Published in The Mammoth Times on July 29, 2021
Under a smoky sky last week, backdropped by a landscape visibly scarred by wildfire, leaders and activists of tribes from Eastern California and Western Nevada, including the Mono Lake Kutzadika’a tribe, hosted a field visit in the Mono Basin to educate locals about the benefits of traditional, Indiginous fire prevention practices.
The timing could not be better.
As fire season becomes more intense, more destructive, and more impactful on local communities, and the loss of critical wildlife and riparian habitat up and down the Eastern Sierra accelerates, the rush is on to better understand how to prevent the kind of wildfire destruction that has become commonplace.
Local tribes say there is a better way.
“We see everywhere, after so many years, there’s a lot of fuel buildup,” said Dean Tonenna, Mono Lake Kutzadika’a tribal elder. “And the fires that do come through here often are quite catastrophic.”
That’s part of the reason why he and other tribal leaders and local, land management agency leaders and community members were gathered together on the concluding day of the ‘Bi-State Traditional Ecological Knowledge Summit’ on July 16. The event was created in collaboration between tribes to provide education and other resources for incorporating traditional ecological knowledge into land use and conservation practices, many of which are faltering in the era of climate change, some tribal leaders said.
Hoping to put theory into practice, the group will join with Cal Fire and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) this fall to put their knowledge into action and conduct a traditional burn in the Parker Meadows area (see more on this below), a partnership and practice they hope to continue in the future.
Why do the tribes think they have a better way to burn? Their knowledge incorporates an understanding of the parts of the natural world that are beyond human control, accepting the reality that wildfires will start and working to mitigate their impacts, rather than attempting to eliminate and prevent them altogether.
However, the United States government has a long history of ignoring and pushing aside traditional knowledge in this fashion, they said. When the government first began to establish land managing agencies, it banned traditional forest practices such as burning, writing them off as “Paiute forestry.”
This ignorance of traditional knowledge has proven deadly – it has led to an increase in fuel loading and in the catastrophic forest fires that have so defined summers in California for the past few years.
Pre-colonization, many Indigenous tribes, including the Mono Lake Kutzadika’a tribe, used fire to prevent fire, according to Tonenna and Heather Stone, an employee with BLM. Tribes conducted deliberately-set burns to reduce accumulated fuel loading, which meant that when natural forest fires did start, they burnt less intensely and spread less easily.
John Hays, Watershed specialist for LADWP, attested to the success of this way of thinking about wildfire.
“On some fires, particularly in the spring on these windy days, the fire moves like water down these drainages,” he said. On areas along the drainages that had already been burned, he said, the wildfire would begin spreading more slowly. Ideally, traditionally burning areas at the bottom of each drainage would create defensible space and make future wildfires easier to contain.
In addition, the tribe’s gathering and use of plants had personal and tribal benefits, and also kept select areas safer from intense wildfire, tribal leaders said.
For example, tribes would collect dead and down wood from trees and shrubs to use for cooking and heating, which, over time, kept selected areas clean and cleared, creating a “fire proofing” effect.
Controlled, or prescribed, burns are also essential for rejuvenating certain plants, such as willow, water birch, and other wetland vegetation, that use fire to regrow. Willows are used for traditional basket making, an important practice in Kutzadika’a culture.
Traditional prescribed burns help stimulate the growth of long, unbranched willow shoots that are essential for basket making.
“A traditional burn is important because not only does it suppress fires, but it helps the regrowth of the vegetation,” said Janice Mendez, a member of the Bridgeport Indian Colony with familial ties to the Kutzadika’a tribe. “I go and gather willows (for basket making.) The old willows are there that have been there for many, many years, they have to be burned back down to the ground–but you’re only burning the tops, not the roots, so that [they grow back] fresh. It’s new, and it’s beautiful.”
Fire also helps sustain the growth of other plants used for traditional Indigenous practices.
“The plants and vegetation… they love the smoke, they love the ash, because it gives new natural elements to help rejuvenate the soil, so you get better products,” said Mendez. “This is important because we have our herbs – some of our Indian herbs – and we are really happy with what we find (after natural fire occurs). This is elemental to the survival of us as a people, for healing, for materials that we use, for the vegetation that grows.”
That’s why common, land management agency fire prevention practices, such as the mowing down of willows and other fuel buildup, is not only less effective in preventing fire, but also culturally harmful, tribal leaders said. Mowing willows produces new growth with a higher frequency of lateral branching, which is not good for basket making – and not as effective at slowing down an incoming wildfire.
“On the north side of Mono Lake driving the back way to Bodie, I watched this giant lawnmower take down all this willow and the destruction it caused,” said Mendez. “It just made the willows look terrible. You couldn’t gather very well in there, because you’re fighting all these big sticks – a fire would take it all down, and it would be done.”
They hope to put their talk into action this fall or winter when the tribes and cooperating agencies burn a small section of Parker Meadows. “This area down here (Parker Meadows) was an important gathering area,” said Tonenna. “I came out here and I saw some of the old growth… I thought, we really need to come here and use fire like the people used to do long ago.”
The burn is planned by the Kutzadika’a tribe, with support from Cal Fire and LADWP. Cal Fire is currently conducting the CEQA review and once completed, will conduct the burn, using their professional firefighting staff from the Owens Valley. The burn will take place during the fall or winter months, when the risk of wildfire spread is low.
Looking forward, the tribe hopes to establish traditional burns as a frequent and expected process.
“If we were able to partner with the Forest Service and say, ‘Let’s burn three acres here, let’s burn three acres upstream and downstream,’ over time we could incrementally rejuvenate more habitat,” said Tonenna.
Many hope that the education and awareness brought about by conducting this traditional burn will spread and inform further prescribed burns to help reduce fuel loading on public and private lands. “I really appreciate that these plants are coming back, because it’s also going to save our lands from devastating forest fires like the (Dexter Fire),” said Mendez. “If we can eliminate that, that’s a huge, huge thing for me. This is our land, and I want to keep it.”