Latest news with #KarukTribe
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Cultural burning: ‘Fire teaches us many lessons'
Pauly DenetclawICT Bill Tripp, Karuk, has been a cultural fire practitioner nearly his entire life. He remembers being four years old, cracking acorns as he waited for his great-grandmother to wake up so they could talk in the mornings. Eventually he turned his attention toward the woodstove and tried to build a fire. His great-grandmother heard him and joined him in the main living area. 'She came out and she told me, 'If you're going to be playing with fire, you're going to do something good with it,'' Tripp recalls. SUPPORT INDIGENOUS JOURNALISM. She took him outside underneath the black oak trees, and told him to burn a straight line. Tripp was left with a small pack of matches and good weather for a slow-burning fire. 'I remember laying on my belly using those matches,' he told ICT. 'I could at least get a light, but I couldn't get it to burn completely, you know? I started doing different things, arranging the fuels different, lighting in multiple places, and using heat to draw together — just with little four-inch flame links. I learned a lot that day.' He went back inside to tell his great-grandmother. 'I used every last match, but I did it, and I was just so proud of myself,' he said. 'And she said, 'Okay, I'll teach you.' So she started telling me the stories. I'm just so grateful that I passed that test that day, because I might not have learned anything if I hadn't.' Tripp has been a cultural fire practitioner ever since. He still uses cultural fire to care for the land around his home. Today, he's also the director of natural resources and environmental policy for the Karuk Tribe in northern California. For years, the tribe has worked toward decriminalizing cultural fire and creating legal protections for cultural fire practitioners in the state. In late February, in the aftermath of the devastating Los Angeles fires, the tribe signed a first-of-a-kind agreement with the state to remove bureaucratic barriers for cultural fire practitioners. The agreement comes at a time of growing recognition that Indigenous knowledge of land stewardship could reduce the amount of undergrowth that fuels wildfires in California, according to Indigenous activists, scholars and cultural fire practitioners. It's time, Tripp said, to shift the focus to using cultural fire, or 'good fire.' Hot, dry conditions Ash, grief and loss are the remnants of the recent fires in Los Angeles, the deadliest and most destructive wildfires in California's history. More than 11,500 homes were burned across 60 square miles, and 30 people lost their lives as of April 15. It will likely take months for the debris to be cleared and years for the area to recover, according to research from the Urban Institute. Even then, affordable housing could be drastically reduced, the National Low Income Housing Coalition reports. The fires also have drawn attention to the fact that California's ecosystem is largely fire-dependent, having relied on fires over the centuries to kill out undergrowth that can fuel the spread of wildfires. Climate change has modified the dynamics, however. Starting in 2020, the state experienced a severe drought that ended in December 2022, when the first of nine so-called atmospheric rivers dumped huge amounts of water from the tropics onto the West Coast. The dramatic increase in rainfall over the next two years encouraged the growth of vegetation and resulted in a wildflower superbloom. Record-breaking heat then returned with reduced levels of precipitation that led to dry conditions again in late 2024, turning the lush vegetation into a tinderbox. The hot, dry weather increased the intensity of the wildfires by six percent and made them 35 percent more likely to occur, according to a report from the World Weather Attribution. On Jan. 7, the first of the Los Angeles fires erupted, with stronger-than usual Santa Ana winds accelerating their spread. Carrying on traditions For thousands of years, Indigenous people across the world have used cultural fire to bring vital nutrients back to the soil, promote the growth of cultural plants and clean the land. In the area now known as California, cultural burning goes back centuries, according to Jessa Calderon, the land, water, and climate justice director at Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples in Los Angeles. 'There is documentation from the Spanish diaries that talked about an area near San Pedro, and they called it the Bay of Smokes. What was happening at that time was traditional burning,' Calderon said. 'When the Spanish made their way back, what they described was a place that was like an untouched paradise,' she said. 'But it, in fact, had been very manicured, because the peoples have always carried on that tradition of taking care of the land, preventing disease with fire, allowing new growth and new shoots with fire. It's important to keep those traditions.' For more than 150 years, however, the state of California explicitly banned the use of cultural fire. Article 10 of an 1850 law called Government Protection of Indians, stated, 'If any person or persons shall set the prairie on fire or refuse to use proper exertion to extinguish the fire when the prairies are burning, such person or persons shall be subject to fine or punishment, as a Court may adjudge proper.' The law contained 20 articles, which are legal rules, and it didn't apply to white people. Its main purpose was to remove Indigenous people from their land, Indigenous children from their families, and impose forced, indentured servitude to white people, according to a report by the California Research Bureau. As late as the 1930s, Indigenous people were killed for using cultural fire to take care of the land, said Karuk Chairman Russell Attebery. Despite this ban, Karuk people would still work secretly to put fire to land. 'I know from speaking with elders, that they would know that an area needed to be burned, and they would go out and jerry rig something that would ignite when they were back in town,' Attebery told ICT. '(The fire) would burn off an area where they knew needed to be burned to reduce the high brush, and the fuels for the fires. They couldn't use their cultural burning ways.' Fire was essential to growing the beargrass needed to weave their baskets, and Karuk people risked their lives to maintain this practice. The threats caused some Native people, however, to lose their knowledge of cultural burning, Tripp said. 'Some individual families have been able to maintain the practice at smaller scales, close at home, but to manage our food, fiber and medicinal groves out there across the landscape, we just simply haven't been able to do that without, back 100 years ago, getting potentially killed, or in more recent years, being cited fines for arson,' Tripp said. Fire reduced plant material — such as dead leaves, fallen pine needles or dry grass that can fuel wildfires — allow beneficial native plants to grow. 'For the plant life, it is a blessing,' Calderon said, 'because there are a lot of plants that we utilize that actually need fire.' Melissa Adams, San Carlos Apache, a cultural fire practitioner who is also a scholar and researcher, said she tapped into Indigenous knowledge and the history of cultural burning while enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of California-Davis. 'I have learned from my own tribe how we placed fire to the landscape for our cultural medicines, for ceremonial ways,' Adams told ICT. 'We have the tribes in California that placed fire purposely for ecological benefits and, from what I've learned, they call it 'cleaning up their forests.'' The use of fire, however, can be heavily restricted in some areas, Adams said. 'Fire restrictions are very prevalent within our fire management systems,' Adams said. 'As a fire practitioner, it's really hard to get fire on the ground in fire-prone communities and fire-prone places such as Southern California.' 'Good fire' More than 80 percent of the Karuk Tribe's cultural and medicinal plants are reliant on fire, according to a report, 'Good Fire II,' co-authored by Tripp that was released by the Northern California tribe in March 2024. Some of the medicinal plants are acorn-bearing oak trees, natural tobacco, hazel tree, and beargrass. 'Karuk people have been using fire to enhance our traditional food, fiber and medicinal resources since time immemorial,' Tripp said. 'We've gone more than a century now without being able to freely practice this at meaningful scales.' Cultural fire is different from prescribed burns, according to practitioners. Cultural fire is given to the land in a spiritual and holistic way that aligns with an Indigenous nations' cultural values. Prescribed burns lack any cultural connection or element. The Karuk Tribe has been at the forefront of defending tribal sovereignty when it comes to cultural burning and protecting cultural fire practitioners. Although cultural burning by Indigenous people was outlawed in 1850, private landowners were able to apply for burning permits but not without heated debate. At the turn of the century, there was huge controversy over the use of good fire, even on private land. The U.S. Forest Service, in 1905, formally adopted the policy of fire exclusion — meaning all types of fire, prescribed and natural, would be banned, prevented or suppressed, according to a 1999 book, 'Prescribed Burning in California Wildlands Vegetation Management,' by Harold H. Biswell. The Red River Lumber Company in Shasta, California, advocated for the use of good fire but faced pressure to stop in 1913 and ultimately complied. In 1924, the California Department of Forestry adopted the same fire exclusion policy as the federal government. By 1945, the negative impact of these policies on the fire-dependent California ecosystem prompted the state to allow private landowners to apply for burning permits. Unfortunately, the permit system had one weakness: It left landowners with the bill for any fire suppression costs or damages caused by escaped fires, which are prescribed burns that go out of control. The California Department of Forestry continuously reminded landowners of this, partly, as a scare tactic. The fear of paying fire suppression costs, coupled with the boom in housing development, effectively stifled the use of prescribed burns by private landowners. The prescribed burn provisions required tribes to apply with the state for permission to conduct burns on their lands, in the same way that private landowners could apply. The Karuk Tribe saw that as diminishing tribal sovereignty and never used the process. 'We've had to establish partnerships with other entities that are covered under the state and don't have sovereignty,' Tripp said. 'They've agreed to help us protect our sovereignty by being applicants for the permits.' This historical wrong was corrected last year. On Sept. 27, 2024, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the Cultural Burning bill. For the first time in California history, the state recognized and affirmed tribal nations' inherent right to oversee cultural burnings. The only caveat was that the tribes had to reach an agreement with the California Natural Resources Agency and local air quality officials first. The Karuk Tribe worked with the agency and air quality officials to become the first Indigenous nation to use the new law to form a sovereign-to-sovereign agreement with the state to oversee and manage its own cultural burnings. 'I feel a little bit anxious because we're not getting out there and getting more done fast enough,' Tripp said. 'I've known the benefits all my life, growing up in my traditional village and getting out there and burning with my family at four years old.' He's seen first hand the benefits of cultural fire on the land, and is excited to see the benefits put to use in coming years. 'I remember some of the early lessons of burning underneath the white oak trees that hadn't burned in 10, 15 years,' Tripp said. 'The next year you had trilliums, you had wild ginger, you just had all these other [plants] you never saw before coming up, and it didn't take a lot of fire.' Despite the historic agreement, damage to the land has already been done and there is a lot of work ahead, said Calderon, who is Tongva, Chumash and Yaqui. 'Within that time of it being outlawed, there were invasive species that Europeans had brought with them that started to become rampant,' Calderon said. 'Our own traditional plants, along with these plants, are now becoming mass fuel for any fire that would come through. So you've got all of this land that stopped being cared for and tended to by outlawing our culture and traditions, and it just becomes a devastation.' Adams said the public should learn that fire can be beneficial. 'For so long, the public narrative of fire has been one that's rooted in fear, one that's only connection to fire is sources of destruction, of loss,' Adams said. 'Perhaps by changing our interrelationship with fire, how we think about it, how we interact with it, to a more stewardship view – that there are ecological benefits, cultural benefits, relational benefits that fire presents.' Incorporating Indigenous practices Cultural fire could be an important tool to help mitigate the devastation and intensity of wildfires in California and beyond, but Indigenous people have to be at the forefront of the conversations. The traditional homelands of the Chumash people were along the Malibu coast and went nearly 200 miles north to Paso Robles, California before they were forcibly displaced by the state. Those who were able to stay did menial labor on farms and ranches. Today, there are many Chumash people who still call this coastline home. 'Tragedy sometimes provides opportunities to revisit past decisions that need updating, and it is important that Indigenous communities be heard on that,' Chumash elder Toni Cordero, said in a statement to ICT. 'We can try to make sure any rebuilding is in appropriate places and done appropriately.' Cordero, a member of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation, said the California Environmental Quality Act statute and guidelines cannot be overlooked in the rush to rebuild after the Los Angeles wildfires. The 40-year-old law established a state policy to ensure that people and nature can exist in harmony 'to fulfill the social and economic requirements of present and future generations.' 'We now have a chance to ensure that rebuilding along the Malibu coast is more consistent with public access, exempting rebuilding from environmental laws like CEQA, without a chance for public [comment] on that, and it suggests that the public may be overlooked in the race to help fire victims rebuild,' Cordero said. 'Of course, we acknowledge that we sympathize with people who have lost their homes, but it would be compounding the tragedy to just repeat past poor decisions.' The Los Angeles area wasn't designed to be fire resilient. The urban landscape is filled with homes that aren't built with fire-resistant material and the close proximity of homes allows fire to jump from one home to another. The county underutilizes prescribed burns because of public opposition. That is slowly changing. Since Newsom was elected, the state has invested $2.5 billion to implement the Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan, and the number of prescribed burns more than doubled in the state from 2021 to 2023, according to his website. Newsom recently signed a bill that would allocate an additional $170 million to clearing brush, thinning forests, creating fire breaks and conducting prescribed burns. The state will provide $10 million in funding to build a fire resiliency center for the Karuk Tribe. Since the Los Angeles fires, the county has conducted two prescribed burns on the lands it manages, burning a total of 16.6 acres, according to CAL FIRE Fuel Reduction Projects. These two burns were about an hour north of Los Angeles. Near the city, fuel reduction projects tend to focus on manual removal or thinning of vegetation. Freddie Romero, a member of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, understands the benefits and positive effects of cultural fire on his traditional homelands in the Malibu area. 'The absence of Indigenous peoples when it comes to prescribed/cultural burning planning, although this is beginning to change, it still is a slow process… Indigenous peoples have used fire for thousands of years to steward these lands and promote sustainable development and growth, and this is not only for themselves, but for all of the earth's ecosystem,' Romero, a Chumash elder, said in a statement to ICT. The devastating Los Angeles wildfires brought together crews from Indigenous nations from as far away as Arizona to assist in fire suppression and, once the fire was contained, in recovery efforts. 'We respond to these incidents… like the Eaton and the Palisades fire,' said Ralph Tovar, assistant fire chief for the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. 'Knowing that people are experiencing tremendous loss, not only for themselves, but for their community, as firefighters, we're sympathetic to that fact. Man, we feel for these people, and we really think about them in this time of need, and we do our best to try and help them.' Looking ahead In October, the U.S. Forest Service halted all prescribed burns on federally-managed lands in California for the foreseeable future in an effort to preserve staff and equipment for fighting wildfires — making the agreement with the Karuk Tribe even more important. The tribe's traditional homelands are located in what is now known as the Klamath National Forest. Attebery is excited about the future of the Karuk Tribe with the agreement in place. The tribe already has planned a number of wildfire prevention projects that include prescribed burning but also logging. The hope is to once again have clean forests. 'Our job is what it was thousands of years ago. It's to protect the lower areas, create a better snowpack, food security, our culture items that we need, water for our rivers and our fish,' Attebury said. Decades of advocacy by the Karuk Tribe to gain oversight over cultural fire has come to a close, but the next battle is funding for wildfire prevention projects. 'This is something that tribes have been doing for thousands of years, we need the opportunity to take the lead. We need the opportunity to access the funding that's coming in,' Attebery told ICT. 'Our goal is to work hard and use the knowledge that we have, but… (we're) adamant that tribes need to take the lead.' Our stories are worth telling. Our stories are worth sharing. Our stories are worth your support. Contribute $5 or $10 today to help ICT carry out its critical mission. Sign up for ICT's free newsletter.
CBC
11-03-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Karuk Tribe right to cultural burning affirmed in agreement with California
The Karuk Tribe of northern California recently became the first to reach an agreement with the California Natural Resources Agency and local air quality officials to practise cultural burns. Bill Tripp, Karuk Tribe's director of natural resources and environmental policy, said the agreement reflects the state's recognition of the community's sovereignty. "The whole fire exclusion paradigm has impacted our rights," Tripp said. "Now we get a lot of very large wildfires today and there's a lot of reasons for that, but fundamentally at the root of it all is the fact that it's been so long since some of these places have burned." He said they've been burning in and around their traditional lands since time immemorial and fire prevention campaigns such as Smokey the Bear instilled a fear of fire in society — one that has allowed for the accumulation of wildfire fuel. He also pointed to other contributing factors like extreme and unprecedented weather patterns and the Weeks Act of 1911, a federal law that established the eastern national forests and the first co-operative wildland firefighting effort, and outlawed some Native American fire management practices in the U.S. Tripp said historically, his people would have roughly 7,000 fires per year to burn off fuel such as dead branches and leaves and to help shape and regenerate the landscape. Indigenous stewardship In Canada, Natural Resources Transfer Acts in 1930 transferred control over Crown lands and natural resources from the Government of Canada to the provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Wildfire consultant Brady Highway, a member of Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation in Sask., said these agreements removed First Nations' right to steward their territory and that extreme wildfires impact their inherent rights. "We are dependent on the land, on a healthy landscape in order for us to hunt and, and fish and gather the foods and medicines that we need," Highway said. "Without a healthy environment, our inherent rights are being impacted." He said he considers the process of applying for burn permits similar to having a duty to consult the province, "when the province regularly imposes regulations, legislation, land use policies on us without that same courtesy of consulting with us." Firekeeper Joe Gilchrist, a member of Skeetchestn Indian Band near Kamloops B.C., recently attended a First Nations Emergency Services cultural burning workshop in Cranbrook, B.C., ahead of this year's wildfire season. He said burn permits are not always practical because it's difficult to set a date to have a fire. "If we did a cultural burn then we would go out on the land every morning and then we would know when it's time to burn," he said. "There's lots of different signs which can't necessarily be projected." He said he's seen wildfires become progressively worse since he was young. "There used to be a pattern where about every four to seven years you'd have a bad fire year," he said. "Just in the 2000s, you start to see that it's almost every year now that the fires are bad." Gilchrist said he supports the direction the state of California's taking and believes a similar approach to cultural burns could work here in Canada. He said fire prevention through cultural burns would be much less expensive than the cost of fire suppression. "[The land] needs fire to be healthy," Gilchrist said.
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
In a First, California Tribe May Freely Burn Its Ancestral Lands
In California, a state increasingly beset by devastating wildfires, the Karuk Tribe will be able to freely set controlled burns, helping to clear the dense underbrush that fuels larger and more destructive fires. Before Europeans arrived to the region, the Karuk would undertake some 7,000 burns each year on their lands along the Klamath River in northern California. Burns could be applied to a single tree or spread across many acres, and were administered ceremonially and to shape the landscape. The need for such burns is clear, tribal official Bill Tripp told The Los Angeles Times: 'One: You don't have major wildfire threats because everything around you is burned regularly. Two: Most of the plants and animals that we depend on in the ecosystem are actually fire-dependent species.' Until recently, tribes would need to secure permits for cultural burns, but a law passed last year allows federally recognized tribes to forge agreements with the state that allow them to administer burns without prior approval. This week the Karuk became the first tribe to reach such an agreement. Controlled burns are 'a real big part of our cultural identity and who we are,' tribal official Aja Conrad recently told Boise State Public Radio. 'It's about how to steward this place. It's about actively, physically tending to this place and rebuilding these sacred relationships.'
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
California tribe enters first-of-its-kind agreement with the state to practice cultural burns
Northern California's Karuk Tribe has for more than a century faced significant restrictions on cultural burning — the setting of intentional fires for both ceremonial and practical purposes, such as reducing brush to limit the risk of wildfires. That changed this week, thanks to legislation championed by the tribe and passed by the state last year that allows federally recognized tribes in California to burn freely once they reach agreements with the California Natural Resources Agency and local air quality officials. The tribe announced Thursday that it was the first to reach such an agreement with the agency. 'Karuk has been a national thought leader on cultural fire,' said Geneva E.B. Thompson, Natural Resources' deputy secretary for tribal affairs. 'So, it makes sense that they would be a natural first partner in this space because they have a really clear mission and core commitment to get this work done.' In the past, cultural burn practitioners first needed to get a burn permit from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, a department within the Natural Resources Agency, and a smoke permit from the local air district. The law passed in September 2024, SB 310, allows the state government to, respectfully, 'get out of the way' of tribes practicing cultural burns, said Thompson. For the Karuk Tribe, Cal Fire will no longer hold regulatory or oversight authority over the burns and will instead act as a partner and consultant. The previous arrangement, tribal leaders say, essentially amounted to one nation telling another nation what to do on its land — a violation of sovereignty. Now, collaboration can happen through a proper government-to-government relationship. The Karuk Tribe estimates that, conservatively, its more than 120 villages would complete at least 7,000 burns each year before contact with European settlers. Some may have been as small as an individual pine tree or patch of tanoak trees. Other burns may have spanned dozens of acres. 'When it comes to that ability to get out there and do frequent burning to basically survive as an indigenous community,' said Bill Tripp, director for the Karuk Tribe Natural Resource Department, 'one: you don't have major wildfire threats because everything around you is burned regularly. Two: Most of the plants and animals that we depend on in the ecosystem are actually fire-dependent species.' The Karuk Tribe's ancestral territory extends along much of the Klamath River in what is now the Klamath National Forest, where its members have fished for salmon, hunted for deer and collected tanoak acorns for food for thousands of years. The tribe, whose language is distinct from that of all other California tribes, is currently the second largest in the state, having more than 3,600 members. The history of the government's suppression of cultural burning is long and violent. In 1850, California passed a law that inflicted any fines or punishments a court found 'proper' on cultural burn practitioners. In a 1918 letter to a forest supervisor, a district ranger in the Klamath National Forest — in the Karuk Tribe's homeland — suggested that to stifle cultural burns, 'the only sure way is to kill them off, every time you catch one sneaking around in the brush like a coyote, take a shot at him.' For Thompson, the new law is a step toward righting those wrongs. 'I think SB 310 is part of that broader effort to correct those older laws that have caused harm, and really think through: How do we respect and support tribal sovereignty, respect and support traditional ecological knowledge, but also meet the climate and wildfire resiliency goals that we have as a state?' she said. The devastating 2020 fire year triggered a flurry of fire-related laws that aimed to increase the use of intentional fire on the landscape, including — for the first time — cultural burns. The laws granted cultural burns exemptions from the state's environmental impact review process and created liability protections and funds for use in the rare event that an intentional burn grows out of control. 'The generous interpretation of it is recognizing cultural burn practitioner knowledge,' said Becca Lucas Thomas, an ethnic studies lecturer at Cal Poly and cultural burn practitioner with the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe of San Luis Obispo County and Region. 'In trying to get more fire on the ground for wildfire prevention, it's important that we make sure that we have practitioners who are actually able to practice.' The new law, aimed at forming government-to-government relationships with Native tribes, can only allow federally recognized tribes to enter these new agreements. However, Thompson said it will not stop the agency from forming strong relationships with unrecognized tribes and respecting their sovereignty. 'Cal Fire has provided a lot of technical assistance and resources and support for those non-federally recognized tribes to implement these burns,' said Thompson, 'and we are all in and fully committed to continuing that work in partnership with the non-federally-recognized tribes.' Cal Fire has helped Lucas Thomas navigate the state's imposed burn permit process to the point that she can now comfortably navigate the system on her own, and she said Cal Fire handles the tribe's smoke permits. Last year, the tribe completed its first four cultural burns in over 150 years. 'Cal Fire, their unit here, has been truly invested in the relationship and has really dedicated their resources to supporting us,' said Lucas Thomas, 'with their stated intention of, 'we want you guys to be able to burn whenever you want, and you just give us a call and let us know what's going on.'' This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
California tribe enters first-of-its-kind agreement with the state to practice cultural burns
Northern California's Karuk Tribe has for more than a century faced significant restrictions on cultural burning — the setting of intentional fires for both ceremonial and practical purposes, such as reducing brush to limit the risk of wildfires. That changed this week, thanks to legislation championed by the tribe and passed by the state last year that allows federally recognized tribes in California to burn freely once they reach agreements with the California Natural Resources Agency and local air quality officials. The tribe announced Thursday that it was the first to reach such an agreement with the agency. 'Karuk has been a national thought leader on cultural fire,' said Geneva E.B. Thompson, Natural Resources' deputy secretary for tribal affairs. 'So, it makes sense that they would be a natural first partner in this space because they have a really clear mission and core commitment to get this work done.' In the past, cultural burn practitioners first needed to get a burn permit from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, a department within the Natural Resources Agency, and a smoke permit from the local air district. The law passed in September 2024, SB 310, allows the state government to, respectfully, 'get out of the way' of tribes practicing cultural burns, said Thompson. For the Karuk Tribe, Cal Fire will no longer hold regulatory or oversight authority over the burns and will instead act as a partner and consultant. The previous arrangement, tribal leaders say, essentially amounted to one nation telling another nation what to do on its land — a violation of sovereignty. Now, collaboration can happen through a proper government-to-government relationship. The Karuk Tribe estimates that, conservatively, its more than 120 villages would complete at least 7,000 burns each year before contact with European settlers. Some may have been as small as an individual pine tree or patch of tanoak trees. Other burns may have spanned dozens of acres. 'When it comes to that ability to get out there and do frequent burning to basically survive as an indigenous community,' said Bill Tripp, director for the Karuk Tribe Natural Resource Department, 'one: you don't have major wildfire threats because everything around you is burned regularly. Two: Most of the plants and animals that we depend on in the ecosystem are actually fire-dependent species.' The Karuk Tribe's ancestral territory extends along much of the Klamath River in what is now the Klamath National Forest, where its members have fished for salmon, hunted for deer and collected tanoak acorns for food for thousands of years. The tribe, whose language is distinct from that of all other California tribes, is currently the second largest in the state, having more than 3,600 members. The history of the government's suppression of cultural burning is long and violent. In 1850, California passed a law that inflicted any fines or punishments a court found 'proper' on cultural burn practitioners. In a 1918 letter to a forest supervisor, a district ranger in the Klamath National Forest — in the Karuk Tribe's homeland — suggested that to stifle cultural burns, 'the only sure way is to kill them off, every time you catch one sneaking around in the brush like a coyote, take a shot at him.' For Thompson, the new law is a step toward righting those wrongs. 'I think SB 310 is part of that broader effort to correct those older laws that have caused harm, and really think through: How do we respect and support tribal sovereignty, respect and support traditional ecological knowledge, but also meet the climate and wildfire resiliency goals that we have as a state?' she said. The devastating 2020 fire year triggered a flurry of fire-related laws that aimed to increase the use of intentional fire on the landscape, including — for the first time — cultural burns. The laws granted cultural burns exemptions from the state's environmental impact review process and created liability protections and funds for use in the rare event that an intentional burn grows out of control. 'The generous interpretation of it is recognizing cultural burn practitioner knowledge,' said Becca Lucas Thomas, an ethnic studies lecturer at Cal Poly and cultural burn practitioner with the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe of San Luis Obispo County and Region. 'In trying to get more fire on the ground for wildfire prevention, it's important that we make sure that we have practitioners who are actually able to practice.' The new law, aimed at forming government-to-government relationships with Native tribes, can only allow federally recognized tribes to enter these new agreements. However, Thompson said it will not stop the agency from forming strong relationships with unrecognized tribes and respecting their sovereignty. 'Cal Fire has provided a lot of technical assistance and resources and support for those non-federally recognized tribes to implement these burns,' said Thompson, 'and we are all in and fully committed to continuing that work in partnership with the non-federally-recognized tribes.' Cal Fire has helped Lucas Thomas navigate the state's imposed burn permit process to the point that she can now comfortably navigate the system on her own, and she said Cal Fire handles the tribe's smoke permits. Last year, the tribe completed its first four cultural burns in over 150 years. 'Cal Fire, their unit here, has been truly invested in the relationship and has really dedicated their resources to supporting us,' said Lucas Thomas, 'with their stated intention of, 'we want you guys to be able to burn whenever you want, and you just give us a call and let us know what's going on.''
