The Fire This Time · Episode 3 of 8 · 20 min
How America Made Indigenous Fire a Crime, and Its Return
For thousands of years, Native nations across North America tended the land with deliberate, low-intensity fire, until settler law made that fire a crime. The frequent burns cleared brush, renewed food and basketry plants and built living firebreaks, creating open landscapes that colonists mistook for untouched wilderness. Tribes such as the Karuk and Yurok now lead the return of cultural burning.
Who's who
- Bill Tripp+1 more episodeKaruk Tribe natural resources director and cultural-fire advocate
- Frank Kanawha Lake+1 more episodeU.S. Forest Service research ecologist of Karuk descent
- M. Kat Anderson+1 more episodeEthnoecologist, author of Tending the Wild
- Stephen J. PyneFire historian, author of Fire in America
- Gifford Pinchot+12 more episodesFirst Forest Service chief, who regarded fire as waste
- Ferdinand Silcox+3 more episodesForest Service chief associated with the 1935 10 a.m. policy
Where it happens
- Klamath River, California+4 more episodesKaruk and Yurok homelands and cultural-fire revival center
- Salmon River, CaliforniaKaruk country in northwest California
Timeline
- 1905U.S. Forest Service founded under Gifford Pinchot
- 1910Big Blowup hardens federal opinion toward total suppression
- 1935Forest Service formalizes the 10 a.m. policy
- 2005Tending the Wild consolidates evidence of managed landscapes
- 2024California enacts SB 310 recognizing cultural burns
- 2025Karuk Tribe signs reported first cultural-burning agreement under SB 310
Still debated
Scholars agree Indigenous burning was real, but disagree on its continental scale, since lightning and climate drove fire in many places. Both an 'untouched Eden' and a 'fully engineered continent' oversimplify.
← PreviousWhy Modern Wildfires Aren't Natural Anymore: Fuel, Air, HeatNext →Peshtigo, 1871: The Deadliest Wildfire in U.S. History
Connected episodes in other series
The Thing the Market Can't BuyThe Price of a Tonne · Episode 14Also features Bill Tripp, Frank Kanawha Lake
The Suppression BargainFire Returns to My Backyard · Episode 4Also features Ferdinand Silcox
How One Arizona Hillside Built Modern ForestryGround Truth: Forest Service Research · Episode 1Also features Gifford Pinchot
How the CCC Planted 3 Billion TreesRoosevelt's Forest Army · Episode 4Also features Ferdinand Silcox