This story is the second feature of a Vox special project,Changes with our climateA limited-run series that explores indigenous solutions to extreme weather that are rooted in history and the future
Silas Yamamoto’s favorite part of the job is starting fires.
As a designated fire technician with the Karuk tribe and Mid Klamath Watershed Council Based in Happy Camp, a small town in Northern California, Yamamoto creates controlled burns — small, intentional fires that can help prevent large wildfires, reduce the habitat of invasive species, and improve plant and soil health. Yamamoto has set a lot of fires in his ancestral homeland, and recently, he’s been traveling across the country to help start fires in other communities as well. The goal is to decolonize our relationship with wildfire, remove barriers to better fire use, and prepare us for a world more affected by the effects of climate change.
But he still doesn’t burn nearly as often as he’d like.
Fires across the country getting worse. In addition to billions of dollars in damage from destroyed homes and infrastructure, these fires are increasingly deadly: every year, wildfire smoke Contributes to thousands of deaths Only in the US, not mentioned elsewhere Health effects Such as decreased lung function and increased risk Dementia. And climate change makes extreme wildfires more common across the landscape Becomes warmer, drier and more flammable.
All of this means that understanding how to control wildfires is more important than ever.
For Yamamoto, fire is a way to connect with his tribal community and the land, but he has bigger ambitions: He wants to organize large collaborative projects — between different states, sovereign indigenous nations — that will spread fire across property lines indiscriminately.
One of the obstacles to effective fire management is the tangled web of property ownership across the country. Good fire mitigation strategies – such as clearing combustible understory on corporate-owned land – are not as effective if family land next door does not do the same. To truly tackle out-of-control wildfires and climate change, fire management must cross those lines, meaning understanding the land we live on as a shared responsibility rather than a collection of private property.
“Fire doesn’t recognize property lines, does it?” Yamamoto said. “It’s a very human construct.”
Fire has always been a part of Yamamoto Karuk culture, but until recently, state and federal authorities viewed all fire as evil — a force of nature to subdue, not survive. For decades, the United States embraced Fire Suppression PolicyAs underscored by Smokey Bear’s “Only you can prevent forest fires” commercials, forests have become denser and fires more frequent and powerful. Fire suppression in California, for example, is a continuous generation of indigenous land stewardship, which cultivated a landscape where fire, people, and plants could coexist. By lighting frequent, small fires, they create a sustainable cycle that clears the underbrush, regenerates vegetation and soil, and prevents the kind of “mega fires” we see today. But that stewardship was mercilessly extinguished in the 19th and 20th centuries: according to Bill TripDirector of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy for the Karuk Tribe Until the 1930s, the Karuk people were shot by white settlers for starting fires.
“Fire doesn’t recognize property lines, does it? It’s a very human construct.”
Today has been an important and encouraging one Transfer Back to more aboriginal burning practices. But still as tribals eventually started fire management Gain more respectIndigenous fire practitioners are still constrained by restricted burning policies, land access, resources and bureaucracy.
We are caught in a negative feedback loop of scarier and more destructive fires. Yamamoto believes we should spread fire — not suppress it: that’s why Yamamoto is working to spread indigenous fire culture to non-native fire practitioners across the country and develop partnerships that can address these challenges together.
“Prescribed fire is not going to be the only way we can get out of it, it’s going to be a combination of factors,” Yamamoto said. “I wonder if we’ll be able to start all that work before the whole forest burns down.”
It’s not just fire – it’s healing
When he was about 10 years old, Yamamoto’s mother began taking him to burn bear grass for regalia and baskets. These more positive experiences shaped the way he thought about fire just as much as the negative effects he saw. “It’s always been part of our culture,” Yamamoto said. “Always has been, always will be, but people outside of it are now starting to understand its importance.”
In 2020, Silas Yamamoto’s family home burned down in the Slater Fire, a devastating wildfire that destroyed over 100 homes in his hometown of Happy Camp, California. Slater was a part of the fire Record-breaking fire season California has seen thousands of wildfires burn millions of acres across the state, causing dozens of deaths and billions in damages.
Yamamoto and his parents were forced to live out of their hotel room for more than a month. After the Red Cross runs out of hotel money, they move into a rental trailer that she says is too small for three adults and their dog. Yamamoto eventually moved out, renting a house from a local family. Yamamoto’s parents are still living in a trailer and have considered leaving the area altogether. “It’s hard to live in an area that used to be so lush and green and beautiful that is now brush and standing matchsticks that will burn in the future,” he said. “It will burn in the future. It’s just when.”
These days, Yamamoto is constantly juggling a busy schedule — traveling around the country or helping with a quick gear change from a meeting with Cal Fire. Aboriginal Women-in-Fire Training Exchange Program or title on fire assignments anywhere in the state.
Starting this fall, with funding from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Yamamoto plans to lead a crew dedicated to prescribed burns in California, but they will travel three months out of the year learning from communities across the country. Yamamoto also hopes his crew can bring an indigenous view of cultural fire to areas that are comfortable with fire but less familiar with an indigenous approach to it. As the risk and severity of fires increases, such collaborative approaches may be the key to survival in a more flammable world.
“Fire is just part of the natural order of things, and if you remove it for a long time, you get these devastating mega fires where absolutely everything burns,” Yamamoto said. “You can’t fight nature, and it’s pointless trying to fight something we don’t fully control.”
Although fire has always been a part of Yamamoto’s life, there are indigenous-controlled burns Continuously gained Wide recognition These practices work in recent years because they embrace the beneficial role that fire can have on vegetation and land. Prescribed burning can clear the landscape of fuels that can lead to larger and less controllable wildfires. Fire can also help Soil health And Seed germination.
But indigenous fires have long done more than reduce the risk of destructive wildfires.
“It’s not just fire,” said Melinda AdamsN’dee is a member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe and an assistant professor at the University of Kansas. Adams’ research focuses on cultural fires, particularly in California and the Midwest. “It’s healing a lot of trauma that our people have gone through, and healing landscapes that have gone through degradation and trauma.”
For Aboriginal people, cultural and community fire has always been a way of building relationships with the land and each other. “Not only are you tending to that space with fire, but then you’re coming back and using that space and having a relationship with it because of fire stewardship,” said Don Hankinsis a Miwkoʔ (Miwok) traditional cultural practitioner and professor of geography and planning at California State University, Chico.
As climate change threatens our way of life, Hankins says these relationships will become even more essential. If you understand the land and you can’t control it, you’re more likely to find ways to adapt to it rather than trying to force it to adapt to you. Hankins says indigenous peoples have always embraced this type of evolution, responding to different climatic conditions.
So even as climate change and the legacy of fire suppression present new challenges, he believes Indigenous thinking is ready for the moment. But it does mean that policymakers need to start listening more to indigenous peoples.
Hankins is working on changes such as recognizing the role of indigenous stewardship and prescribed burning under the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to assess the environmental impacts of their actions, and the Endangered Species Act and Clean Air Act. These changes could create more space for indigenous fire management and pave the way for more resources and independence for indigenous fire practitioners.
One concept that Yamamoto is particularly keen to explore is cross-boundary burn. The Forest Service, for example, can start a burn on federal land that continues on private land, where a partner organization like the Mid Klamath Watershed Council can take over. But developing processes and systems to coordinate these projects requires a level of collaboration unfamiliar to some partners accustomed to working on their own.
As land co-management agreements pop up between tribes and government agencies, tribal experts stress that while these partnerships are a good move, they only work if tribes aren’t treated as junior partners. “We will never achieve what we need to do unless everyone participates together,” said Don Hankins. “I think it’s a really important issue, but it has to be Aboriginal-led.”
To ensure this, Hankins, Yamamoto and others are working to find scientific evidence that policymakers can find more credible than generations of successful indigenous stewardship. To do this successfully, indigenous experts say a change in mindset is as necessary as a change in policy.
“There’s definitely a lot of education that needs to happen as the public understands the importance of indigenous knowledge and not just thinking of them as a trope or something from the past,” says Melinda Adams. “This is something that is going to save our planet.”
