Ologies with Alie Ward - Indigenous Fire Ecology (GOOD FIRE) with Amy Christianson

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

Cultural burns. Prescribed blazes. A healthy forest. What exactly is “good fire?” Let’s ask Indigenous fire scientist Dr. Amy Christianson, who is a co-host of the podcast ...Good Fire. This wonderfully generous and informed scholar took a quick break from her Canadian wilderness vacation to fill me in on Indigenous history, collaborations between Western science & First Nations elders, Aboriginal thoughts on cultural burns, flim-flam, evacuations, snowmelt, hunting strategies, land stewardship, happy trees, climate strategies, and the social science behind wildfire education. Also learning from Native wildfire fighters. Huge thanks to her and Matt Kristoff -- who also hosts the Your Forest Podcast -- for allowing us to use excerpts from their interview to launch Good Fire. Subscribe to both podcasts to get more ecological knowledge in your ears.Follow Dr. Amy Christianson on Twitter Listen to the “Good Fire” podcastAlso great: Your Forest podcastA donation was made to Indigenous Residential School Survivors More episode sources & links Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts & bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, totes, masks… Follow @ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @alieward on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray MorrisTranscripts by Emily White of The WordaryWebsite by Kelly R. Dwyer

Oh, hey, it's that incense that reminds you of freshman year so much that you can only smell it sometimes because you don't want the nostalgia to fade. Allie Ward, back with a follow-up as promised episode of oligies that serves as a companion piece to last week's fire ecology episode. So perhaps listen to that one first, come here for more context, or don't, ultimately none of my beeswax. Okay, so just a little behind the scenes on this one's format. Format is a little different than what you're used to.

I spoke with this oligist while she was up in the wilderness of Canada on vacation and the internet was spotty. So the first 10 minutes or so, it's not the finest quality audio we've ever had on oligies, but we did our best. And then she sent some standalone recordings answering more questions. And then after the break, we're featuring excerpts from her own Indigenous fire ecology podcast, Good Fire with Matt Christoff, making this a real community effort and a fire mosaic episode indeed.

So this oligist got her master's and PhD in hazard management and fire science and works as a fire social scientist for the Canadian Forest Service. She is a Metis woman from Treaty 6 territory on land now known as Canada and has authored papers such as social science research on Indigenous wildfire management in the 21st century and future research needs. So she is well schooled on this. And then I saw she has a podcast called Good Fire, recorded with Matt Christoff, who also hosts the Your Forest podcast.

So this oligist was on vacation. I desperately wanted to chat with her the one week she was trying to relax, but she luckily was very up to take a little break and chat amid spotty internet and some tech diffs. Huge thanks to Matt for getting us in touch and for lending us excerpts from Your Forest and Good Fire to future. Also thank you to everyone at patreon.com slash oligies for making this show possible. This episode was informed by the questions you left about Indigenous fire stewardship.

And thanks to everyone who writes and reviews podcasts, it matters more than you will ever know. And I read them all so I can prove it with a fresh shout out for one left this week such as Sarah Ibe who wrote, I started listening to this podcast and got to the gynecological episode and decided to make my first OBGYN appointment after turns out I have endometrial cancer. I had a hysterectomy and I'm currently doing radiation therapy. Thank you dad for this informative podcast.

Sarah, what sending you the biggest, biggest hugs and the best vibes for a speedy defeat of that. And thank you for getting checked out. Okay, onward to the episode, etymology is simple, Indigenous means native, fire has a root meaning fire and ecology, the study of where we live. So we'll be covering cultural burns, drip torches, forest debris, healthy trees, the legality of Indigenous fire stewardship, fighting fires with strategy, napping on the fire line, evacuations and more with fire scientist, advocate, podcast host, Canadian

Forest Service employee, scholar and Indigenous fire ecologist, Dr. Amy Christensen. Yeah, no problem at all. It's great to have so much like attention on this topic as well. Oh, it's, it's wonderful, wonderful to have you. So now are you at the top of a mountain right now trying to get cell service? No, I'm actually at my parents' cabin, but they do not have great internet, but does it sound okay? Yeah, it sounds great so far.

Literally, they're at like the very north end of a lake called Shishwap Lake and currently we're actually surrounded by three fires as well. Oh my gosh, and is that an area that you're pretty familiar with? Has your family been there for a long time? Yeah, my parents have this cabin that we've had in our family, I think for about 30 years now. Have you seen a change at all in how the summers go in terms of, say, being surrounded by fire? So the area that we're in is actually kind of a rainforest area.

We always kind of jokingly refer to it as that and we used to get so much rain out here in the summer. In probably the last 10 years, we've noticed it's been getting warmer in this area and we've been getting less rain and even the cedars are really starting to not look as healthy and then the last probably five years we've had more summers of smoke. So it's really been, yeah, I've really noticed a change just even in my lifetime. How long have you been studying fire? How long had you been a fire scientist?

I grew up in Northern Alberta. There's always kind of fires around my family, although we didn't kind of have the connection. We were disconnected from cultural burning practices, but my family was kind of always a bit involved in fire and my husband's a wildland firefighter and yeah, just growing up it seemed like kind of a normal thing in the north. When I moved down south to an urban center, that was when I really realized that other people didn't have that or weren't so used to that. I guess I started actually as a geologist, but I always loved hazards, but more volcanic

hazards and things that I was interested in. So I did two years actually in New Zealand where I did my masters on volcanic hazard management, but I always kind of feel like bound to the forest in Alberta. So I ended up kind of coming back and I even said to my PhD supervisor, like, you know, I'll study anything but fire. You know, I don't want to have fire in my life because I just, you know, was around it all the time and wanted something different. But yeah, kind of slowly got pulled back into the field and yeah, I've been at the Canadian

Forest Service now for about 10 years. Oh my God, what is your, what is your work like and have you grown to appreciate it at all? Are you still like fire? Here we are again. You and me fire. Yeah, no, I think it's kind of one of those things you have to realize that maybe you're just like, I don't know, no, I don't want to say destined to be, but you know, I think

that living in the North, it's just, you know, I think that you have that experience with fire and seeing it around you. That's one thing I always find interesting is when I meet, you know, other fire scientists who aren't, you know, from areas that experience fire. And I think sometimes it may be hard for them to relate, especially when we're talking about fire risk and kind of how people act during a fire event. So one of Dr. Christensen's areas of research and work is studying evacuations. So when to leave your home with just a few possessions and your life for what might be

the last time. And it's something that she says fire scientists who haven't grown up around fire and had to themselves evacuate might not understand. And if you listened to last week's episode, I mentioned that my parents lived in the remote Sierra Nevada's for years and coercing them to evacuate during the King fire was not easy, even with the promise of a night or two at the fantasy end with a mirrored ceiling. When I first started out at the Canadian Forest Service, there was like no interest really in indigenous fire management or cultural burning practices or indigenous firefighters.

So I would say it was like a very lonely kind of first five or six years. And so most of my colleagues are actually international folks. So mainly folks from actually California and Australia who are in this field as well. I think like pretty much since we've started having the big fire events in Canada, that's really what's forced people to kind of look at maybe a different way of looking at fire on the landscape. My interest in fire is also tied to like my own family's history. So my family's Métis.

So we're from Northern Alberta, the Cardinal and Labican families. And we kind of had like a weird kind of disconnection from culture, which most Métis families in Canada actually experience during colonization. And so it's basically we weren't allowed to practice any of our traditions and other things. It's interesting to me because it almost parallels fire in a way. So when settlers, you know, first came to Canada, one of the first things that they brought with them was actually fire suppression. And as they move kind of west across Canada, they basically just put into place fire suppression

policies wherever they went. And the big reason for that was, you know, that they saw the forest as this wilderness, as this kind of natural place. But really now we know, like, and lots of scientific studies are pointing out that that wasn't natural. Like many of those areas were actually stewarded by Indigenous people to look that way. Actually, the first fire suppression campaign was in 1610 in Newfoundland in Canada, where that that was like kind of the first, you know, enactment of, you know, thou shalt not

light fires on the landscape. Amy says that she is from Northern Alberta, and there were only two fire rangers for the entire province. So so even though they had like a fire suppression policy, you know, those guys couldn't be everywhere, obviously. So there was still a lot of culture burning that went on. So I would say that in where I'm from, it really only kind of stopped or halted around the sixties or the seventies, where fire really stopped being allowed on the landscape

in the north. And what we've seen with that, you know, is just a massive increase in fuel loading and also kind of these like monoculture forests, where there are the stands, you know, all one species, like all similar age, and they're really vulnerable to pests or to other disturbances like fire. And so we're getting these massive big fire events that have come through. And so for indigenous people, you know, like my family and others, they, my family were actually buffalo hunters, and they used fire in the buffalo hunt, but also afterwards to

improve the habitat for buffalo and other things that to help them in their hunting. When the settlers started coming across and saying like, no, you can't do this. Like, you don't know as much as us. Like, you know, it really devalued indigenous people and their knowledge. And then when you add into that, you know, we had residential schools in Canada where indigenous people, you know, were sent there and basically told, you know, that, you know, they were savages, that their way of knowing their family, of knowing the earth wasn't proper and, you know, that they had to learn this new way that was much better.

So we, like my colleague, Faisal Mula, he was telling me that they call that like a cultural severance activity, where basically you're just told that, you know, suddenly, you know, you cannot practice your culture anymore. And so the impacts of that are just massive on people, not only on like, you know, their ability to use fire, but also just on who they are as a person, their pride in their family and other things. And so I too, like even now, I still have a lot of anger about that. And, you know, how I wasn't able to learn from my elders about landscape stewardship and other

things because of that, you know, like kind of dominant Western world view. Do you know, or has there been research into how much of that knowledge is lost? Yes, actually, Henry Lewis, who is a researcher, he actually started in California, but then was at the University of Alberta. Dr. Henry T. Lewis, aka Hank, was an anthropology professor at the University of Alberta and was one of the first researchers to really document indigenous fire stewardship and its role in shaping the landscape. And he wrote the paper A Time for Burning.

It was published in 1982 and a PDF to it is linked on my site. It's typewritten on a typewriter. It's wild. And it details all of the different biomes and how indigenous cultures shaped them with fire. And if you're like, no reading, need visuals. He also made a 16 millimeter documentary titled The Fires of Spring. All of this was managed by people who had developed a complex technology of fire. To assure a continued successful adjustment to the Northern Doreal Forest.

Somehow this ended up on YouTube. Hank, God. He went up and worked with the Woodland, Cree and Denny people in Northern Alberta. So actually kind of where my family's from as well. And what he was saying was in the 1970s, when he did his work, that he thought that between 90 and 95 percent of that knowledge had been lost. So I mean, that was now like, it's hard to believe it almost 50 years ago, right? When that was happening.

So for me, like I often hear people say in meetings, like, you know, oh, well, indigenous knowledge isn't applicable to today and cultural burning practices. Because, you know, now we have climate change, like now there's more values on the landscape in terms of thinking about structures and other things. But I always argue against that because for me, like it's not about like indigenous people, like we're alive today, we're part of society. Like we see all these things. Like indigenous people are on the front lines of climate change.

Like of course we know that that's occurring. And, you know, indigenous knowledge, the most beautiful thing about it is how adaptable it is to the local environment. So like for like, because, you know, you're living in that environment, you're dependent on it. Okay. So Amy's internet cut out again. So we tried a new way of recording just via the phone and her laptop. And it sounds much better, which is great. So clear. In fact, you may even be able to discern the pitter-patter of children's footsteps

on the cabin stairs as her family vacationed around her. Hi. Maybe this will work. I can hear you great. At home it's funny because I have a pretty good setup with a podcasting microphone and headphones. And of course I'm like, oh, it's this week when I'm gone, but no worries. But where were we? Yes. That indigenous fire knowledge is starting to get more attention as climate change worsens and larger fires erupt. And as a fire scientist, what is her work day like?

Sure. Yeah. So with my job with the CFSI, most fire research scientists, I say kind of do the same thing. So we have our research projects that we run or that we're a part of. So a lot of my day is actually kind of meeting about research and other things that are going on. So really similar to like, you know, an academic researcher from a university. But then as well, we also kind of have the policy or the government side. So I sit on a lot of like national or international committees or working groups, you know, looking at fire and trying to direct policy. We just recently in Canada finished the blueprint for wildland fire science for 2019 to 2029.

So looking at, you know, topics that we should really be spending money basically in time doing research on. And one of those, the themes from that was actually on indigenous fire. So we also have an evacuation database actually with the Canadian Forest Service, where we've tracked wildfire evacuations in Canada since 1980. So during the summer, like that's one thing is that we have like lots of our staff working on that doing data entry into it. Yeah, it's a big job this summer. Like in 2020, I think we only had 20 different evacuations in Canada. But this year, I think we're already at 125 different evacuation events. So it's a huge job. So this blueprint for a wildland fire science in Canada 2019 to 2029

outlines in its own words, a business case to increase investment in wildland fire science. And it is 57 pages of really great strategies covering themes like understanding fire in a changing world, recognizing indigenous knowledge and enhancing knowledge exchange mechanisms to improve the ways in which wildland fire science and technology are shared, understood and implemented. So Amy's team had been working on that. And for the curious, I will link to the full PDF on my website. Now, as far as the increasing evacuations, that issue gets more personal as this episode unfolds, even more personal than my parents in an hourly motel in Reno. And this is something I think a lot of people have trouble wrapping their brain around. And maybe there is no good

answer. But is it climate change? Is it human ignition and carelessness? Is it not letting the forest burn as it naturally would? How do you scientists come up with plans to tackle this issue if it's kind of like a trifold problem? Yeah, I agree with you. It's such a complex issue. I mean, there's also the fact that people are just building more in, you know, areas that are of higher risk to fire, you know, as communities get larger and kind of expand out into what, you know, some people call the wildland urban interface, it's really increasing fire risk. I think that that's the hard thing too is that there's no like magic bullet solution, right? Like, even with cultural burning, like, you know, I'm such a strong proponent of getting that back on the ground. But

that doesn't at all tackle, you know, how vulnerable some homes and other things are to fire at the moment. Climate change, she said, is also a pretty big fricking deal. But the one thing, you know, that I think locally, like, you know, in our towns and stuff that we can control is the fuels that are available to burn. And so that's why, you know, I think that cultural burning or landscape level fuel management, as well as the community wildfire mitigation is so important to do in combination. And lately, too, I've been seeing, I don't know if you are seeing it in the States as much, but in Canada, there's a bit of a movement to just kind of, you know, fireproof communities or, you know, keep homes or, you know, structures safe from fire. But to me, that's really missing

the point of like the landscape around your home. Like, for me, I don't want to be living, you know, if my home is standing in like the middle of, you know, a blackened landscaping in Canada, it can take a long time for the forest to regenerate. Sometimes, you know, 20, 30, 40 years. And even then, they're finding up north in the boreal forest, the burns are just so hot that they're basically kind of killing the soil and any vegetation around. So yeah, it's quite a complex issue. But I think when I think as an Indigenous person, I look at the forest, I don't just see it as trees or timber values or other things. You see it as like part of who you are, right? Like your relations. So you want to be able to, you know, steward and protect that area as much as you

do, you know, your own home or structure. And can you describe a little bit about prescribed fires and Indigenous fire stewardship versus cultural burns? I think a lot of people maybe want to lump them in together. But can you describe a little bit about how they work or what they are? Yeah, so there's a bit of a danger of that. This whole thing now where we're seeing prescribed fire and just kind of throwing cultural burning into that. So prescribed fire is, you know, generally what agencies do. So where they're setting fire on the landscape, but in many cases, they're setting, you know, high severity fires. It's burning really fast. And they want to burn a lot of land in a little bit of time. So we see like lots of aerial ignition of fires. We see

them using, you know, basically like helicopter ignition. And in Canada, like lots of times, people put that together as, you know, being a crown fire, being these big, bad kind of out of control fires that are burning up, you know, mountain sides. That's generally the media that we see in Canada about prescribed fire. But it really differs from cultural burning, because cultural burning is more about achieving a cultural objective around the forest, around where you live. So you don't really want to have these big, large sand replacing fires that go through and can kill everything in a prescribed fire event that sometimes is what happens in Canada. Yeah. So for cultural fire too, the thing is that most fires are actually pretty low intensity.

In Australia, they call them like slow burns or cool burns. And they generally move through the understory. And they're done it certain times of year where the potential fire behavior is very low risk. So, you know, where you're not getting, you know, potential of crown fire, there's lots of natural fuel breaks around the fire. In Canada, that's usually snow still on the ground. For indigenous people, cultural burning too is like a family, a community activity. So like when I'm doing burns and things like I take my daughters, my mom was on the last one that we did. There's a great photo that's run in a few news articles about Amy's work. And she's standing in a golden grassy field. It's hazy with smoke as a cultural

burn grass fire. She's overseeing lurches behind her. And there's a husky, wolfy dog sitting to her right staring off and Amy's wearing black leggings and a red flannel shirt and is pregnant with what would be her second daughter. So the mood is very calm, unlike what most people's experience of land on fire might be. Lots of times, you know, we don't wear personal protective equipment, you know, like the kind of no mix that you usually see firefighters wearing, because usually the fires are honestly just so slow. And most people find them, I think, a bit boring too, because it can take a really long time to burn a really small piece of land. And so for agencies, it doesn't really work well, right? Because that for them means more

staffing dollars and other things to achieve like, you know, a smaller area of burned. Yeah, when it comes to how much fuel is in some of the forest now, that would be too much for, say, a prescribed burn, maybe to tackle. I'm reading like, there's so much, you know, dead timber and fallen timber because we've suppressed fire for so long, like, where does fire management even begin to kind of tackle that issue? Yeah, it's, it is a big issue. And I think people often get overwhelmed, like I just hear, you know, all the time, Oh, it's so complex. There's so many things and so many people's competing values. But I think that we often lose the focus on like local communities. So in Canada,

our First Nations have reserves. And so if you go onto a reserve, many times, like, when you speak to the elders and other people, like, they know what needs to be done in their area, like, they know if certain areas are too fuel loaded, and, you know, they want to go in there and kind of mechanically treat treat the forest. So, you know, by using machines and labor to go in and do thinning and other things before they can burn to kind of keep the fuel low low in those areas. So I think for me, that's that the biggest thing is that we really need to go back to kind of these local solutions to fire. And that's really kind of what our research is showing that, you know, local people want to be involved. So, you know, I talk mostly about Indigenous peoples,

but, you know, ranchers, farmers, other people who, you know, use the landscape for their livelihood, they also, you know, really want to have a healthy forest and environment around them. And they know the areas too. And even forestry companies, like, the one nice thing about cultural burning is that because we're doing kind of these low understory burns, like, we don't want to burn the nice big healthy trees, right? Because those are so important for cultural activities and for other, like our relations, other animals. It's actually a really nicely works together because you kind of can get cultural burns going through and really removing some of that deadfall and promoting those healthy big tree growth that like the timber companies love.

And obviously, this is something that is a family issue for you to having, you know, being married to someone who is a fire fighter. At what point did you decide to spread the word about good fire? And the term good fire too is something that I'm kind of just learned too. Can you talk a little bit about what good fire is? Sure. So good fire, I think, comes just from the idea that, you know, it's very obvious that we can have good fires on the landscape, you know, that fire is something that is helpful to the environment and to people. And so I think indigenous people lots of times see fire almost in a dichotomy. So kind of, you know, these bad fires, and then the good fire that we

can use as a tool before colonization, indigenous people would use fire on the landscape in good ways. But then also we did have lightning fires, obviously back then, right? But they would come across the landscape and kind of enter into this mosaic landscape that these indigenous burns and other lightning caused fires. Like, and so as they would enter them, then the fire behavior would change. So as you know, it entered a meadow, the fire intensity might decrease, and then it would go back into the forest and maybe increase, and then it would hit like a deciduous stand of trees and go down again. And so this mosaic or patchwork on the landscape was actually really helpful for fire to kind of decrease the intensity of these fire events. But what we're seeing right now is

because we've been suppressing those fire events, there's just so much fuel in the forest that we're seeing these bad fires. So even like I'm thinking like the Dixie fire in California right now, or we have like multiple fires in Canada at the moment too that are bad fires, like lots of times, you know, we look at and say, Oh, fire is natural, there's good ecological benefits. But for me, there's nothing good about these current fires happening right now. So at this point, our FaceTime call cut out because of spotty internet. So Amy recorded a clip answering a few more questions because she is the best, and knew that we only had a few days until this one up, and she's once again the best. I also just wanted to mention the importance of Indigenous people in fire

in Canada, but also in other countries, you know, we often think about Indigenous people and fire management as something that happened in the past, but we have a lot of amazing Indigenous firefighters in Canada, Indigenous fire managers and other people who are really, you know, on the front lines, trying to bring back good fire and Indigenous fire stewardship, and really out there every summer, kind of protecting our communities from these bad fires. And especially in Canada, lots of times there, we don't give enough attention, I think, to those Indigenous firefighters. Lots of times they're kept kind of from progressing in their careers because they might not have the appropriate Western education level, so you know, a degree or a diploma or something.

But they have, you know, might have 20, 30, 40 years experience of being on the fire and so knowledgeable and incredible. And I think, you know, lots of times we need to look at where Western science as well got some of its ideas. Like I've spoken to many elders who've told me about drip torches and how they would use tree limbs and sap to create their own drip torches. That's what their ancestors did and how they would spread fire across the landscape was in doing that. So now, you know, it's a metal canister with fuel in it, but it's kind of the same idea that Indigenous peoples had about how to use fire properly on the land. And just this incredible knowledge base and people in the communities, you know, had roles. In Canada, some nations actually

had families that were firekeepers. There were many people who knew about fire and had knowledge about fire activity. After the break, you'll hear a clip from Good Fire podcast hosts Amy Christensen and Matt Christoff talking about Indigenous firefighters experience on the fire line. And I admit I found this discussion hilarious. But before that, remember Henry T. Lewis, a Hank, the anthropologist who wrote A Time for Burning and made that fires of spring film. So the retro 16 millimeter film aesthetics are far from the coolest thing about his fireworks. One of the coolest things I think from Henry Lewis' work was when he was speaking to Woodland Korean Denny elders about how they would use fire to melt the frost in the ground. And I've seen

actually a few kind of Western science studies lately on that, but that's actually an older technique that the communities would use. So you get kind of all the dry grass on top of a meadow or something. And they would go and burn that in the really early spring, because that's the most important thing about Indigenous burning is the time to burn when it's safe to do a Good Fire. And they would, that would then turn that level, that grass into, you know, black. And so the black would absorb the heat of the sun and then start to melt the frost out of the ground in the early spring. And that would give you much like earlier green shoots and green grass coming up that then moose, deer, other things could come in and eat in that area. So it would

make your hunting or other things a lot easier to do. That's genius. So yeah, I think that that's, those are things, you know, that, and there's probably so much more out there that we don't even know that communities use and how they would use fire in a good way. And I mean, if people are interested as well, you know, Frank Lake, I think is probably one of the first kind of fire ecologists who also is an Indigenous man who, you know, saw very early the importance of Indigenous fire knowledge and in bringing it. And he's written some really great publications that I think for people are eye-opening, you know, about how we can use fire in a good way on the landscape. And to hear an ear load of other incredible Indigenous voices in fire ecology, you'll want

to subscribe to Good Fire. It's a podcast series by Amy and Matt, and we are featuring audio from a discussion as they launched Good Fire in 2019. They were gracious enough to let us steal some clips to round out the conversation amid our tech issues this week. And as it turned out, Amy and I had further trouble connecting because those three fires that she mentioned around her family cabin got bigger and they were forced to evacuate from their vacation. So yes, her work is timely and personal. And she literally wrote the book on this, a volume titled First Nations Wildfire Evacuations, a guide for communities and external agencies alongside Tara, McGee, and First Nations Wildfire Evacuation Partnership. So I'm going to link to that in the show notes

as well. Now, in her name, we're donating this week to a cause of her choosing. And she asked it to go to Indigenous Residential Schools survivors. That's irss.ca. For over 20 years, they've assisted First Nation peoples in British Columbia to recognize and be holistically empowered from the primary and generational effect of the residential schools by supporting research, education awareness, establishing partnerships, and advocating for justice and healing. And the Society assists survivors with counseling, court support, information, referrals, workshops, and more. And you can find out more at irss.ca. There's a link in the show notes. And in Canada, consider participating in Orange Shirt Day on September 30. It's also known as National Day

for Truth and Reconciliation. Okay, so that donation was made possible by some sponsors of the show. And so many of you patrons asked about Indigenous Fire Management, namely, and I'll list you all off at once very quickly, Cameron Brown, Doug, potential future fire ecologist Ronan, Jackie, Chris Brewer, Kimberly Hoffman, Ellen Skelton, Thomas, and Wyndham, Brianna Freeman, Justin, Roberts, Anthony Willis, Donnell O'Neill, and Alexandra Cattool. And because our time chatting was cut short, again, we're so honored and lucky to feature relevant clips from a conversation with The Good Fire podcast hosts Amy Christensen and her co-host, Matt Christoff. Okay, here Amy is talking to Matt about fears of fire. Even in our Indigenous communities, like lots of people are

now worried about fire and scared of fire. And I think, so for me, when I come across people, like, you know, that kind of have that tendency to think of fire is bad, I always say, you know, well, there's good fire. And that's kind of, you know, the name from the podcast. So, you know, when we're doing these kind of good fires, it's basically, it's not a wild fire, it's totally different. Most Indigenous people want to bring back burning, right? And bring back that cultural practice to their landscape, because most elders, when they look at the forest, the first thing that they say is that it's unhealthy, and that it needs cleaning up. When I first started working a bunch of elders, I'd always hear this cleaning up phrase cleaning up. And, you know,

it took a while till I realized that, you know, that meant fire that they wanted, because, you know, you don't normally think of that, you think like, oh, go out with a rake or something, like Donald Trump thinks that we're doing. But, you know, it was actually, you know, that they wanted to use fire to kind of clean up all that dead litter on the forest floor. So, they just want to do that again in their territory. But I think they also realize that because of the fire suppression that we've had over the last, you know, 50 to 300 years, depending where you are in Canada, that it's not that easy just to bring back our burning practices, right? Because we burned on intervals. So, depending on where you were, you know,

if you were burning a meadow, you might burn the meadow every three years. If you were burning, like, you know, an old growth forest, then you might burn every 20 years. Like, you know, it just depended on what you were burning or what objective you were trying to achieve. So, you know, we, and now we've excluded fire. So, I mean, the litter and the buildup of fuel is crazy. So, I think like now, most of the elders I talked to, they say like, if we went and tried to do this now, like we would basically burn down the forest because we'd be trying to start a low intensity burn, but there's just too much fuel on the floor. So, it would immediately like escalate. So, how do indigenous fire scientists and wildlands firefighters approach these really

different schools of thought? Amy explains to Matt. We call it like two-eyed seeing. So, that's kind of the new concept that's come up. So, that's like, you know, where as indigenous people or even as non-indigenous, like, you know, you're looking at the world through one eye, through your Western perspective, right? Because we're all trained in that, you know, like, there's not, there's very few people that, you know, are born and raised in the bush and have that kind of only subsistence lifestyle. But then out of the other eye, you know, you can see with your indigenous eye, right? So, you can see, you know, how, you know, where things could be better. And I think for me, that's where fire management comes in. Because, you know, I'm trained from the

Western perspective, but I think, you know, from like culture, then like, you know, there's things that indigenous people do or know better. And, you know, for me, part of my job is, you know, advocating for that and trying. So, you know, it's not saying like, drop all Western science around fire, right? We need that. We need that too. But then indigenous people in our cultures also know ways, you know, for making the forest healthy. So, to me, if you bring those two together, it makes like, you know what I mean? It's then you have like an incredible knowledge base that you're coming from. Right. The firefighter stories, I promise to you. One example is like talking to firefighters. So, there's this one guy who is a non, like a non-indigenous firefighter. So,

it's kind of funny up on that, you know, the fire crews there, lots of that, there's like 30 or 40 year indigenous firefighters that have been on the fire line a long time. And they say, you know, these new kids like university grads come up and start telling them what to do. So, this one guy was actually telling me that, you know, he started out of university as kind of a fire boss and went up on the, the one line and he had these native crews and he said he was, he thought they were the laziest people in the world because he's like, they would get up in the morning and work a little bit. But then he's like, then they nap all day and then like in the, in the bush, you know? And then he's like, but then, you know, they would get up and kind of work all night. And

then he's like, and then I started like really looking and watching what they were doing. And he said that then one of the guys came up and told him like, we fight the fire when it's the weakest because we see fire as a living being. And why would you fight something at the height of its day? You know, like at 2pm on a really sunny hot day with high winds, right? Like, why would you do anything, right? Like the fire can just jump or, you know, but if you, you know, fight it in the morning when it's the weakest or in the evening or overnight, when humidity is high and the temperature is low and so the activities, yeah, decrease. Yeah. And every, well, I should say generally now with climate change, who knows, but generally fire activity decreases at night, right?

So, so these guys have got that not from textbooks, but from years of being out and watching fires. So I think, and so he was saying like, to me, like this non-indigenous kid that, that it was just amazing to see that because he didn't learn any of that in school. And so for him, he said he learned more that summer working with the native crews about fire than going to school, basically. And not to say, you know, don't stay in school kids, but like, because that's important too. But you know, there's other ways and other things to, to learn as well about, about fire. Lots of the indigenous fire guys, they always tell me one of the funniest things is like the, when the fire season first starts and like in, in Cree, the word for white boy or whatever is

Moony out. So they say like, oh, it's so funny when like the Moony out come on the fire because he's like, they're all just doing selfies with the fire in the background. And he's like, and we're all like, you know, actually working. And he's like, and you look and all the Moony are just lined up way away from the fire, taking selfies. And then it was funny because then I started seeing on Facebook, like lots of people. Yeah, they do well on Instagram. Yeah, but I think that that's like just maybe a bit of, and it's kind of more of like, because for indigenous people, it's more of a lifestyle, right? So they're, they've been doing that. That's so it's, it's a great career for indigenous people because they can go out in the summer,

make money, be on the land. And then in the winter, they can go and like run their traplines or hunt, be with their families and like kind of participate in their, their culture. So I think that that's why it's become like kind of a, a nice lifestyle for certain people. Yeah, for sure. So how do agencies and nations work together? How can ecologists and firekeepers spark those collaborations? People always say, Oh, you need to engage with the indigenous communities. And, and well, like to me, that's a nice concept. I know that lots of non-indigenous people or companies get frustrated because, you know, they go to these communities and try to engage and nobody turns up or, you know, they can't get ahold of anybody, nobody returns their calls. And so I

think for me, like the thing to remember with that is, you know, for people to remember that like First Nations are under the Indian Act, right? So basically all their resource and, and, you know, how their capital for how they're run all basically is decided in Ottawa almost, you know, and how much money comes down to them. So most of the times, you know, even though the communities have high capacity, you know, for forestry or other things, it's often very underfunded because of what comes down the stream from Ottawa. Ottawa is an Eastern Canada in Ontario. And did you know that Ottawa is the capital of Canada? I didn't until right now. So if you feel the same, it's okay. Basically, there's not enough money, right? So they, you know, might not have a forestry coordinator,

they might not have a lands person or, you know, or the chief might be like that, you know, the chief has to manage housing, healthcare, like, you know, everything, like you can. So I know people get frustrated, but at the same time, I think, you know, there's a needs to be a bit of patience and understanding there that lots of the nations are trying as much as much as they can. And some are great, like there's some nations, you know, that have really gone into forestry there, you know, the community forest in BC. I think that those are a really great example of things that are working well. Or I know there's been partnerships like between different like forest industries and indigenous nations too. Most forestry people don't go into forestry because

they want to, you know, kill all the trees and everything, right? They go into it because they love being in the forest, right? So they want to sustain that. Most indigenous people love being in the forest, right? So right there you have a match of, you know, so then it almost goes to, well, then, you know, if these are our shared values, how then can we, you know, move forward together? But I think one of the problems is that there's a real lack of trust because there's been a lot of people that have taken advantage of indigenous communities. So, you know, come in and said good things, said all the right things, and then, you know, ended up taking money and, you know, not involving the nation. And so it can take a while. I think like a helpful thing too is

employing indigenous people. So, you know, when you make or want to work in a certain nation or with them, you know, to employ people from that band and give them, you know, a sustainable, you know, career. And there's lots of indigenous people that actually have forest tech diplomas and other things that can do that. So I think, you know, and I know it's not easy either. I don't want people to think like, oh, yeah, you just sit at a table and decide your values. And then everything goes away. Amy explains that over the many years, promises have been made and broken and outside collaboration has seemed to come with a price tag. You know, I think you need to recognize, you know, if you want to do this kind of work, that there has to be some kind of benefit

for the community as a whole as well, whether that's, you know, monetarily or, you know, supporting like a recreational forest or, you know, something, yeah, to kind of come to that. I don't, like, there's not, I think, an easy answer for, you know, like, just do this one step and, you know, indigenous people will love to work with you. But for me, I think that forestry really has an advantage over, say, like the oil and gas industry, because I think that there's many more shared values. Or like, I think the worldview of an indigenous person in a forest or as much more similar. So, yeah, I think that that's kind of exciting, almost. And, you know, something kind of, and I've seen like a bunch of nations now, you know, are opening their own

little sawmills and other things. And to me, that's like exciting. So because it has to do with the housing crises we have, right? So they want to be able to, you know, harvest their own wood to build their own homes, which I mean, why we aren't doing that, I have no idea. You know, instead of shipping in the wood and timber and stuff. So I think, yeah, there's, unfortunately, there's not like a really easy answer. But I would say like the biggest thing is, you know, to be genuine and patient and then understand that history, you know, that the situation that you're coming into, because lots of people get like, I don't want to say white savior, because that sounds really bad. But, you know, he's kind of like, Oh, I'm going to go to the community and

help them. Or you know, like, and I think the problem is that there's a revolving door of these, you know, white saviors are coming to save them. And like, even like, if you go to a First Nation conference, like, there's just kind of business people all over the place trying to sell the chiefs on different ideas and different, different things. So yeah, it's almost kind of being becoming trusted in the community. And then also working long term. And that's something that, you know, our, especially in government, like, we don't really support because, you know, everyone kind of wants to climb the ladder in government. Whereas, you know, the most trusted people are generally the ones from the community who've been in the community the longest. And

that's generally who like an indigenous person would trust. So yeah, it's almost like doing these relationships long term too. And I think there's some great examples out there of things that are going really well. So yes, trust and incentives really matter, as does plain old money. And I would say lots of that does come from like that funding issue, you know, that sometimes they just don't have enough money. And then also other times, you know, we're dealing with lots of issues that have been brought on by colonization, right? So like, if you're dealing with a suicide crisis in your community, you're not really going to care about forestry, right? And so I hear people say that to like to me sometimes about, you know, when I talk about how we're stewards of the

environment, they'll say to me, like, Have you ever been on a reserve and looked at like, you know, there's garbage everywhere. And you know, and people don't care about their houses. And like, that's hardly an environmental steward. And to me, that's colonization, right? Like, that's where where we've gone and where we've been pushed. So reminder that cultural burning practices were criminalized, but now they're becoming of interest to Western scientists. And Amy says that returning to that fired stewardship could be really healing for forests, for people who love the forest, and for the people who have been kept from doing it for so long. Moving forward, it's kind of like re, like regaining our culture back. And so that's like,

we're related to burning. We're burning in those things because burning for us is a cultural practice, right? And so I think by getting fire back on the landscape by kind of making our forest healthier, you know, then that promotes a healthier community. So you know, instead of kids sitting inside, you know, they're out on the land and like what kid doesn't like fire, right? Oh, totally. So they're out with their elder, like burning and and anyways, there's neat things like even just showing kids like how smart their ancestors were, like the one elder that I was talking to was telling me about how drip torches actually came from First Nations people, which I didn't know. But I think like that to me, that's neat because you take kids out there. Yeah. And

you show them like, well, you know, drip torches came from, you know, and super cool. And even like kids had jobs on fires, right? So, oh man, I actually heard this fantastic quote that almost made me cry the other day from this guy in Australia. And he was saying for them, burning is such a family affair. And actually, that's what I hear to you from all of our, the people I've talked to here is that, you know, it wouldn't just be the men that would go out and burn, it's the entire family. And the kids like one thing they would do is pick up like pine cones. And, you know, light them on fire and then from the fire and then throw them. Like awesome for kids. And I know like there's fire managers probably listening to this saying,

oh my goodness, they're going to burn down the forest. Please do not do this. If you are just a kid listening, I don't want to start throwing flaming balls of fire. Don't do that. Yeah. But this was obviously under the direction of elders and, you know, also burning at like a very low risk times, right? Like this was not in the summer. This is very controlled. Yes. But so, you know, it's to give the kids a job on the fire. And the one guy from Australia was saying that for his mob, that for them, it was bringing children's laughter back to the forest because the trees hadn't heard the children laugh in a long time. And they felt that that was needed for the trees to be healthy too. And I mean, that kind of relates like obviously children's laughter does not,

you know, directly affect the tree. But it's more that like if people are out on the land stewarding it, right? Then that promotes health for the health of the trees. So anyways, to me, that was such a beautiful quote because I think too often, you know, we kind of remove that or remove kind of the community. Patreon, Nikki DeMarco asks, is there any way we could go back to indigenous stewardship to help with this problem? Or does the red tape make it not feasible? So moving forward, what are the legalities of it? So on our like the reserves, we're technically allowed to burn, right? Because that's the, you know, the band. Well, it's federal jurisdiction, but you know, the band kind of has a bit of control over it. So you know, that you don't

need provincial permission to do that. So you know, lots of agents, fire management agencies say, you know, oh, we're so supportive of indigenous people, and we want to help that, you know, you know, support their practices, you know, until we say, you know, we want to burn something. And so, you know, what I've seen even, you know, in BC is where I'm doing a lot of work right now because the nations there are so passionate about burning. But, you know, they, they're going into these meetings, and it's, you know, like a really complicated process to get prescribed burning on the ground. And it's very Western based, you know, you have to know, like, fuel types that are out there. That's the culture we live in now, right? So of course, it's going to be that kind

of bureaucracy. Yeah, it's like a crazy 12 step process. And most of the communities look at that and just say, you know, we'll screw this, we're burning ourselves, you know, and then even when they want to burn, like, I've heard of lots, you know, where somebody sees smoke and then, you know, calls the, you know, calls the emergency number and then, you know, a helicopter will just come and put out their fire, their little fire that they're burning, right? Without, you know, coming and dropping down and maybe talking to the people or are seeing what's going on. So there's a bit of a disconnect and I can see it from both sides, right? Because especially in BC, like, the fires has been so crazy that I think, you know, the BC fire management or wildfire service

there, you know, obviously doesn't want out of control fires, but the nations there want to burn. And so what I'm seeing right now is because they, they're just like smashing heads basically, like they're supportive until we want to burn. And because of that smashing of heads is that now the nations are saying, like, we'll screw you, this is our territory, we're doing what we want, you know, and then like, it becomes like this real conflict situation. And we're trying to work with like the agency and, you know, maybe even introduce some sort of like cultural burn protocol or procedure, you know, that's more indigenous base, that same thing, like you're kind of getting permission, you know, you're notifying the correct authorities, but it's not as crazy as this like existing process.

Well, I think that's, and we've just, again, it's another thing we've discussed a bit on the, on the other episodes we did that, yeah, the Good Fire podcast, but talking about that, that's another big barrier to indigenous burning or cultural burning, however you want to call it, is the, like the Western barriers on that, because like, you're right, we don't want out of control fires. So the Western, like the Western government, like we want to make sure that like any fire that is started is not going to become a problem for anything outside of the, the, the reserve or whatever, right? But also at the same time, recognizing that like you were, like you were saying, indigenous people have been working with fire for thousands of years and understand the

relationship. So how do you make sure that government feels comfortable with this going on, but also ensuring that because it's entirely possible also, like this is something that somebody who's playing devil's advocate would say, right, is just saying that like, well, how do we ensure that they know what they're doing? Because it could be somebody who just because they're indigenous doesn't mean they know what's going on, right? They have to have that knowledge passed down and collected somehow. No, I've heard that all the time. Like, oh, if we allow this, the Indians are going to be lighting fires everywhere. Yeah, exactly. Right. And then that kind of fear. Yeah. Right. So there's that fear of, will they take advantage of this and just do it for fun or

whatever? And that exists. So we have to address that fear. So how do we, there's going to have to be a collaboration somehow to be like, okay, we acknowledge that like these four people somehow, unfortunately, that's the way it's going to have, I think it probably going to have to go that these four people in this band have the knowledge and they have to be like, I don't know. And this is super westernized for me to think, right? Like these people have the knowledge and understanding of how to do this. So if they're in charge, we're not going to worry about it. But I also feel like indigenous communities having to talk to the overlord, the government, what they're doing on their own land is counter is exactly the opposite of what

you're trying to accomplish here. Yeah. And so that's like, so you know, like there's fire boss training, right? Or no, burn boss training. So there's like different levels of that. You can go through same thing. It's very western. Like I know that now, like there's Bob Gray and other guys who train on that who are starting to incorporate a bit of indigenous knowledge or, you know, the importance of indigenous knowledge and burning, but same, it's very like kind of western, you know, this is how we light a prescribed fire. And that's all we know. That's the only culture I know, right? So it's where my perspective is going to come from. Yeah. So we're doing brainstorming some of the firekeepers and we're like, you know, will they do a certification

course to get that? So maybe what we need to do then is have a cultural burning certification course, right? So that, you know, if people would go through and then once they get that, then, you know, they can go in and light fires or whatever. But then we had a lot of firekeepers that were saying like, no, that is basically just us trying to fit into a western system. And they were saying like the one guy actually at the firekeepers conference, I just went to the government, people were talking and he stood up and he just said, you know, I find this really difficult because they're talking about, you know, like all the procedures you need to go through to get approval. He stood up and he just said, you know, for me, this is my family's like my

nation's inherent right to steward the land. This is my responsibility. This is why I was put on this earth. You know, so for me then to have to go and ask you for permission to do what is my responsibility and my right, that doesn't make any sense. And then he was saying like, you know, a hundred years ago, you guys were telling us we couldn't burn because we were destroying the forest. And now you're saying to us, oh, only we can burn because, you know, you guys, because now the forest is destroyed. And he's like, you're the ones, you know, whose practices because you wouldn't listen to us, you know, have led to this. If you were to listen to my ancestors, you know, then we wouldn't be in this predicament we're in now. So like, let us kind of take it over. So

I think it's one of those like, I don't, I don't really like that term like wicked issue, you know, where it's like super complex, but it is kind of like that in a way, right? Because you like, you're worried, the forest isn't healthy right now. I don't personally want to say to somebody like, yeah, go out and burn and then have, you know, a massive crown fire start. But I think the thing is with indigenous fire practice is that it's, you know, you're burning at very specific times. So, you know, it's like early spring before the snow is left in Canada. It's late fall, just like the day or two before the first snow fall, right? You're not burning like obviously in the summer. So like, I would think that that, you know, obviously still should be criminalized to some

extent, you know, that you need to find people or whatever that are just going because that is very high risk. And so like what our like elders and ancestors say from like the different nations that I've talked to is that, you know, our burning that we do is so low risk. That's why we don't need protective equipment. That's why we don't need a burn plan. Because if we're doing it right, you know, there's, there's literally very lower zero risk. I think they would say zero risk to what they're doing, you know, to starting an out of control fire or somebody getting hurt. It's amazing how complicated the situation is to try and navigate this, but I think the only way forward is to come together and have this discussion. It seems like a cop out to say that

because it's just like, we need to discuss it. Like, unfortunately, that's the truth. Yeah. Well, and on the Good Fire podcast, I think like that's what's interesting is because with the range of people that we talk to on there, like, you know, you go from somebody who thinks, you know, like it's their right to burn and they're not working with any agency. And then to like other people who, you know, are employed, like me kind of by an agency, like Frank Lake, you know, he works for US Forest Service and he's used his, you know, work within this kind of western government structure to bring more fire back to his territory. So yeah, it's just, it's really interesting to see kind of all the different perspectives.

So that conversation was from the Your Forest podcast, which is hosted by Matt Christoff, who also co-hosts Good Fire with Amy. And of course, there's a whole Good Fire episode with Frank Lake. And there's so many other great voices in Indigenous fire ecology. So I'm going to link that episode and the podcast in general on my website. And I will also put up a link to the wonderful 47-page book called Blazing the Trail, Celebrating Indigenous Fire Stewardship, so many resources, so much learning. Now to wrap up though, let's talk about some pains and some asses. So the most vexing thing about Amy's job. I'd have to say my least favorite thing about my job is the bureaucracy, which I think that most people who work in a government agency can relate

to. It's sometimes really frustrating when, you know, you know, something needs to be done or what a solution could be. But then you kind of get held up in all sorts of bureaucratic processes. So I mean, that's my least favorite. Unfortunately, it takes up a lot of time that we could be, you know, devoting to other things. So that's frustrating for sure. In the standout best aspect, the most brightly glowing coal. But I think my most favorite thing about my job is that I'm able to work with communities and knowledge keepers from across Canada and then internationally, sometimes as well. And I really realized that that's, you know, a position of privilege that I have and that I'm in to be able to do that. And it comes like with a lot of responsibility that often,

you know, keeps me awake at night. But for me, when I'm able to bring fire keepers or other people to events or other things, and just see their pride and finally being recognized in their knowledge being known. And sometimes like I've been referring to that as kind of like, you know, we had this big severance event with fire, but now what we're almost seeing is this reunion with fire, where indigenous people are coming back to it. And so, you know, we have the land back movement for indigenous people. And often I think, you know, we need a fire back movement as well, where indigenous people, you know, empower it again to make those decisions on the land. And what I'm seeing right now in Canada, especially is that there is a movement where people want to

be involved in fire management decisions that are happening in their territories. And so I think that's really exciting. So ask smart people exciting questions, because sometimes the situation is impossibly complex, and they can help break it down for you, like a fungus on a fallen log. And so for more on this topic, you can get yourself some Good Fire podcast into your ears. It's hosted by Amy and by Matt Christoff. And it's linked in the show notes. Matt's podcast again is your forest podcast. Thank you so much to him for letting us use so much of his interview with Amy. You can follow Amy at Christians and Amy on Twitter. There are more links in the show notes and up on my website, alleyward.com, slash oligies, slash Good Fire.

You can follow us at oligies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at alleyward with 1L, new full length adult friendly episodes continue to come out on Tuesday. And we're moving small indies releases to the weekend, I think Sundays or Mondays. So look for a new kid friendly episode next week. Also, I'm sorry that my neighbor's dog's barking. I can't really do anything about it. We got to get this episode up. I'm so sweaty. Merch is available at oligiesmerch.com. Thank you to Sisters Shannon Felses and Bonnie Dutch for managing Merch. They host a podcast called You Are That, a comedy podcast. Thank you to longtime friend Aaron Talbert. We met when we were four for admitting the oligies podcast Facebook group. Thank you to Emily White of the

Wardery Professional Transcription Company for making transcripts for oligies. They're available for free on my website. Thank you, Caleb Patton, for bleeping episodes. Thank you, Noelle Dillworth for all the scheduling and Susan Hale, both of you for helping with social media quizzes and such. As always, giant thank you to resident editor. By resident, I mean, we live in the same bed. Jared Sleeper, who helped me stitch all these audio clips together. And also, of course, to Stephen Ray Morris for all the editing help and for working on smologies now too. Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the theme music. And if you listen to the end, you know, I tell you the secret. This week's secret, it's pretty juicy. It's actually not. It's that I

prefer dry pulpy oranges. I don't want a juicy orange. I want the pulp to hold all the juice. I don't want any juice on my hands. I want a dry pulpy orange. I don't know if it's a certain kind of orange, or if I have to just let them sit on the counter longer. But if you are a pulpologist and you know this, holler. Let me know because every time I open an orange, I'm rolling the dice. I'm like, come on, give me a dry one. Is it gross? I don't know. I don't care. Anyway, buh-bye. Have you ever thought about fighting fire with fire? Yeah.