This month, the Karuk Tribe published a sequel to its 2021 “Good Fire” report.
The report, “Good Fire II: Current Barriers to the Expansion of Cultural Burning and Prescribed Fire Use in the United States and Recommended Solutions,” names ways to support Native peoples’ right to set fires for ecological and cultural purposes.
The first report helped pass state laws supporting cultural and traditional uses of fire and influenced California’s wildfire strategy.
“The biggest change that I hope to see is the ability for practitioners to be able to engage within their ancestral homelands more freely. Without question about asking permission to be on their own ancestral homelands to do the stewardship.”- Don Hankins, co-author of 'Good Fire II'
Don Hankins, a professor of geography and planning at Chico State, co-authored both “Good Fire” reports. He said the second iteration considers the most recent legislation and points out areas still in need of improvement. The report includes 85 recommendations that highlight barriers to getting more good fire on the ground.
“‘Good Fire II’ takes the work that we did in ‘Good Fire I’ and really pairs it with a consideration of the benefits of where we've seen progress within the state, where there obviously needs to be adjustments,” Hankins said. “It really targets, maybe within the federal government side of things, [how] to enable more engagement around cultural and prescribed burning.”
One of the recommendations in the report asks policymakers to clarify in federal law that cultural burning falls within the sovereign authority of tribes. The report also highlights the need to recognize that cultural burning is distinct from prescribed burning.
“While both forms of beneficial fire are essential to restoring resiliency to the landscape, cultural burning has history, motivation, and meaning which includes but also goes beyond wildfire protection benefits to include highly sophisticated ecological and cultural benefits,” the report reads.
Hankins said other recommendations include looking for opportunities for the federal government to engage with tribes in cultural burning and allowing tribes to be stewards of their ancestral territories, even if the federal government owns the lands.
“The biggest change that I hope to see is the ability for practitioners to be able to engage within their ancestral homelands more freely,” Hankins said. “Without question about asking permission to be on their own ancestral homelands to do the stewardship.”
He added that he’d also like to see tribal practitioners burn alongside federal ones.
“I think if we are able to fully implement what we're talking about in ‘Good Fire’, then there's no question in having tribal people out with their own training systems being able to burn alongside federal burners,” Hankins said. “Or tribal people just out being able to burn on federal lands without those burners, I think is ultimately the direction that we want to see things go.”
He believes policymakers at the federal level are motivated to consider these recommendations to better address the wildfire crisis.
“I think that the report is going to give space for some of the necessary modifications and changes that need to take place within our policy frameworks of fire. But I don't think it's necessarily going to get us over the hurdle.”
He said making these changes is a process, and there may be a need for a third “Good Fire” report in the future.
