In California, Tribal members and more protected from liability for cultural, controlled burns

Hankins said that, while cultural burning achieves the same goal as controlled burning, it also goes way beyond risk mangement and back to a core Indigenous principle: connection to the land.

“What it really comes down to, in my mind, is this idea of cultural competency,” he said. “ If you're a practitioner, like a weaver or a hunter, and you're using fire to help you with those particular things, that's very unique.You're setting fire and you're coming back into that spot continually to collect plant materials, or to hunt or to provide that habitat so that you can hunt in a different area and the animals have that place that you burned for their wellbeing.”

With prescribed burns, he said, you walk away.