Indigenous fire practices can help Oregon wildfires, land management

As fires appear to haunt Oregon’s imagination of summertime, we sit to reflect on the need to define our collective relationship with fire through an engagement with Indigenous science or ways of knowing and understanding the world.

Native American communities in western Oregon have been tending the land with fire since time immemorial. This practice, known today as cultural burning, offers many lessons on the value of fire to care for land and water. Cultural burnings are an ecological practice grounded in Indigenous science that prevents disastrous fire seasons, nourishes watersheds, sustains traditional food sources and maintains cultural practices and keeps memories alive across generations.

In western Oregon, Native communities have carefully burned to maintain oak groves for acorns, used mindful fire in meadows for camas and other foods and pruned and burned hazel patches for basketry materials. These practices, among many others, require the use of fire as a transformational element — fire to clear grassland, maintain forest health and encourage new growth, while rejuvenating springs and water tables.