Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)

The beautiful open vistas and bountiful plants and animals described by early European explorers were not an untouched wilderness in which humans played no role. (…) Native people created the landscape that Europeans encountered: “Lands adapted to them as they adapted to landscapes.”

Fires, many of them intentionally set, also shaped much of California’s vegetation before European colonization.

Native communities treated fire as an ally to increase biodiversity, improve basket materials, encourage healthier berries, control pests and diseases, enhance the growth of grasses and bulbs, germinate seeds, encourage mushroom growth, and reduce the chances of high-intensity fires.

According to Hankins and other experts, Western methods of fire suppression are largely to blame for California’s catastrophic fires that are becoming increasingly common every summer. The removal of Indigenous people and their land-tending practices, such as intentional burning, went hand in hand with misguided fire-suppression policies.