Cultural Burns: Understanding Indigenous Stewardship Practices and the Benefits of Intentional Fire

11/17/20 • 41 min

The 2020 fire season in the US has seen another historic year, with record breaking fires across the Western US. But fire is not new, it has been part of the Indigenous cultural landscape for millennia; not framed as something to be feared but rather as something to be embraced as an intentional part of stewardship. For this episode we unpack a bit about this relationship and what it can mean for land management moving forward.

This episode is co-hosted by first-year Cultural Heritage Management graduate student, Emily Dayhoff. Emily is a Southern Sierra Miwuk and currently works as a Cultural Demonstrator and Park Ranger in Yosemite National Park. She gives interpretive programs on her ancestors and a variety of other topics related to the park. Emily often engages in conversations about Indigenous fire stewardship and cultural burns with park visitors.

Valley view of Yosemite National Park by King of Hearts - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28519137.

During this episode Emily and I speak with Dr. Don Hankins, a Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning at California State University, Chico and Field Director for the California State University Chico Ecological Reserves. His areas of expertise are pyrogeography, water resources, and conservation.

Combining his academic and cultural expertise as a Miwkoʔ (Plains Miwok) traditional cultural practitioner, he is particularly interested in the application of Indigenous land stewardship practices as a keystone process to aid in conservation and management of resources. Dr. Hankins is currently engaged in wildland fire research with an emphasis on landscape scale, prescribed and cultural burns; water research focused on ecocultural approaches to place with an emphasis on the Bay-Delta and tribal water rights.

Dr. Hankins has been involved in various aspects of land management and conservation for a variety of organizations and agencies including federal and Indigenous entities in both North America and Australia. More about his work can be found HERE.

Landscape shaped by fire. Hundreds of lupins and fireweed. Photo by Leithen M'Gonigle retrieved from: https://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu/news/2016/03/how-fire-diversity-promotes-biodiversity.

Additional Resources:

Dr. Hankins mentions the chaparral ecosystem, a definition of chaparral can be found on the US Forest Service’s website HERE.

Find out more information about a few of the fires referenced in the podcast:

Rim Fire (2013)
Ferguson Fire (2018)
Camp Fire (2018)

Valley view of Yosemite National Park by King of Hearts - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28519137.

Landscape shaped by fire. Hundreds of lupins and fireweed. Photo by Leithen M'Gonigle retrieved from: https://ourenvironment.berkeley.edu/news/2016/03/how-fire-diversity-promotes-biodiversity.

Additional Resources:

Dr. Hankins mentions the chaparral ecosystem, a definition of chaparral can be found on the US Forest Service’s website HERE.

Find out more information about a few of the fires referenced in the podcast:

Rim Fire (2013)
Ferguson Fire (2018)
Camp Fire (2018)

Previous Episode

Heritage Stewardship

A conversation with Wanda Raschkow and Elizabeth Hora reveals some of the possibilities along with some of the challenges for implementing a statewide site stewardship program.

Wanda serves as the Statewide Site Stewardship Program Coordinator for Friends of Cedar Mesa, a conservation-focused non-profit located in Bluff, Utah. Friends of Cedar Mesa works to ensure that public lands in San Juan County, with all their cultural and natural values, are respected and protected.

As part of that mission Friends of Cedar Mesa has partnered with the Utah Bureau of Land Management to develop a heritage stewardship program. Wanda served as a federal-agency archaeologist for 20 years before joining Friends of Cedar Mesa, she’s worked with the US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and National Park Service. In each agency, she trained and mentored volunteer site stewards.

Wanda believes that engaging the public in the care of our shared heritage is critical to preserving archaeological sites for the future.

My other guest is Elizabeth Hora. Elizabeth a Public Archaeologist for the Utah State Historic Preservation Office or SHPO in Salt Lake City, Utah. She holds a Masters in Archaeology and Cultural Resource Management from Utah State University and specializes in Fremont archaeology, radiocarbon dating, and dendroarchaeology. Her most recent work focuses on eliminating damage to archaeological sites through education, stewardship, and public outreach.

If you are interested in learning more about how to become involved in some of the initiatives we talked about in this episode you can reach out to Wanda Rashchow at [email protected]

Visit with Respect: https://www.friendsofcedarmesa.org/visit-with-respect/

ArchMonitor: https://www.friendsofcedarmesa.org/archmonitor/

Utah Heritage Stewardship Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/UtahHeritageStewardshipProgram/

Utah Public Archaeology Network (UPAN): https://history.utah.gov/antiquities/upan/

Utah Professional Archeological Council (UPAC): https://www.upaconline.org/

HB: 163 https://le.utah.gov/~2020/bills/static/HB0163.html

Next Episode

Protecting our Heritage During Crisis

The 21st century has seen an unprecedented threat to our global heritage—from natural disasters, extreme weather events, and climate change to military conflicts in some of our most sensitive areas of global heritage alongside the intentional targeting of cultural sites for destruction.

During this episode, join me as I chat with Corine Wegener, director of the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative (SCRI), an outreach program dedicated to protecting cultural heritage in crisis situations. SCRI’s work includes U.S. domestic and international responses to disasters in Haiti, Nepal, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. It also offers disaster response and leadership training for cultural heritage stewards worldwide.

Cori Wegener at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Cathedral sustained extensive damage during Haiti's 2010 earthquake.

Cori has spent many years working on disaster preparedness for Heritage sites and assets. Before coming to the Smithsonian in 2012, Cori was an associate curator in Decorative Arts, Textiles, and Sculpture at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. During a concurrent career as a U.S. Army Reserve officer, she served on several military deployments, including her last assignment as an Arts, Monuments, and Archives Officer in Iraq after the 2003 looting of the Iraq National Museum. In 2006, Cori founded the U.S. Committee of the Blue Shield (USCBS), the U.S. branch of an international NGO dedicated to implementing the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property during Armed Conflict. She serves on the USCBS and the Civil Affairs Association boards and provides advice and training to U.S. and international military personnel regarding cultural property protection. Cori holds a BGS in Political Science with a minor in Military History from the University of Nebraska Omaha, where she also received her ROTC commission. She has M.A. degrees in both Political Science and Art History from the University of Kansas.

To learn more about the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative, visit culturalrescue.si.edu. To learn more about the 1954 Hague Convention, visit uscbs.org.

Additional Resources:

Links to some the organizations and initiatives Cori mentioned in our chat.