Editor's note: This story was produced for Our Living Lands, a collaboration of the Mountain West News Bureau, Koahnic Broadcast Corporation, and Native Public Media focusing on the impact of climate change on Indigenous communities across the country.
It’s a sun-splashed afternoon in a forest near South Lake Tahoe, where large fir and pine trees stretch into the clear blue sky, and dozens of tribal members are eager to learn about cultural burning.
But first, they have to learn how to control and put out fires.
That’s why a group is huddled around a heavy-duty water pump with two thick fire hoses connected to it. One hose is in a tub of water the size of an above-ground pool, and the other is unraveled a few dozen yards away.
“We have everything connected,” says Jeremy Miles Placencia, a U.S. Forest Service forestry technician leading the demonstration. “We have our discharge hose. Now we can set up the fuel line.”
And then Placencia revs up the water pump, which roars like an angry lawn mower, echoing through the forest. Water pushes through the extended hose, like a snake coming to life.
Now, participants can practice spraying pressurized water as if they were putting out a fire.
One person soaking up that knowledge is Kyle Tabor-Cooper, 30, who’s a member of the Nooksack Tribe in Washington state. He lives in Northern Nevada and is engaged to a member of the Washoe Tribe.
“I've met a lot of people that have inspired me to get into this training and just show me a different kind of way with cultural, intentional fire,” Tabor-Cooper said.
Cultural fires are restorative, not destructive. They’re typically done on a smaller scale to take care of traditional medicine plants or other cultural resources that rely on fire.
“For example, the Washoe Tribe, our first two burns were burning a willow patch,” said Rhiana Jones, director of the Washoe Tribe’s environmental protection department. “Washoes are famous for their baskets, making beautiful baskets. So when you burn the willows, they grow back better, straighter, with less secondary nodes.”
But the Washoe Tribe wasn’t allowed to intentionally burn for more than a century. That’s because of longtime colonial federal policies that prioritized suppression – or putting out fires as soon as they start.
Jones said that has hurt tribes, and the health of many forests.
“Fire suppression is like Indigenous culture and Indigenous people suppression as well,” she continued. “They were not interested in, I think, learning from Indigenous people.”
But that has started to change over the last decade. Now, many federal fire officials say decades of keeping fire off the land caused a buildup of highly flammable dead trees and brush, turning many forests into a tinderbox.
And rising temperatures and drier conditions are adding even more fuel. A 2021 study led by UCLA found that climate change has been the main driver of the increase in fire weather in the West.
“Climate change has had a huge effect, with respect to drought, increase of pests and pathogens, and then increase of wildfire,” Jones said. “So, we're having these catastrophic, huge wildfires coming through that we can't keep up with.”
Global nonprofit The Nature Conservancy has worked with tribes to help restore that balance. The group, which was at the Washoe Tribe’s training, brings together trained burn bosses and Indigenous fire practitioners to work and learn side-by-side.
“A lot of what we're doing here is trying to return to that different style of fire that allows us to actually promote our ecosystems, promote our cultures,” said Brandon Cobb, who’s Cherokee and a program manager with The Nature Conservancy.
Cobb noted it’s important younger generations become educated and trained on stewarding their homelands.
“As Indigenous people, it took almost 500 years to nearly eradicate us,” he said. “And in order to rebuild to what we once were, it will take at least 500 years.”
Back near the water pump, Tabor-Cooper is motivated to be a part of that change.
“I feel like there's a lot of purpose in this kind of line of work,” he smiled.
Through the hands-on training, Tabor-Cooper gained qualifications to fight fires with federal and state agencies and the Washoe Tribe, and work on cultural burns with tribal members.
The Nooksack tribal member already got a taste of what it’s like. He recently observed a cultural burn in a meadow meant to restore medicinal plants like elderberries, an experience that inspired him even more.
“The possibilities and the opportunity and what the future holds seems so much brighter,” he said. “Introducing a relationship with fire that isn’t just bad.”
Tabor-Cooper said he’s excited to carve out a career in fire, and pass that torch of knowledge down to his future children.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
