Good Fire Podcast by Amy Cardinal Christianson and Matthew Kristoff
Stories of Indigenous fire stewardship, cultural and social empowerment and environmental integrity
Indigenous Wisdom in Climate Care with Rachael Cavanagh and Melinda Adams
Episode highlight
In this episode, Rachael Cavanagh and Melinda Adams talk about the role of Indigenous fire stewards in managing climate change.
Resources
Solastalgia to Soliphilia: Cultural Fire, Climate Change, and Indigenous Healing
ON FIRE: The Report of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission
Indigenous Fire Data Sovereignty: Applying Indigenous Data Sovereignty Principles to Fire Research
Sponsors
Indigenous Leadership Initiative
Quotes
20.51 - 20.56: “Our law is still in the land and it’s in all of the stories that have been passed down to us by our Elders.”
40.27 - 41.08: “It comes back to our relationship. Us as First Nations people or Indigenous people, we have a very respectful relationship with fire, but then if you look at non-Indigenous people… everything is from fear… If you look at the language they use, it’s… suppression and it’s firefighting and… all of their language is based around reactionary responses whereas if you talk to Indigenous people across the globe, it’s all about care. We come from a place of care and guardianship, and this is our obligation.”
Takeaways
“Cultural obligations as guardians and custodians” (03.19)
Rachael Cavanagh is a Minjungbal woman from the Bundjalung/Yugambeh Nations of South East Queensland and Northern New South Wales. Rachael’s family name means ‘the wind’, and she runs a consulting business working with First Nations people across Australia to change the narrative around caring for the land using First Nations-led cultural environmental practices. She plays a large role in “bringing back cultural fire practices as well as reintroducing women as the caretakers of our waterways”. Her work also involves bringing children along, and is the cultural curriculum creator of the first bilingual school in New South Wales which will be a fully cultural immersion school.
“How to be a better relative, good human and good ancestor” (06.10)
Melinda is a member of the N’dee San Carlos Apache Tribe in what is present-day Arizona and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas. She got her PhD from the University of California, Davis, where she spent a lot of time with cultural fire practitioners and continues to do so in the second year of her work. She believes that all Indigenous people have a relation with fire, whether historical or through reclaiming practices now. She is very vocal about how Western science is only now catching up with the ecological benefits of cultural fire practices, and gives a platform to others to voice their climate plans.
Culture and caring for country (10.24)
Fire for Racheal’s community is the role of the matriarch, so she has always taken her daughters along for cultural burns. Her older daughter can now independently lead a burn. “We live in a society where our kids still have to maintain the Western ways of doing things”, she laments, but her family prioritizes cultural burning to care for the land as much as she does, even when the education system doesn’t understand why children must lead the solutions.
Inclusivity of several generations (13.44)
Melinda’s son would accompany her on burns in California and would learn from Elder practitioners. California is a fire rich place and her son belongs to a tribe native to California, so she moved here to help him establish a connection with his lineage. However, burn windows are changing and it is important to have a commitment to the land so Elders and children can be invited out to the land to care for it. “This is a generation that is going to pay the consequence of a lot of climate decisions that were made without them in mind”, she notes.
Breaking colonial constructs (17.44)
Rachael explains how women were rarely seen in the broader fire network of 250 tribes revitalizing cultural fire practices in Australia. Different tribes have subgroups that have different law systems, protocols and processes around fire, but more women have been coming along to a point where women-only workshops are organized to make them feel culturally safe to have conversations and share fire stories. This helped the women see their role in the cultural fire practices. She feels lucky to have had her female ancestors teach her about fire as cultural and environmental.
The environment is our kin (23.40)
Rachael observes that even though fire is the key to bring together, it’s the conversations that heal. They share knowledge and stories, and discuss specific solutions. The 2019-2020 fires in Australia have been an added impetus to advocate for putting people back in the forests, which Indigenous people have been advocating for since colonization. While the government is still resistant, localized partnerships are helping shift from the western firefighter system. However, it is still more about Black participation than about cultural leadership. More women stepping into leadership roles will benefit the entire community.
“Our spirit of health is tied to our time on the land and our time with one another” (27.53)
Melinda shares an article written to explain academic terms around fire, public mental health and climate mentality around catastrophic events. The article explores how cultural fire pushes back against solastalgia, climate grief experienced when one’s homelands are devastated through climate change. She credits Indigenous people in so-called California with managing the loss through wildfires with decades of determined work on the land and training others to safely steward cultural fire. This leads to soliphilia, which eases solastalgia regarding climate change and wildfire.
Taking care of country as a generational responsibility (30.25)
Melinda recognizes that while catastrophic climate change can’t be controlled, learning about tribal histories and the effects of colonization and having some agency on what one can do on the land helps to protect it against climate change impacts. She works with Indigenous and non-Indigenous students to educate them and mitigate their climate anxiety feelings by having them work on the land. Cultural fire is different than controlled fire because it situates Indigenous people in the position of power, so she uses the term ceremonial burns to invite allies into the work while signalling an Indigenous-centeredness.
Denying Indigenous rights continues all over the world (33.25)
Rachael struggles with the cultural appropriation in workshops that she extends to non-Indigenous people, because they do not understand the terms being used or the ceremony around it, and use token Black participation as their justification. She reinforces the importance of Indigenous people leading ceremonial burns since it is their cultural responsibility. The 2019-2020 fires increased fire insurance so much that it has now become a barrier, and rules have been applied around how people can gain economically from cultural Indigenous practices, which disadvantages those who rely on them.
Love Mother Earth as your mother (38.27)
Melinda acknowledges how stressful and seasonal it is to work in wildland fire, and how difficult it is to change an agency from a fire suppression mindset to get support and funding for getting good fire on the ground. Rachael points out that the funding always goes to the reactionary perspective, but if that funding went into Indigenous fire stewards, there wouldn’t be a need to fight fire. It is important to expand the definition of assets protected in a fire to include the environmental and cultural assets too. Indigenous people use a different language to talk about fire which includes planning for the future.
Community and care (45.30)
As life givers, Indigenous women care for fire and the land differently from male counterparts that are bringing fire back, Melinda says. Her hope is to invite etymologists who are studying the earth and its conservation, since certain insects find the environment more inviting after a cultural burn (also called cool burn). She highlights the importance of returning what is collected from the land to prevent the destructiveness of the research. Rachael finds it harder to ground men into cultural spaces because they enjoy the adrenaline of chasing wildfire, whereas women come from a nurturing space for the land.
Paving the way into the future (51.49)
Melinda is happy to see the momentum around amplifying cultural fire, but reiterates that Indigenous people need to be the ones leading the work and setting the agenda and timelines since they come from a place of protecting the land and community. By centering cultural fire and protection of fire knowledge, interesting pathways to science are unearthed which help actualize the principles of discovering solutions while caring for people and the land. Developing partnerships with different tribes and using AI in fire tech will build a better fire metric while preserving traditional ecocultural knowledge.
Building true partnerships (57.17)
Rachael will continue advocating for law reform in First Nations fire practices and access to land, building localized partnerships to rally people from the bottom up and pushing for First Nations people to be leaders in the climate movement. Australians need to include the principles, protocols and processes to engage Indigenous communities meaningfully, so she runs workshops and lectures to teach them about developing respect and filling the gaps in the understanding of cultural ways of knowing and being. She is also using creative storytelling to access government funding to keep this work going.
Send in your comments and feedback to the hosts of this podcast via email: amy.cardinal@ilinationhood.ca and yourforestpodcast@gmail.com.
If you liked this podcast, please check out YourForest podcast too. Rate and review Good Fire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or other podcast platforms. Please share our podcast on Instagram, BlueSky, and Facebook and tag a friend!