Cultural Fire is something we have discussed quite a lot on this podcast. Today, we get to hear from some folks in Parks Canada about how they will be opening up the door to cultural fire. Some really open minded and thoughtful people at Parks have made it possible for Indigenous voices to be heard and for real change to be made. Getting Good Fire back on the land, in a place that is synonymous with “wilderness”, is a huge step in the right direction for understanding our relationship to land.
Your Forest Podcast by Matthew Kristoff
Resources
A Time For Burning by Henry Lewis
United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Sponsors
Quotes
27.02 - 27.08: “If we look at cultural burning just from a fire perspective, you are missing the whole picture about… mental health and other things.” (Amy)
39.15 - 39.28: “I think recognizing the harms that we did in the past with policies… is important and then doing whatever we can to improve in the future and fix that.” (Pierre)
Takeaways
Get to know Amy (05.53)
Amy is a Métis woman from Treaty 8 territory in Northern Alberta and is working with Parks Canada as an Indigenous Fire Specialist. She also co-hosts the GoodFire podcast with Matthew Kristoff. All her work is centred around Indigenous fire, supporting nations in bringing cultural burning back and supporting Indigenous firefighters in uncovering the impacts of fire on Indigenous communities across Canada.
Get to know Pierre (07.26)
Pierre is a Nova Scotian originally from Quebec and is now the manager of the national fire management program for Parks Canada. He got his love of nature and desire to be an environmentalist from his grandfathers, with whom he spent time as a child. After working on active restoration in water bodies and forests, he now works on fire restoration in protected areas.
The differences in cultural burning (11.02)
Amy shares that cultural burning has been used by Indigenous nations across Canada for millennia to steward the landscape and promote resources that can be used for cultural objectives including vegetation, animal husbandry and medicinal plants. Each Indigenous community burns for different reasons, using different techniques. Two neighbouring nations may burn for reasons as different as clearing the bush for moose, or fishing.
How colonization changed cultural burning (12.26)
Amy narrates that cultural burning was carried out till settlers brought in fire exclusion policies to remove fire from the landscape because they saw it as damaging to timber and were concerned about watersheds. However, not only did they remove fire from the landscape, but they also removed Indigenous peoples from the landscape through the Indian Act by putting them onto reserves or residential schools and were punished for burning on their landscapes.
Truth and reconciliation (13.30)
Amy finds that Parks Canada is honest about its history of removing people from the landscape and recognizes that a spirit of reconciliation is how we can improve that relationship moving forward. Her family members were trappers in the North and she speculates on their uses of fire from what she has read in historical accounts, since her grandmother and father didn’t burn. She discusses the contrast in Indigenous fire-keepers being hired as firefighters.
Relearning cultural burning (15.30)
Amy reconnected with her history after returning to Canada following her travels. She began learning the importance of fire on the landscape from Métis Elders, which grew her interest and became both an academic and personal learning journey about her family, her roots and her connections to the environment. She also learned from the accounts of Henry Lewis, a cultural burning researcher in Fort McMurray.
Creating more fire-keepers (19.18)
Amy notes that Eastern Canada has had a longer history of colonization than BC or Alberta, and are more removed from their cultural burning practices historically. Yet, there is a lot of knowledge in Miꞌkmaq communities about cultural burning, which had been passed on through stories by Elders. There is a need to train more Indigenous peoples to become fire-keepers, taking a leaf out of Australia’s book, where a huge training program for youth is being run.
Removing cultural burning is removing the sound of children laughing from the trees (21.54)
Amy points out that prescribed and cultural burning are not the same, though you may have heard them used interchangeably. She values that Parks Canada views them as separate since prescribed burning is about hazard reduction where a lot of land is burned in a short time frame. However, cultural burning is about achieving cultural objectives for the community by using low-intensity fires in low-risk times to burn slowly to cleanse the land.
One of the most prominent ways cultural burning differs from prescribed burning is that it appears different to the senses. Cultural burning involves a fire you can walk beside, like a relative or spirit, whereas prescribed burning can swallow an entire side of a mountain in flames. Cultural burning is replete with the sound of children’s laughter since it is a community activity, whereas prescribed burning is abuzz with radio traffic and the sounds of helicopters pouring fire.
Using cultural practices on the land (25.33)
Amy is positive about how Parks Canada is conducting prescribed burning almost similar to cultural burning, with many prescribed burners learning from cultural burners. Pierre emphasizes the importance of joining the two, with prescribed burning learning from cultural burning for ecological restoration or risk reduction. However, it can only be up to Indigenous peoples to define cultural burning and come into Parks Canada to do that.
The spark is lit (29.28)
As a research scientist with the Canadian Forest Service, Amy had worked with Pierre from Parks Canada on different committees and admired Parks Canada for being a progressive fire agency with objectives around Indigenous peoples and reconciliation. In her conversations with Pierre, she saw the fire program as an opportunity to put policies into place to bring cultural burning back on the land since her work as a researcher was more advisory than operational.
Keepers of the flame (30.44)
Moving from the Canadian Forest Service to Pierre’s team was seamless since most of Amy’s work had been with Parks Canada. However, she looked at this as an opportunity to gain practical experience and understand the challenges and outcomes of the operational aspects so that she could supplement her academic knowledge with real-life experience. Pierre recalls a 90s program which increased the implementation of burning as a way to manage wildfires.
Making meaningful strides with reconciliation (33.18)
Pierre discusses how prescribed fire had been linked to cultural burning in how it brings fire to the landscape and how that has helped in opening the door and removing barriers to cultural burning in the recent past. The federal government is also supporting the fire program. Pierre’s ex-wife is Miꞌkmaq and he is inspired to bring back their cultural practices, like burning, to the land to maintain ecological integrity for future generations, like his 2 Mi'kmaq daughters.
Indigenous ways of knowing (41.34)
Amy explains how confirmation bias acts in the world - where people are inclined to only process what is congruent with their beliefs and views and ignore other facts to avoid cognitive dissonance. Indigenous peoples feel frustrated by fire policies that were created by non-Indigenous people who had no connection to cultural burning. Pierre wonders how Indigenous ways of knowing can be incorporated into policy-making.
Long road ahead (45.05)
Pierre lists some examples of the challenges in bringing Indigenous knowledge into the mainstream - cumbersome official processes, mostly oral records and problems with cultural appropriation. However, he believes we need to work through those and begin having better conversations with Indigenous partners. Amy adds that many different nations may have territorial claims to a national park which adds to the complexity of Indigenous consultation.
Enabling Indigenous collaboration (47.25)
Pierre recognizes that there is a lot of resentment in the relationships between the government and Indigenous communities but some parks have better relationships than others. When Indigenous peoples approach Parks Canada to collaborate on fire management, the fire managers need to know how to remove barriers to access and create the right agreements and policies to enable that collaboration. Amy has been brought in as a dedicated resource for this.
Programs, people, personalities (52.21)
Amy recounts how Parks Canada reached out to her for her criticism of their Indigenous relationships and asked her to help them do it better. Her work involves learning about the different programs and people involved and understanding their motivations for being involved. She is working on a cultural burn program, a series of workshops, associated field trips, and coordinating with the Métis nation on re-writing fire policy and conducting workshops.
“The things that are usually done in a good way take time” (57.12)
Pierre believes that Elders are needed to guide them and Amy is facilitating opening the door for more Indigenous partners to show them what cultural burning should be like. Amy’s non-negotiable ask was to have a group of Elders advise them. However, she recognizes that change takes time at various levels, and is excited about the involvement of not just Elders but Indigenous youth and other Indigenous employees in Parks Canada.
Removing barriers (1.01.00)
Pierre deliberates how policies can help in removing barriers and what else is needed to not fall into the pan-Indigenous trap of believing all communities operate in the same way. Amy conducted an assessment of the barriers to managing fire and claims there is work to be done to remove those. She has seen some good partnerships of some parks with Indigenous communities and is hopeful about initiatives like the Wildland Fire Canada Conference.
Knowledge keeping (1.06.00)
Amy narrates how Indigenous peoples didn’t support their knowledge being captured by fire agencies after some big fires as a romantic solution. There has been a lot of learning on the part of Parks Canada and other agencies to avoid appropriation of Indigenous knowledge. Involving Indigenous communities and Elders keeps the knowledge protected with the knowledge keepers so they can burn with support from Parks Canada, not by Parks Canada’s instructions.
Whose land is it? (1.08.47)
Amy expresses the desire of Indigenous peoples to burn on their lands, but this is made difficult because parks and many other lands are crown lands. She hopes that through the Indigenous leader initiatives, fire guardians can come onto landscapes and demonstrate the abilities of cultural burning to reduce carbon emissions and wildfires. Amy and Pierre mention the barriers to getting such initiatives off the ground but are hopeful for the future.
Looking ahead (1.14.00)
Amy observes that recent devastating fire events have made people nervous to put fire back on the ground, but many researchers have affirmed that fire needs to be on the ground in some capacity in controlled ways with people who are highly knowledgeable about fire, like prescribed burners or cultural fire-keepers. Pierre’s priority is to improve relationships with Indigenous partners and invite them into Parks Canada to take this work forward.
Be a good ally (1.18.18)
Pierre looks at his role as not only promoting cultural burning but also highlighting the great work that has already been done in this space. He is also excited about the involvement of the youth. Senior management at Parks Canada supports this work and is upfront about past errors. Amy points out that there has been a lot of support for these programs, and that being a good ally is “using your power to make space for Indigenous peoples”.
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