The Role of Indigenous Peoples & Fire  

United by Fire is a nine-part narrative podcast series that takes you inside the harrowing 2020 wildfire season in Colorado through the voices of those who witnessed it firsthand. Hear from firefighters and residents who found themselves in the path of the flames, as well as ecologists, land managers, community planners and entrepreneurs who are working to build a more wildfire-resilient future.  

The series is hosted by Kristan Uhlenbrock, Executive Director of the Institute for Science & Policy. For more information and resources from this episode, check out the episode summary page. Enjoy the transcript, and to listen to the audio version visit institute.dmns.org/united-by-fire. 

KRISTAN UHLENBROCK: Hello Laws of Notion listeners. Welcome back for more extended content from our season of United by Fire. I’m your host, Kristan Uhlenbrock.  

This episode will come in two parts. In the first half, we learn about Indigenous Peoples’ use of fire and the knowledge they bring to today’s fire challenges. And in the second half, we learn how a Forest Service tribal liaison is working to build relationships with Tribes who still call Colorado home.  

Part 1 - Good Fire 

KRISTAN: Humans have always influenced fire on the landscape. For thousands of years before European settlement, Indigenous Peoples actively managed the land with fire. Their cultural burning practices weren't just about controlling fire - they promoted biodiversity, provided resources, and maintained a working relationship with the landscape. 

Then the government adopted a strict fire suppression policy that broke this ancient cycle. And for over 100 years now, we've been aggressively putting out fires, which has led to severely overgrown forests. 

As our landscapes face unprecedented challenges, Indigenous practices offer crucial lessons about living with fire rather than fighting against it. But can we develop frameworks where traditional ecological knowledge and Western land management work together?  

Today, Indigenous voices are often missing from conversations about land management. Yet many are trying to change that and share what many Indigenous Peoples knew all along – that fire can be a tool for good when used intentionally. It's known as Good Fire. And this is where Teresa Romero comes in.  

TERESA ROMERO: I am the Executive Director and President of the Native Coast Action Network and we're a non-profit that is made up of Chumash women. It's an Indigenous women led nonprofit. And our focus is on cultural and ecological building of capacity in West Coast tribes. 

KRISTAN: Teresa’s on a mission to restore cultural fire – using low-intensity, smaller fires to heal the land – in order to preserve and revitalize their coastal Native homelands and empower Indigenous communities. Cultural fire is as much about ecology as it is about identity. It can support biodiversity and the production of food, medicine, and cultural materials. And it typically doesn’t involve fire engines, drip torches, and other things we might associate with prescribed fire.  

TERESA: It's more about a community cultural approach versus a Western approach, which really is about fuel management and making sure fire doesn't get away. It looks very different. 

KRISTAN: Teresa uses an example from another Tribe in California, the North Fork Mono Tribe, to show how the process is different. It starts with intention and connection. 

TERESA: On the first day you set up a circle - it could be a couple hundred people - and do welcomes and introductions and explain why you're here at this place at this time, which can take hours. So that's an entire first day, pretty much, because it's about introducing yourself, why you want to participate in fire, what's important about fire to you, and so it can be a really lengthy circle.  

KRISTAN: Then the community gathers for a meal and prepares for the work ahead. 

TERESA: Fire is lit with ceremony and prayer. It's not lit with drip torches. It's lit with sticks. And traditionally an elder will light that fire. You'll clear debris that needs to be cleared underneath trees that maybe need access. And so you build up the piles from the underbrush and you burn the piles. 

And so you have the 200 people there to help you with this. And many times it'll be that removing of the brush and then having people on a fire line, lighting fire underneath the understory tree with sticks and fire. Sometimes flint is used, sometimes not. Sometimes, more modern fire sources might be used, but it's always done with prayer and in a different, culturally driven way.  

KRISTAN: California’s landscapes, like much of the West, were etched by Indigenous burning practices long before settlers arrived. Take Yosemite Valley for example. You can look back at photos and paintings from the late 1800s and compare them with photos from the 21st century, and the landscape looks dramatically different. Yosemite used to have more open valleys and way fewer trees. Then began a century of fire suppression and removal of Indigenous peoples who were using fire as a tool. And what we were left with was extremely dense landscapes. And while a picture can help paint reality for many, so can talking to those with knowledge passed down through generations.  

TERESA: When the Spanish came in, in the narratives, they said, "There are little fires everywhere here." And even in artwork, sketches, they have the little fires everywhere. So we know the native people in the state of California were burning up and down the state. That was 250 years ago. It's a tool. Fire is a tool. 

KRISTAN: Low-intensity cultural fires kept landscapes open, generated healthy soil and water, and supported hunting. Now, Teresa and others want to share their knowledge of how to steward the land as a way to bring people together and reconnect with their heritage. 

TERESA: This is a complete revitalization effort. So it's really about connecting the Chumash community back to cultural fire and how our resources and ecosystems are really connected to that fire being applied, and it's through suppression of fire that began in the 1700s when the Spanish came into the state of California that our resources really began to change. And it's about educating our community about that as well, and that's a lot of work. 

KRISTAN: Teresa also wants to share this knowledge because as wildfires intensify, there is a lot to learn from Indigenous Peoples on how to live with fire. 

TERESA: It’s the West now. We're on fire. Let's just face it. And not necessarily in a good way. And I think there's a larger understanding that things have to change around fire management because what's happening is really not working because we're having these devastating fires. 

KRISTAN: One project Teresa is involved in is called Cycles of Renewal, a collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center. The goal is to preserve Chumash knowledge about fire through stories, train fire stewards, and build partnerships with land managers. 

TERESA: Through that, it's my hope we'll have 12 fire stewards who can go out and participate in good fire activities, as well as Western prescribed fire activities, but also to build in that cultural connection from those partners working around prescribed fire here locally in our region. 

KRISTAN: During this process, the Chumash fire stewards are learning about both traditional cultural fire practices and modern prescribed fire techniques. 

TERESA: What we are finding is that from a cultural perspective, going through this Western-prescribed training is difficult because it looks at fire in a completely different context. The feedback I'm getting is that it feels very military driven because it uses the incident command system protocols throughout the fire and so it's very different than going out, having community get together, and put fire on the ground. 

From my perspective, those working in prescribed fire and good fire are not that far away from one another in the work that they're doing. There are just different approaches to putting the fire on the ground. Both will create resilient community in some way. 

KRISTAN: By engaging people in learning how to steward fire on the landscape, Teresa is helping communities see fire as not something to be feared but embraced.  

TERESA: Fire here has really devastated some people's lives. I remember talking to somebody locally whose home had burned down three times and refuses to leave. So it's those folks who've been impacted in very traumatic ways that you really need to build those relationships with.  

It takes time to build relationship with community to understand that fire can be a really helpful resiliency tool. It's really talking about positive examples from other places where this has been happening for a longer period of time, where they have built resiliency on their lands from those extreme wildfires is how you're going to build those conversations and relationships in community. 

KRISTAN: Embracing cultural burning is more complex than simply reviving a practice. It’s also about navigating the realities of today’s world. Cultural burns are similar to prescribed fires in some regards, yet they are also different. It wasn’t until recently that federal agencies recognized the differences in practice. And one of the hurdles for Tribes wanting to do more cultural burns is that they may face the same permitting and jurisdiction requirements as state and federal agencies.  

TERESA: It's very complex in our area to return and revitalize fire because lands are, with the exception of the reservation, the land base is very small for the tribe. So, this is about expanding fire across our territory so that we can protect our resources. 

KRISTAN: Our current regulations and protections, whether around public safety or air quality, might severely limit or even criminalize cultural burning practices. And while many of these requirements might be necessary and legitimate at times, they can also create barriers for Tribes to connect with a practice that is part of their culture and self-governance.  

TERESA: I think there's probably policy that could be created that can create avenues to make cultural fire happen on these federal lands that are not tribal lands. Because fire has to be applied there and they're still in our original lands. And I would say the original people to those lands understand that the lands need to be stewarded and managed in a traditional way. 

KRISTAN: There is an interest from some to reexamine state and federal policies. For example, after my interview with Teresa, California passed a law that now allows Tribes to do cultural burns in consultation with the state fire agency, instead of needing to get their permission. And on a federal level, others are looking at amending policies like the National Environmental Policy Act or the Clean Air Act to support adding beneficial fire back to our landscapes. The argument is that these policies were created during the height of fire suppression and should be amended to support fire as a natural part of the system. 

Teresa says scaling this work needs to happen. That we need a framework that takes the wisdom of cultural burning and weaves it into the fabric of land management nationwide. This means avoiding simply extracting and appropriating Indigenous knowledge but ensuring that tribes share in meaningful decision-making. 

TERESA: I am convinced that we can make this happen as a broader community working together. I know it can happen, but we need money and allies to make it happen. And then the place, the land. 

Part 2 – A Journey to Work with Tribes 

KRISTAN: Bringing good fire back to the landscape isn't simple. And while there are Tribes and leaders like Teresa leaning into engaging their members, there is also a significant role for government agencies to work more synergistically with Tribes. And recently, there have been some steps to do this.  

In 2004, Congress passed the Tribal Forests Protection Act, which allows federally recognized tribes to propose cross-boundary projects on Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service lands to protect a Tribe's land and resources. And in 2018, as part of the Farm Bill, Congress updated what’s known as the 638 Authority -- which grants a Tribe's self-determination and self-governance -- to be applied to the Tribal Forests Protection Act.  

Both of these measures provided the tools for better Federal-Tribal collaboration. Yet any true co-stewardship approach requires agencies to share power they've historically held tightly. It also means working across different knowledge systems and timescales. And it often starts with people who care about the long process of reconciliation between Tribes and the US government. Jason Herbert is one of those people. 

JASON HERBERT: My name is Jason Herbert... I guess Dr. Jason Herbert? Is it fancy if I say it like that? So, my name is Jason Herbert. I am a tribal liaison for the United States Forest Service, actually located in the Pike-San Isabel National Forest and Cimarron and Comanche National Grasslands, and we're headquartered in Pueblo, Colorado. 

KRISTAN: Jason is the first person to have this job. And after being in this role for only a year and a half, he knows that making authentic connections takes time.    

JASON: One of the things that I did not want to do initially was just start showing up on reservations or showing up on tribal lands or things like that because tribes are sovereign nations, and I now represent the federal government, right? I wanted to honor that sovereignty. You don't just show up at someone's house and say, “Hey, let's be friends now,” right? You've really got to be invited to someone's home. 

KRISTAN: So, he picked up the phone.  

JASON [as if on the phone]: "We've never talked before and I don't know you, but I'm here now and if there's something I can do for you or be of service, I sure would like to." 

KRISTAN: Jason wants to build meaningful relationships while not putting any additional burden on Tribes.  

JASON: My job is to communicate with tribes who have called these landscapes home since time immemorial and that's exactly what I do. We need to be doing a better job talking to tribes. These lands are important. They've always been important, and in order to effectively carry out and honor our treaty and trust obligations, we need to be communicating with tribes and not just talking to tribes. You're not saying “hey, this is what we're doing,” but have real actual relationships with the many tribes who have called Colorado home or in places and other places throughout the United States. And that's, that's my job. 

KRISTAN: Forty-eight Tribes have ancestral connections to the state of Colorado. Tribal nations like the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute, who currently have reservations within Colorado borders, but also the numerous others, who lived here for thousands of years before being forcibly removed to places like Oklahoma, Wyoming, and Montana.  

JASON: Over and over and over again, the conversations I've had with Utes, Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Jicarilla Apache, Pawnee, have been, “Colorado is home. We want folks to know that Colorado is our home and that we are still here.” I'm a historian and I've seen the erasure of Indigenous people from the American narrative, and we are all working hard to reverse that, but no one tribe is the same. No one person in any community is the same, but overwhelmingly the biggest conversation I've had with folks is for other people to know Colorado is home to a multitude of Indigenous communities.  

KRISTAN: With limited access to their ancestral lands, it can be tough for tribes to influence land management decisions in those areas. Legal systems tend to prioritize current landowners, often leaving Tribes out. Then add in distance, limited resources, and bureaucracy, and it’s even harder. So Jason spends a lot of time crossing state lines – and reaching across generations of displacement. 

JASON: I'm looking forward to in the next year of service, getting to go out and meet folks out in Oklahoma, because you can't say “Hey, why don't you just come to Pueblo? Why don't you just come out here?” It's a long gosh darn way away! You want to meet somebody, you want to earn trust, you want to be a servant, you go to them and you meet them where they are. And that's not a tribal liaison thing. That's a human thing. 

KRISTAN: He says repairing trust means acknowledging the harms of the past. 

JASON: Pull no punches, is what I've been told. You know, the United States has a very complicated history, at times a very disastrous history, with Indigenous people here on this continent, and frankly, Indigenous people elsewhere. We need to come to terms with that, and that's a thing that, as the United States, as Americans, we're still wrestling with. But it's important that we do have these conversations and not in a way that says, “Hey, these things happened and we should all feel bad.” Now, certainly no one should feel good about genocide, right? Or attempted genocide or forced extirpation or violently removing people from their homelands. We don't talk about these things to purposely make people feel bad. I always say, “You're not guilty. You didn't do this. But you are responsible for learning from it.” And tribal members who I've spoken to about this kind of stuff have said, “We need to be able to talk about this in very straightforward terms. Let's be real about this kind of stuff so that we create a better path moving forward.” If you don't acknowledge these things, how are you ever supposed to establish trust? 

KRISTAN: But that’s only the first step. For Jason, it’s just as important to focus on the present, to honor the sacredness of national forest lands and the connections they create. 

JASON: When you're out in the woods or on our grasslands, enjoy these spaces. They are magnificent. But know that they are sacred spaces to people who have been here for the longest time and continue to be here. All I want on a personal level is for folks to know that these lands are sacred. The native people are still here. 

KRISTAN: Since Jason is the first person to hold a tribal liaison role in this Forest, he’s just starting to move out of the relationship-building phase and into conversations about land management. He says tribes are sharing more about their priorities – and asking questions.  

JASON: So my job is a communicator, but also an educator at times. And also as a learner, because the biggest part of what I do is listen to our tribal partners to learn from them, what we need to know, what they want us to know. 

Okay, what are you doing with fire? When you do a prescribed burn, what happens? What's that process like? Or when you go out and you need to build a road or a hiking trail in these amazing spaces we have out here, what are you doing to make sure that ancestral resting places are not disturbed? Or that you were honoring treaty and trust obligations, or things like that. Or, hey, have you done what we might refer to as an inventory of the biology on the forest and the grasslands? Like, what kind of animals do we have? Are the animal populations healthy? Are we seeing invasive species? Things like that. 

KRISTAN: The Forest Service is currently working with Indigenous groups in different parts of the U.S. to bring back traditional fire practices. In California, the Karuk Tribe is helping restore forest health with cultural burns. And in the Pacific Northwest, tribes are using fire to manage prairies and reduce wildfire risk. 

JASON: There was always the desire here at Pike-San Isabel, Comanche and Cimarron to incorporate that knowledge into our practices. But we just didn't know how because we didn't have those relationships. And now we're starting to develop those relationships. And what we're hoping to do in the coming year is really start to do some real one-on-one working relationships, not just with Jason, the relationship guy, but with our fire crews going to, going to reservations and meeting with tribes to say, “Hey, this is how we've been doing it. How do you do your thing? How do we integrate all of these things?”

Whether it's prescribed burns, whether it is mitigation for wildfire and stuff like that, whether it's protection of resources that are important, right? So that is a thing that's really exciting because we're starting to develop that now. 

KRISTAN: For Jason, a shift in our thinking is critical to making progress. And that means looking at modern land management science and traditional ecological knowledge as inseparable.  

JASON: Ultimately, traditional ecological knowledge is science. We're just blending science here. We're ultimately affecting the best possible outcome for our natural resources here on the mountains, our grasslands, forests, streams, things like that. And ultimately, incorporating really the masters of these spaces who have been shepherding and sourcing and shaping these landscapes for thousands of years is only going to help us create a much better ecosystem that everybody gets to enjoy. 

Credits 

KRISTAN: Laws of Notion is a podcast production from the Institute for Science and Policy at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.     

I’m your host, Kristan Uhlenbrock. This episode was produced by me, Tricia Waddell, and Carson Frame, with support from Jordan Marks and fact-checking by Kate Long. Sound design by Seth Samuel. Original music by Ryan Flores and additional tracks by Epidemic Sounds. For a full list of credits, check out the show notes.  

To listen to the audio version or for more information and additional resources on wildfires in Colorado, please visit institute.dmns.org/united-by-fire.

Check out all the seasons of the Laws of Notion podcast at lawsofnotion.org. 

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