Experts say North American authorities should follow Indigenous traditions of fighting fire with fire.
VICTORIA, B.C.-As another year of long-burning, uncontrolled wildfires decimates portions of the U.S. and Canada-even threatening the world's oldest trees, located in California-one expert says North American authorities need to take some guidance and advise from Native Americans.
"We're not burning anywhere near as much as we should," fire ecologist and noted burn boss Bob Gray, from Chilliwack, B.C., told The Canadian Press. Gray consults for local, provincial, state and tribal governments across Canada and the United States.
Gray has been a part of a U.S. Forest Service research team studying the history of forest and wildfire behavior when Indigenous burning was widespread. In this role, he talked with elders and studied aerial photographs and evidence of fires on trees.
Indigenous people in the U.S. and Canada traditionally set controlled fires to get rid of extraneous brush, which not only reduces the chance of uncontrolled fires breaking out later, but also to improve hunting or berry-picking conditions. Removing dried out, dead brush left room for healthy brush to flourish, which enhances food-producing plants and draws animals.
"There was so much burning going on and it resulted in all kinds of different vegetation types, and many of those just didn't carry fire very well," he said. "And so that historic landscape was basically vaccinated against large-spread fire."
Gray and other experts say B.C. and other areas should be burning tens of thousands of hectares every year to reduce dense forests packed with fallen branches and leaves, said Gray, but the Forests Ministry said it burned an average of 5,000 hectares annually from 2010 to 2019 in British Columbia.
"That's where some of the frustration is," Amy Cardinal Christianson, a fire research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service and Metis, told The Canadian Press. "That we need to bring back cultural burning on a much larger scale than, you know, a burn here, there."
Christianson pointed out that cultural burning was a family practice, and in some Indigenous communities, fire keeping was a specific expertise and role passed through generations. Fire keepers studied forests and understood when it was time to start a healthy fire.
Settlers colonializing the countries did not understand the system, often jailing or fining the Indigenous for setting cultural burns, even though in some areas the practice continued until the 1950s and 1960s.
While some Indigenous communities still participate in cultural burnings, they face several barriers. For one, because they study the land, they know when the time is right for burning. However, the lengthy approval process hinders their ability to strike while the fire should be hot.
Some Indigenous fire keepers feel they shouldn't have to get approval from "a colonial system," Christianson noted. "They feel like they should be able to have their own certification within their communities, about burning."
Russell Myers Ross agrees. The former chief of the Yunesit'in Government is working to rekindle cultural burning. He told The Canadian Press, "I think the frustration is that as long as you have people that know the land really well and have experience with fire, that we shouldn't have to go necessarily through all these hoops to try to get the credentials."
British Columbia's draft action plan for implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples includes a call to reintroduce cultural fire. The community resiliency investment program, created in 2018, sees the provincial wildfire service work with First Nations and others to reduce wildfire risks.
The province has also partnered with the First Nations Emergency Services Society, which is working with the wildfire service to support First Nations interested or involved in cultural and prescribed burn programs.
