This tribe was barred from cultural burning for decades — then a fire hit their community

Cultural burning — the practice of using controlled fires to tend the landscape — was once widespread among many Indigenous groups, but ended with the arrival of European settlers.

The practice is central to tribal culture, said Coats, who recalled how when he was a child, basket makers would gather basket making materials, hunters would gather hunting tools and medicine people would gather medicine. Burning was performed to help all of those tradespeople collect the best supplies possible, he said.

“We didn’t call it cultural burning,” he said. “We just called it taking care of the land.”