this. If you are just
Speaker 4: a kid listening, I don't want to start throwing flaming
Speaker 4: balls of fire, don't do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but this was obviously under the direction of elders
Speaker 3: and you know also burning at like very low risk times, right,
Speaker 3: Like this was not in the yes, but so you know,
Speaker 3: it was to give the kids a job on the fire,
Speaker 3: and the one guy from Australia was saying that for
Speaker 3: his mob that for them, it was bringing children's laughter
Speaker 3: back to the forest because the trees hadn't heard the
Speaker 3: children laugh in a long time and they felt that
Speaker 3: that was needed for the trees to be healthy too.
Speaker 3: And I mean that kind of relates like obviously children's
Speaker 3: laughter does not you know, directly affect the tree, but
Speaker 3: it's more that like if people are out on the
Speaker 3: land stewarding it, right, then that promotes health for the
Speaker 3: health of the trees. So anyways, to me, that was
Speaker 3: such a beautiful like quote because I think too often,
Speaker 3: you know, we kind of remove that or remove kind
Speaker 3: of the community.
Speaker 1: Patroon Nitnikki DeMarco asked, is there any way we could
Speaker 1: go back to indigenous stewardship to help with this problem
Speaker 1: or does the red tape make it not feasible? So
Speaker 1: moving forward, what are the legalities of it?
Speaker 3: So on our like the reserves, we're technically allowed to burn,
Speaker 3: right because that's the you know the band, well it's
Speaker 3: federal jurisdiction, but you know, the band kind of has
Speaker 3: a bit of control over it, so you know that
Speaker 3: you don't need provincial permission to do that. So, you know,
Speaker 3: lots of agents fire management agencies say, you know, oh,
Speaker 3: we're so supportive of indigenous people and we want to
Speaker 3: help that you know, you know, support their practices, you know,
Speaker 3: until we say, you know, we want to burn something.
Speaker 3: And so you know what I've seen, even you know,
Speaker 3: in BC is where I'm doing a lot of work
Speaker 3: right now, because the nations there are so passionate burning.
Speaker 3: But you know, they they're going into these meetings and
Speaker 3: it's you know, like a really complicated process to get
Speaker 3: prescribed burning on the ground, and it's very Western base.
Speaker 3: You know, you have to know like fuel types that
Speaker 3: are out there. Yeah, it's like a crazy twelve step process.
Speaker 3: And most of the communities look at that and just say,
Speaker 3: you know, we'll screw this. We're burning ourselves.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: And then even when they want to burn, like I've
Speaker 3: heard of lots, you know where somebody sees smoke and
Speaker 3: then you know, calls the you know, calls the emergency
Speaker 3: number and then you know, a helicopter will just come
Speaker 3: and put out their their little fire that they're burning
Speaker 3: right without you know, coming and dropping down and maybe
Speaker 3: talking to the people or are seeing what's going on.
Speaker 3: So there's a bit of a disconnect, and I can
Speaker 3: see it from both sides, right because especially in BC,
Speaker 3: like the fires has been so crazy that I think,
Speaker 3: you know, the BC fire manager or wildfire service there,
Speaker 3: you know, obviously doesn't want out of control fires, yes,
Speaker 3: but the nations there want to burn. And so what
Speaker 3: I'm seeing right now is because they they're just us
Speaker 3: like smashing heads basically, like they're supportive until we want
Speaker 3: to burn. And because of that smashing of heads, is
Speaker 3: that now the nations are saying like, well, screw you,
Speaker 3: this is our territory. We're doing what we want, you know.
Speaker 3: And then like it becomes like this real conflict situation,
Speaker 3: and we're trying to work with like the agency and
Speaker 3: you know, maybe even introduce some sort of like cultural
Speaker 3: burn protocol or procedure you know that's more indigenous based,
Speaker 3: that same thing, like you're kind of getting permission, you know,
Speaker 3: you're notifying the correct authorities, but it's not as crazy
Speaker 3: as this like existing process.
Speaker 4: Well, I think that's and we've just again it's not
Speaker 4: a thing We've discussed a bit on the on the
Speaker 4: other episodes we did that, yeah, the Good Fire podcast.
Speaker 4: But talking about that, that's another big barrier to indigenous
Speaker 4: burning or cultural burning however you want to call it.
Speaker 4: Is the like the Western barriers on that because like,
Speaker 4: you're right, we don't want out of control of fires.
Speaker 3: Yes, so yeah, the.
Speaker 4: Western like the Western government, like we want to make
Speaker 4: sure that like any fire that is started is going
Speaker 4: to become a problem for anything outside of the reserve
Speaker 4: or whatever. Right, But also at the same time recognizing that,
Speaker 4: like you think you were saying, Indigenous people have been
Speaker 4: working with fire for thousands of years and understand the relationship,
Speaker 4: So how do you make sure that government feels comfortable
Speaker 4: with this going on? But also ensuring that because it's
Speaker 4: entirely possible. Also, like this is something that somebody who's
Speaker 4: playing Devil's Advocate would say, right, is just saying that, like, well,
Speaker 4: how do we ensure that they know what they're doing,
Speaker 4: because it could be somebody who just because they're Indigenous
Speaker 4: doesn't mean they know what's going on, right, they have
Speaker 4: to have that knowledge pass down and collected somehow.
Speaker 3: And you know, I've heard that all the time, like, oh,
Speaker 3: if we allow this, the Indians are going to be
Speaker 3: lighting fires.
Speaker 5: Everywhere, like yeah, exactly right, and then that kind of
Speaker 5: fear yeah, right, So there's that fear of will they
Speaker 5: take advantage of this and just do it for fun
Speaker 5: or whatever, and that exists, So we have to address
Speaker 5: that fear.
Speaker 4: So how do we There's going to have to be
Speaker 4: a collaboration somehow to be like, Okay, we acknowledge that
Speaker 4: like these four people somehow. Unfortunately, that's the way it's
Speaker 4: going to happen. I think it's probably gonna have to
Speaker 4: go that these four people in this band have the knowledge, yeah,
Speaker 4: and they have to be like, I don't know, and
Speaker 4: this is super westernized for me to think, right, like,
Speaker 4: these people have the knowledge and understanding of how to
Speaker 4: do this, so if they're in charge, we're not going
Speaker 4: to worry about it. But I also feel like indigenous
Speaker 4: communities having to talk to the overlord, the government of
Speaker 4: all what they're doing on their own land is counter
Speaker 4: is exactly the opposite of what you're trying to accomplish here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so that's like, so you know, like there's
Speaker 3: fireboss training, right or no burn boss training, So there's
Speaker 3: like different levels of that you can go through the
Speaker 3: same thing. It's very Western, like I know that now,
Speaker 3: Like there's Bob Gray and other guys who train on
Speaker 3: that who are starting to incorporate a bit of Indigenous
Speaker 3: knowledge or you know the importance of Indigenous knowledge and burning.
Speaker 3: But same, it's very like kind of Western. You know,
Speaker 3: this is how we light a prescribe fire, and that's
Speaker 3: all we know.
Speaker 4: That's the only culture I know, right, so it's where
Speaker 4: my perspective is going to come from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're doing brain the FireKeepers and we're like,
Speaker 3: you know, well they do a certification course to get that,
Speaker 3: So maybe what we need to do then is have
Speaker 3: a cultural burning certification course, right, so that you know,
Speaker 3: people would go through and then once they get that,
Speaker 3: then you know they can go and and light fires
Speaker 3: or whatever. But then then we had a lot of
Speaker 3: fire keepers that were saying like, no, that is basically
Speaker 3: just us trying to fit into a Western system, right,
Speaker 3: And they were saying, like the one guy actually at
Speaker 3: the fire keeper's conference, I just went to the government
Speaker 3: people were talking and he stood up and he just said,
Speaker 3: you know, I find this really difficult because they were
Speaker 3: talking about, you know, like all the procedures you need
Speaker 3: to go through to get approven. He stood up and
Speaker 3: he just said, you know, for me, this is my
Speaker 3: families and like my nation's inherent right to steward the land,
Speaker 3: this is my responsibility. This is why I was put
Speaker 3: on this earth, you know. So for me then to
Speaker 3: have to go and ask you for permission to do
Speaker 3: what is my responsibility and my right, that doesn't make
Speaker 3: any sense. And then he was saying, like, you know,
Speaker 3: one hundred years ago, you guys were telling us we
Speaker 3: couldn't burn because we were destroying the forest, and now
Speaker 3: you're saying, test oh, only we can burn because you
Speaker 3: know you because now the forest is destroyed. And he's like,
Speaker 3: you're the ones, you know who's practices because you wouldn't
Speaker 3: listen to us, you know, have led to this. If
Speaker 3: you would have listened to my ancestors, you know, then
Speaker 3: we wouldn't be in this predicament we're in now, So like,
Speaker 3: let us kind of take it over. So I think
Speaker 3: it's one of those like I don't I hate I
Speaker 3: don't really like that term like wicked issue, you know,
Speaker 3: where it's like super complex, But it is kind of
Speaker 3: like that in a way, right, because you like you're
Speaker 3: worried the forest isn't healthy right now. I don't personally
Speaker 3: want to say to somebody like, yeah, go out and
Speaker 3: burn and then have you know, a massive crownd fire start.
Speaker 3: But I think the thing is with indigenous fire practice
Speaker 3: is that it's you know, you're burning at very specific times.
Speaker 3: So you know, it's like early spring before the snow
Speaker 3: is left in Canada, it's late fall, just like the
Speaker 3: day or two before the first snow fall. Right, You're
Speaker 3: not burning lif like obviously in the summer. So like
Speaker 3: I would think that that, you know, obviously still should
Speaker 3: be criminalized to some extent. You know that you need
Speaker 3: to find people or whatever that are just going because
Speaker 3: that is very high risk. And so like what our
Speaker 3: like elders and ancestors say from like the different nations
Speaker 3: that I've talked to is that you know, our burning
Speaker 3: that we do is so low risk. That's why we
Speaker 3: don't need protective equipment. That's why we don't need a
Speaker 3: burn plan, because if we're doing it right, you know,
Speaker 3: there's there's literally very lower zero risk. Why I think
Speaker 3: they would say zero risk to what they're doing, you know,
Speaker 3: to starting an out of control fire or somebody getting hurt.
Speaker 4: It's amazing how complicated the situation is to try and
Speaker 4: navigate this, but I think, yeah, the only way forward
Speaker 4: is to.
Speaker 3: Come together and discussions.
Speaker 4: It seems like a cop out to say that, because
Speaker 4: it's just like like we need to discuss it, but
Speaker 4: unfortunately that's the truth.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, and on the Good Fire podcast, I think like
Speaker 3: that's what's interesting is because with the range of people
Speaker 3: that we talked to on there, Like, you know, you
Speaker 3: go from somebody who thinks, you know, like it's their
Speaker 3: right to burn and they're not working with any agency,
Speaker 3: and then to like other people who you know, are
Speaker 3: employed like me kind of buy an agency, like Frank Lake,
Speaker 3: you know, he works for US Forest Service and he's
Speaker 3: used his you know, work within this kind of western
Speaker 3: government structure to bring more fire back to his territory.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's just it's really interesting to see kind
Speaker 3: of all the different perspectives.
Speaker 1: So that conversation was from the Your Forest podcast, which
Speaker 1: is hosted by Matt Christoff, who also co hosts Good
Speaker 1: Fire with Amy, And of course there's a whole Good
Speaker 1: Fire episode with Frank Lake, and there's so many other
Speaker 1: great voices in indigenous fire ecology. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: link that episode in the podcast in general on my website,
Speaker 1: and I will also put up a link to the
Speaker 1: wonderful forty seven page book called Blazing the Trail, celebrating
Speaker 1: Indigenous fire stewardship. So many resources, so much learning. Now
Speaker 1: to wrap up, though, let's talk about some pains in
Speaker 1: some assets. So the most vexing thing about Amy's job.
Speaker 3: I'd have to say my least favorite thing about my
Speaker 3: job is the bureaucracy, which I think that most people
Speaker 3: who work in a government agency can relate to. It's
Speaker 3: sometimes really frustrating when you know, you know something needs
Speaker 3: to be done or what a solution could be, but
Speaker 3: then you kind of get held up in all sorts
Speaker 3: of bureaucratic processes. So I mean, that's my least favorite. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: it takes up a lot of time that we could be,
Speaker 3: you know, devoting to other things. So that's frustrating for sure.
Speaker 1: In the standout best aspect, the most brightly glowing coal.
Speaker 3: But I think my most favorite thing about my job
Speaker 3: is that I'm able to work with communities and knowledge
Speaker 3: keepers from across Canada and then internationally sometimes as well,
Speaker 3: And I really realize that that's you know, a position
Speaker 3: of privilege that I have and that I'm in to
Speaker 3: be able to do that, and it comes like with
Speaker 3: a lot of responsibility that often you know, keeps me
Speaker 3: awake at night, but for me when I'm able to
Speaker 3: bring fire keepers or other people to events or other
Speaker 3: things and just see their pride and finally being recognized
Speaker 3: in their knowledge being known, and sometimes like I've been
Speaker 3: referring to that as kind of like, you know, we
Speaker 3: have this big severance event with fire, but now what
Speaker 3: we're almost seeing is this reunion with fire where Indigenous
Speaker 3: people are coming back to it. And so, you know,
Speaker 3: we have the land back movement for Indigenous people, and
Speaker 3: often I think, you know, we need a fireback movement
Speaker 3: as well, where Indigenous people you know, empowered again to
Speaker 3: make those decisions on the land. And what I'm seeing
Speaker 3: right now in Canada especially, is that there is a
Speaker 3: movement where people want to be involved in fire management
Speaker 3: decisions that are happening in their territories. And so I
Speaker 3: think that's really exciting.
Speaker 1: So ask smart people exciting questions because sometimes the situation
Speaker 1: is impossibly complex and they can help break it down
Speaker 1: for you, like a focus on a fallen lock and
Speaker 1: so for more on this topic, you can get yourself
Speaker 1: some good Fire podcast into your ears. It's hosted by
Speaker 1: Amy and by Matt Christoff, and it's linked in the
Speaker 1: show notes. Matth's podcast Again is Your Forest Podcast. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much to him for letting us use so
Speaker 1: much of his interview with Amy. You can follow Amy
Speaker 1: at Christensen Amy on Twitter. There are more links in
Speaker 1: the show notes and up at my website aliwar dot
Speaker 1: com slash Ologies slash good Fire. You can follow us
Speaker 1: at ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at ali Ward
Speaker 1: with one l New full length adult friendly episodes continue
Speaker 1: to come out on Tuesday, and we're moving smologies releases
Speaker 1: to the weekend I think Sundays or Mondays, so look
Speaker 1: for a new kid friendly episode next week. Also, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry that my neighbor's dog's barking. I can't really do
Speaker 1: anything about it. We gotta get this episode up. I'm
Speaker 1: So Sweaty. Merch is available at ologiesmerch dot com. Thank
Speaker 1: you to sisters Shannon fellas Us and Body Dutch for
Speaker 1: managing merch. They host a podcast called You Are That,
Speaker 1: a comedy podcast. Thank you to longtime friend Aaron Talbert
Speaker 1: we met when we were four, for admitting the Ologies
Speaker 1: podcast Facebook group. Thank you to Emily White of the
Speaker 1: Wordery Professional Transcription Company for making transcripts for Ologies. They're
Speaker 1: available for free on my website. Thank you Caleb Patten
Speaker 1: for Bleeping episodes. Thank you Noel Dilworth for all the scheduling,
Speaker 1: and Susan Hale, both of you for helping with social
Speaker 1: media quizes and such as always giant thank you to
Speaker 1: Resident editor by resident, I mean we live in the
Speaker 1: same bed, shared sleeper who helped me stitch all these
Speaker 1: audio clips together. And also of course to Steph Maray
Speaker 1: Morris for all the editing help and for working on
Speaker 1: Somologies now too. Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the theme music.
Speaker 1: And if you listen to the end, you know I
Speaker 1: tell you the secret. This week's secret. It's pretty juicy.
Speaker 1: It's actually not. It's that I prefer dry, pulpy oranges.
Speaker 1: I don't want a juicy orange. I want the pulp
Speaker 1: to hold all the juice. I don't want to need
Speaker 1: juice on my hands. I want to dry, pulpy orange.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's a certain kind of orange
Speaker 1: or if I have to just let them stand on
Speaker 1: the counterlonger. But if you are a pulpologist and you
Speaker 1: know this, holler let me know, because every time I
Speaker 1: open an orange, I'm rolling the dice. I'm like, come on,
Speaker 1: give me a dry one. Is it gross? I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't care anyway, berbye. Pacodermatology, homiology or doo zoology, lithology, technology, meteorology, paratology, anthology, ceiology, slidology.
Speaker 3: Have you ever thought about fighting fire with fire?