Indigenous Fire Management

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Indigenous Fire Management

Indigenous fire management refers to the intentional use of fire by Indigenous peoples to care for landscapes, sustain culturally important plants and animals, maintain food resources, influence vegetation patterns, reduce fuels, support biodiversity, and fulfill cultural responsibilities to land. The research on Indigenous fire stewardship increasingly portrays fire not simply as a destructive disturbance or a technical land-management tool, but as part of complex ecological and cultural relationships developed over many generations.

Historical, archaeological, ecological, ethnographic, and Indigenous knowledge sources demonstrate that deliberate burning shaped landscapes across many parts of North America and elsewhere. Indigenous peoples used fires of different sizes, frequencies, seasons, and intensities to produce desired ecological conditions. These practices could maintain grasslands and oak woodlands, improve plant resources, influence wildlife habitat, create vegetation mosaics, manage fuels, and reduce the dominance of large climate-driven fires in some landscapes.

Colonial settlement and government fire-suppression policies disrupted many of these practices. Indigenous peoples were displaced from traditional lands, customary burning was restricted or criminalized, and centralized fire suppression became a dominant feature of twentieth-century land management. Contemporary efforts to restore cultural burning therefore involve more than reintroducing prescribed fire. They also concern Indigenous sovereignty, governance, knowledge transmission, cultural revitalization, institutional reform, and the restoration of relationships between communities and their lands.

Indigenous Fire Stewardship and Cultural Burning

Cultural burning is intentional fire applied according to Indigenous knowledge, cultural responsibilities, ecological objectives, and place-specific practices. It can differ significantly from conventional prescribed burning because its purposes are often broader than reducing wildfire fuels. Cultural fire may support food production, basketry materials, medicines, wildlife habitat, travel routes, ceremonies, community relationships, and the long-term health of culturally important landscapes.

Research describes Indigenous fire stewardship as a system connecting knowledge, culture, governance, ecological objectives, and practical fire use. Indigenous practitioners may burn particular landscapes at specific seasons and intervals according to locally developed knowledge about plants, animals, weather, fuels, and cultural needs.

The revival of cultural burning is increasingly associated with ecological restoration as well as cultural revitalization. Indigenous communities and researchers argue that successful restoration depends on maintaining Indigenous leadership rather than simply extracting traditional fire knowledge and incorporating it into non-Indigenous management institutions.

Contemporary research also emphasizes reciprocity. Indigenous stewardship may approach landscapes as networks of relationships among people, plants, animals, fire, water, and other elements rather than treating individual resources primarily as commodities or management units. From this perspective, burning is one component of an ongoing responsibility to care for the land.

Historical Evidence of Indigenous Burning

A substantial body of evidence indicates that Indigenous burning influenced historical fire regimes across North America. Researchers use tree rings, fire scars, archaeology, ethnographic records, historical documents, plant remains, phytoliths, Indigenous oral knowledge, and ecological patterns to reconstruct these relationships.

Research in the Southwest United States indicates that intensive Indigenous land management could weaken the relationship between climate conditions and fire occurrence. Tree-ring studies in Arizona and New Mexico show that Indigenous communities influenced when and where fires occurred rather than simply experiencing fires produced by climatic variation.

Evidence from the Jemez Mountains suggests that Pueblo communities maintained relatively low-severity fire conditions around densely settled areas through a combination of fuel gathering and burning. Research involving Western Apache fire history similarly documents persistent Indigenous influence on fire regimes.

Indigenous settlement geography also affected fire frequency in eastern North America. Fire-scar evidence from eighteenth-century Pennsylvania indicates that fires occurred more frequently near Native towns and travel routes, demonstrating that human geography helped structure historical forest-fire patterns.

Studies of the Great Plains likewise suggest that Indigenous populations were important drivers of fire patterns alongside climate, vegetation, and large grazing animals such as bison.

Archaeological research in California provides additional evidence. Plant remains from the Quiroste Valley support interpretations that Indigenous burning contributed to the maintenance of open grassland habitats and food-producing landscapes. Studies of oak savannas in the Pacific Northwest similarly connect long-term Indigenous burning with the maintenance of ecosystems that later declined following changes in land use and fire exclusion.

Earlier ethnographic and ecological scholarship documented the diverse reasons Native Californians deliberately burned landscapes. These included managing foods, improving plant materials, maintaining open environments, encouraging wildlife habitat, and shaping vegetation succession.

Biodiversity, Pyrodiversity, and Ecosystem Resilience

Indigenous fire stewardship can contribute to biodiversity by producing landscapes containing vegetation patches with different fire histories. Instead of allowing fuels and vegetation to develop uniformly across large areas, repeated small fires can create fine-grained mosaics of recently burned and longer-unburned habitat.

This variation is sometimes described as pyrodiversity. Different species benefit from different vegetation structures and stages of ecological succession, so a heterogeneous fire landscape can provide a wider range of habitats than a uniformly managed landscape.

Global research has found substantial evidence linking Indigenous fire stewardship with biodiversity conservation and habitat heterogeneity. Indigenous burning has contributed to the maintenance of fire-adapted ecosystems that might otherwise undergo substantial ecological change when fire is excluded.

Oak ecosystems provide an important example. Cultural burning historically helped maintain oak woodlands and associated resources in parts of North America. Research suggests that restoring appropriate fire regimes may increase ecological resilience while also renewing cultural relationships involving food, gathering, and stewardship.

Fire exclusion can produce major ecological changes. Grasslands and open woodlands may become increasingly dominated by shrubs or trees, culturally important plants may decline, and fuels may accumulate. Returning carefully managed fire can therefore be both an ecological restoration strategy and a means of restoring Indigenous stewardship.

Fire Suppression and Colonial Disruption

The decline of Indigenous burning was closely connected to colonialism, displacement, changing land ownership, and government fire policies. Indigenous communities lost access to traditional territories while customary burning was frequently prohibited or discouraged.

Fire suppression became a dominant institutional approach in many regions during the twentieth century. While intended to protect forests, property, and communities, prolonged exclusion of frequent low-intensity fire altered many fire-adapted ecosystems.

These changes had cultural consequences as well as ecological ones. When communities could no longer burn, access to foods, medicines, basketry materials, hunting environments, and other culturally important resources could decline. Knowledge traditionally transmitted through participation in burning could also become more difficult to maintain across generations.

Research involving Cherokee fire traditions illustrates how fire exclusion could change both landscapes and cultural practices. Comparable patterns appear throughout western North America, where the interruption of Indigenous stewardship contributed to substantial changes in vegetation and fire regimes.

The broader global decline in subsistence-oriented and smallholder burning shows that this transformation is not limited to North America. Centralized fire suppression and changes in land governance have displaced locally managed fire practices in many regions.

Fire Sovereignty and Indigenous Governance

Contemporary Indigenous fire restoration increasingly emphasizes fire sovereignty: the authority of Indigenous peoples to determine how, when, why, and where fire is used within their homelands and communities.

From this perspective, cultural fire cannot be fully restored simply by allowing Indigenous practitioners to participate in conventional prescribed-fire programs. Laws, land tenure, liability rules, permitting systems, institutional authority, and relationships between governments can determine whether Indigenous communities are genuinely able to exercise stewardship.

Research on California Indian allotment lands illustrates how administrative and legal barriers can restrict cultural burning even where ecological arguments strongly support its restoration.

Work involving Karuk and Yurok communities demonstrates the importance of Tribal governance and meaningful partnerships with state and federal agencies. Expanding beneficial fire may require reforms to liability systems, permitting procedures, institutional cultures, and assumptions about who possesses legitimate authority over fire.

Scholars therefore caution against treating Indigenous fire simply as a collection of techniques that can be transferred into conventional land management. Indigenous fire knowledge is embedded within culture, governance, relationships, and responsibilities to particular places.

California and the Revival of Cultural Fire

California has become an important center for the contemporary revival of Indigenous cultural burning. Tribal nations, Indigenous practitioners, researchers, nonprofit organizations, state agencies, and federal land managers are developing projects intended to restore both ecological fire and Indigenous authority.

Karuk, Yurok, Hupa, Amah Mutsun, Tolowa Dee-ni', and other Indigenous communities have played prominent roles in this movement.

Research involving Amah Mutsun Tribal members examines how cultural burning can help maintain coastal grasslands and emphasizes differences between Indigenous stewardship objectives and conventional Western fire management.

In northern California, practitioners have worked to restore frequent low-intensity fires to forests and culturally important landscapes. These burns can improve plant resources, restore habitat conditions, reduce accumulated fuels, and provide opportunities for communities to renew relationships with fire.

The Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation and California State Parks have collaborated to return cultural burning to an ecoculturally important landscape in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park after more than a century of interruption.

National Park Service programs in Redwood National and State Parks and Yosemite similarly acknowledge Indigenous relationships with fire and the role that cultural burning historically played in maintaining landscapes.

California's oak ecosystems are another focus of restoration. Indigenous burning has long been connected to oak woodland management, food production, biodiversity, and cultural relationships. Efforts to restore fire therefore extend beyond wildfire mitigation and include the restoration of entire cultural-ecological systems.

Tribal Fire Programs Across the United States

Contemporary Indigenous fire stewardship extends far beyond California.

The White Mountain Apache Tribe and the Fort Apache Agency have maintained a long-running prescribed-fire program intended to protect communities and sustain fire-dependent forests.

The Spokane Tribal Network has incorporated cultural burning into efforts to restore Native foods and strengthen intergenerational knowledge transmission. Fire becomes both an ecological practice and a means of reconnecting community members with traditional landscapes.

The Seminole Tribe of Florida has combined prescribed fire with hydrological restoration to restore wetlands, pinelands, medicines, travel routes, and other culturally significant resources.

In the Southern Plains, educational programs developed with Tribal participants link modern prescribed burning with longstanding Indigenous fire traditions and demonstrate the ecological role of carefully applied fire.

Indigenous fire practitioners from northern California have also shared experience with Tribal communities in Oregon. Such exchanges can provide technical knowledge while supporting communities seeking to rebuild their own place-specific fire traditions.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Western Science

Indigenous fire management has also become an important area of interaction between traditional ecological knowledge and Western scientific research.

Tree-ring analysis, archaeology, vegetation surveys, satellite imagery, fire modeling, ethnobotany, and historical records can provide valuable evidence about past fire regimes. Indigenous knowledge can contribute information about the purpose, timing, location, cultural meaning, and ecological effects of burning that may not be visible through conventional scientific methods alone.

Ethnobiological approaches therefore combine multiple types of evidence to reconstruct historical fire regimes. This is particularly important because conventional fire-history methods may overlook frequent, small, low-intensity fires that left limited physical evidence.

Collaborative research can improve understanding, but the literature also stresses differences in authority and values. Indigenous knowledge should not simply be treated as another dataset available to outside institutions. Effective collaboration requires recognition of Indigenous governance, intellectual authority, cultural responsibilities, and relationships with land.

Projects that co-produce restorative-fire research seek to bring Indigenous practitioners, scientists, universities, Tribal governments, and land-management agencies together while acknowledging these different knowledge systems.

Cultural Fire, Food, and Community

Fire management has historically been closely connected to Indigenous food systems and material culture.

Burning can influence the abundance and quality of edible plants, improve habitat for hunted animals, maintain oak-producing landscapes, encourage grasses and other useful species, and support plants used for baskets, tools, medicines, and ceremonies.

Research in California indicates that fire management was integrated with other practices such as pruning, harvesting, sowing, and tending. These activities demonstrate that many landscapes sometimes regarded as untouched wilderness were instead actively managed cultural landscapes.

Cultural burning can also create opportunities for intergenerational learning. Young people can participate alongside experienced practitioners, allowing ecological knowledge, cultural values, language, and practical fire skills to be transmitted within communities.

For this reason, the restoration of fire may contribute to cultural revitalization as well as ecological recovery.

Changing the Modern Relationship With Wildfire

Growing concern about severe wildfire has renewed interest in beneficial fire. Decades of suppression have contributed to fuel accumulation and ecological change in many fire-adapted forests, although wildfire conditions are also influenced by climate, land development, vegetation, and numerous other factors.

Indigenous fire stewardship provides evidence that people do not necessarily exist outside natural fire systems. In many landscapes, intentional human burning has been an ecological process for centuries or millennia.

Modern fire management therefore increasingly distinguishes between destructive wildfire and carefully applied beneficial fire.

However, the revival of Indigenous burning involves more than increasing the number of acres treated with prescribed fire. Cultural fire can differ in scale, timing, purpose, governance, and ecological objectives. Applying Indigenous knowledge effectively requires attention to particular communities and landscapes rather than assuming that a universal Indigenous fire-management formula exists.

The growing recognition of Indigenous fire stewardship consequently challenges both historical fire-suppression policies and conventional ideas about supposedly untouched ecosystems.

Conclusion

Indigenous fire management demonstrates that fire has long been a tool of ecological stewardship, cultural continuity, food production, biodiversity conservation, and landscape management. Archaeological records, tree rings, historical evidence, ethnobiology, ecological research, and Indigenous knowledge all show that intentional burning shaped many North American landscapes.

The suppression of these practices disrupted both ecosystems and Indigenous cultures. Fire exclusion changed vegetation patterns, interrupted access to culturally important resources, limited knowledge transmission, and transferred authority over fire from Indigenous communities to centralized institutions.

The contemporary revival of cultural burning seeks to reverse parts of this history. Tribal nations and Indigenous practitioners are restoring beneficial fire to forests, grasslands, oak woodlands, wetlands, and other ecosystems while rebuilding community knowledge and cultural relationships with land.

The research also makes clear that Indigenous fire stewardship cannot be reduced to a wildfire-prevention technique. Its broader significance lies in the connection between ecological processes and Indigenous governance, sovereignty, reciprocity, culture, and responsibility to place. Restoring Indigenous fire therefore involves not only bringing fire back to landscapes but also restoring the authority and relationships that allowed those landscapes to be stewarded for generations.

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Global Research, Reviews, and Fire-Ecology Frameworks

1. Cultural Burning, Regime Shift, and Resilience in North American Oak-Fire Systems

[DOI 10.1016/j.jenvman.2026.129667 | Sara Souther et al. | Journal of Environmental Management | 2026] A systematic review of 64 studies examines how Indigenous cultural burning historically shaped North American oak-fire systems, maintained ecological resilience, and generated social and ecological benefits that contemporary fire management could help restore.

8. Living with Fire: Exploring Indigenous Perspectives and Practices in the Southwestern USA

[DOI 10.1071/WF25156 | Multiple authors | International Journal of Wildland Fire | 2026] A systematic review of 113 peer-reviewed studies examines Indigenous fire knowledge and practice in the American Southwest and identifies opportunities for incorporating Indigenous leadership into contemporary fire stewardship.

7. Indigenous Fire Stewardship to Revitalize Disrupted Ecosystems

[DOI 10.1111/gcb.70411 | Jonathan W. Long, Don L. Hankins and Melinda M. Adams | Global Change Biology | 2025] This commentary argues that restoring Indigenous fire stewardship can help repair ecological relationships disrupted by colonization and conventional fire exclusion while strengthening Indigenous cultural connections to land.

9. Cultural Burning

[Source page | Bruno David, Michael-Shawn Fletcher, Simon Connor et al. | Cambridge University Press | 2025] This archaeological and interdisciplinary overview describes methods for identifying cultural burning in historical landscapes and demonstrates how long-term Indigenous fire practices can be reconstructed from multiple forms of evidence.

10. Principles of Fire Ecology

[Source page | Multiple authors | Fire Ecology | 2024] This synthesis places people within fire ecology and discusses how colonial suppression of Indigenous burning altered ecosystems, emphasizing that intentional human fire must be considered in understanding many fire-adapted landscapes.

2. Revitalising Indigenous Cultural Fire Practice: Benefits and Partnerships

[DOI 10.1016/j.tree.2023.07.001 | Kirsten Maclean et al. | Trends in Ecology & Evolution | 2023] This article discusses the revival of Indigenous cultural fire practices and argues that supporting Indigenous fire practitioners can provide ecological, cultural, economic, social, and self-determination benefits.

13. Including Stewardship in Ecosystem Health Assessment

[Source page | Nicole E. Heller et al. | Nature Sustainability | 2023] This article argues that ecosystem health assessments should explicitly account for human stewardship, including Indigenous burning and reciprocal relationships that have historically maintained many supposedly natural ecosystems.

12. Global Decline in Subsistence-Oriented and Smallholder Fire Use

[Source page | Cathy Smith, Ol Perkins and Jayalaxshmi Mistry | Nature Sustainability | 2022] Drawing on hundreds of case-study locations worldwide, this research documents declining local and subsistence fire use and considers the ecological and social consequences of replacing traditional burning with centralized fire suppression.

3. Conservation of Earth's Biodiversity Is Embedded in Indigenous Fire Stewardship

[Source page | Kira M. Hoffman et al. | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 2021] A global review finds substantial evidence that Indigenous fire stewardship increases biodiversity, creates habitat heterogeneity, and contributes to the conservation of fire-adapted landscapes.

117. Indigenous Fire Management: A Conceptual Model from Literature

[DOI 10.5751/ES-11945-250411 | William Nikolakis and Emma Roberts | Ecology and Society | 2020] A conceptual analysis identifies central dimensions of Indigenous fire management, including knowledge, culture, governance, objectives, and practice, while warning against reducing Indigenous fire to a simple technical intervention.

5. Indigenous Fire Stewardship

[Source page | Frank K. Lake and Amy Cardinal Christianson | Encyclopedia of Wildfires and Wildland-Urban Interface Fires | 2019] This reference article explains Indigenous fire stewardship as a system of intentional burning tied to cultural responsibilities, ecological knowledge, fuel management, food resources, and the creation of heterogeneous landscapes.

4. Social Science Research on Indigenous Wildfire Management in the 21st Century and Future Research Needs

[DOI 10.1071/WF13048 | Amy Christianson | International Journal of Wildland Fire | 2015] This review compares research on Indigenous wildfire management in Australia, Canada, and the United States and identifies major gaps involving governance, knowledge transmission, community participation, and Indigenous authority.

14. Linking Humans and Fire: A Proposal for a Transdisciplinary Fire Ecology

[DOI 10.1071/WF11048 | Michael R. Coughlan and Aaron M. Petty | International Journal of Wildland Fire | 2012] The authors call for a fire ecology that treats intentional human burning as an ecological process and integrates anthropology, ecology, geography, archaeology, history, and Indigenous knowledge.

Historical, Archaeological, and Ecological Evidence of Indigenous Fire Regimes

103. Tree Rings Reveal Persistent Western Apache (Ndee) Fire Stewardship

[Source page | Christopher I. Roos et al. | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 2025] Tree-ring evidence documents long-lasting Western Apache fire stewardship and shows how Ndee burning reduced the dominance of climate over fire occurrence in Arizona forests.

105. Native American Geography Shaped Historical Fire Frequency in Forests of Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania, USA

[DOI 10.1038/s41598-023-44692-5 | Stephen J. Tulowiecki, Brice B. Hanberry and Marc D. Abrams | Scientific Reports | 2023] Fire-scar records indicate that fires were more frequent near eighteenth-century Native American towns and trails in Pennsylvania, supporting the importance of Indigenous settlement geography in shaping eastern forest fire regimes.

114. After the Fire: Potential Impacts of Fire Exclusion Policies on Historical Cherokee Culture in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, USA

[DOI 10.1007/s10745-023-00395-z | Carson Colenbaugh and Donald L. Hagan | Human Ecology | 2023] This article examines historical Cherokee relationships with fire and argues that twentieth-century fire-exclusion policies altered both Appalachian landscapes and Indigenous cultural practices and sovereignty.

101. Indigenous Fire Management and Cross-Scale Fire-Climate Relationships in the Southwest United States

[DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abq3221 | Christopher I. Roos et al. | Science Advances | 2022] Tree-ring records from Arizona and New Mexico show that intensive Indigenous burning weakened the usual relationship between climate and fire at local and landscape scales, demonstrating that Native fire management substantially influenced historical fire regimes.

102. Native American Fire Management at an Ancient Wildland-Urban Interface in the Southwest United States

[DOI 10.1073/pnas.2018733118 | Christopher I. Roos et al. | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 2021] Archaeological and fire-history evidence from the Jemez Mountains indicates that Pueblo communities managed fuels through wood harvesting and burning for centuries, maintaining relatively low fire severity around densely settled landscapes.

118. Fire, Native Ecological Knowledge, and the Enduring Legacy of Indigenous Landscape Management

[Source page | Douglas Deur | Portland State University | 2020] This work explores Native ecological knowledge of fire in western North America and emphasizes the continuing ecological imprint left by generations of Indigenous landscape stewardship.

104. Indigenous Impacts on North American Great Plains Fire Regimes

[DOI 10.1073/pnas.1805259115 | Christopher I. Roos et al. | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 2018] This continental-scale analysis investigates relationships among Indigenous populations, climate, bison, and fire and finds evidence that Native peoples were important drivers of fire patterns across parts of the Great Plains.

121. Native American Depopulation, Reforestation, and Fire Regimes in the Southwest United States, 1492–1900 CE

[Source page | Matthew Liebmann et al. | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 2016] Archaeological and ecological evidence investigates how Indigenous depopulation and changing land use after European colonization altered forest structure and fire regimes in the Southwest.

110. An Ethnobiological Approach to Reconstructing Indigenous Fire Regimes

[Source page | M. Kat Anderson | Journal of Ethnobiology | 2015] Anderson explains how ethnobotanical knowledge, historical evidence, archaeology, and ecological observations can be combined to reconstruct Native burning patterns that conventional fire-history methods may overlook.

116. Local and Global Pyrogeographic Evidence That Indigenous Fire Management Creates Pyrodiversity

[Source page | Rebecca Bliege Bird et al. | Ecology and Evolution | 2015] Field observations, modeling, and a global literature review show that small, intentional Indigenous fires can create fine-grained mosaics containing vegetation patches of many different fire ages.

122. Phytoliths as Indicators of Plant Community Change: Reconstruction of the Historical Extent of Oak Savanna in the Willamette Valley, Oregon

[DOI 10.1016/j.catena.2014.11.004 | R. Kirchholtes, J. van Mourik and B. Johnson | Catena | 2015] Phytolith evidence helps reconstruct the historical extent of Willamette Valley oak savanna, a landscape strongly associated with Indigenous burning and other long-term stewardship practices.

109. Archaeobotanical Evidence for Indigenous Burning Practices and Foodways at CA-SMA-113

[DOI 10.1179/1947461X13Z.00000000015 | Rob Q. Cuthrell | California Archaeology | 2013] Archaeobotanical evidence from California's Quiroste Valley demonstrates the importance of grassland foods and supports the interpretation that Indigenous burning helped maintain open habitats along the central coast.

112. Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources

[Source page | M. Kat Anderson | University of California Press | 2005] Drawing heavily on Native knowledge holders, Anderson documents burning, pruning, harvesting, sowing, and other practices through which Indigenous Californians actively tended ecosystems and culturally important resources.

119. Indians, Fire, and the Land in the Pacific Northwest

[Source page | Robert T. Boyd, ed. | Oregon State University Press | 1999] Contributors use historical, ecological, ethnographic, and botanical evidence to document extensive Native burning from coastal Oregon and Washington to interior forests and grasslands.

111. Patterns of Indian Burning in California: Ecology and Ethnohistory

[Source page | Henry T. Lewis | Ballena Press | 1973] This foundational work documents the numerous purposes, timing, frequency, and ecological effects of deliberate burning by Native Californian peoples and remains an important source in cultural-fire scholarship.

Sovereignty, Governance, Decolonization, and Institutional Partnerships

115. Restoring Fire Sovereignty on California Indian Allotment Lands

[Source page | Multiple authors | Fire Ecology | 2026] This research analyzes legal and administrative barriers surrounding cultural burning on Indian allotment lands and argues that restoring fire sovereignty requires changes extending beyond conventional prescribed-fire policy.

11. Indigenous Stewardship Rights and Opportunities to Recenter Indigenous Fire

[Source page | Multiple authors | Fire Ecology | 2025] The article argues that Indigenous fire stewardship should be understood as an exercise of Indigenous authority and cultural responsibility rather than simply another land-management technique adopted by outside agencies.

15. Cultivating Reciprocity and Supporting Indigenous Lifeways Through the Cultural Transformation of Natural Resource Management in North America

[DOI 10.1002/pan3.70056 | Multiple authors | People and Nature | 2025] This article examines cultural fire as a reciprocal and kin-centered form of stewardship and argues for transforming natural-resource institutions so Indigenous peoples can maintain relationships with culturally important species and landscapes.

108. Indigenous Fire Futures: Anticolonial Approaches to Shifting Fire Relations in California

[DOI 10.3167/ares.2023.140109 | Deniss J. Martinez, Bruno Seraphin, Tony Marks-Block, Peter Nelson and Kirsten Vinyeta | Environment and Society | 2023] This article frames cultural fire revival as an anticolonial movement that challenges suppression, dispossession, incarceration, and extractive land-management institutions while advancing Indigenous sovereignty and reciprocal relationships with fire.

6. Indigenous Fire Stewardship: Federal/Tribal Partnerships for Wildland Fire Research and Management

[Source page | Frank K. Lake | Fire Management Today | 2021] Lake examines how federal agencies and Tribal nations can build more equitable fire-management partnerships that recognize Indigenous knowledge, sovereignty, cultural objectives, and long-term stewardship responsibilities.

107. Facilitating Prescribed Fire in Northern California Through Indigenous Governance and Interagency Partnerships

[DOI 10.3390/fire4030037 | Tony Marks-Block and William Tripp | Fire | 2021] The authors examine Karuk and Yurok efforts to expand beneficial burning and argue that Indigenous governance, sovereignty, liability reform, and meaningful interagency partnerships are essential to restoring fire.

135. Project Firehawk: Decolonizing Prescribed Fire

[Source page | Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network | FAC Net | 2021] This article discusses efforts to shift prescribed-fire institutions toward Indigenous leadership and argues that expanding beneficial fire requires attention to colonial power structures as well as technical training.

120. Listening and Learning from Traditional Knowledge and Western Science: A Dialogue on Contemporary Challenges of Forest Health and Wildfire

[Source page | Larry Mason et al. | Journal of Forestry | 2012] Tribal knowledge holders, scientists, and forest managers discuss how traditional knowledge and Western science can contribute to healthier forests while recognizing differences in values, authority, and approaches to fire.

California Cultural Fire Restoration and Tribal Practice

130. Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation and California State Parks Return Cultural Burning to See-tr'ee-ghin-dvm-dvn

[Source page | Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation and California State Parks | California State Parks | 2025] A cultural burn at Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park returned Tolowa Dee-ni' fire to an ecoculturally important oak and conifer landscape after more than a century of colonial interruption.

131. Prescribed Fire at Redwood National and State Parks: Living with Fire Since Time Immemorial

[Source page | National Park Service | Redwood National and State Parks | 2025] This resource discusses the long history of cultural and natural fire in redwood forests and explains how Native burning contributed to the region's historical fire patterns.

136. Four Resources on Cultural Burning in Northern California and Oregon

[Source page | Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network | FAC Net | 2025] This collection highlights Indigenous cultural-fire programs and educational resources in northern California and Oregon and provides pathways for learning from Tribal practitioners and collaborative networks.

106. Centering Amah Mutsun Voices in the Analysis of a Culturally Important, Fire-Managed Coastal Grassland

[DOI 10.1002/eap.3014 | A. Taylor et al. | Ecological Applications | 2024] Working with Amah Mutsun Tribal members, researchers combine vegetation surveys, satellite imagery, and interviews to examine how cultural burning maintains coastal grasslands differently from conventional Western fire management.

123. Cultural Resources: Tribal Cultural Resources and Fire

[Source page | Pacific Southwest Research Station | U.S. Forest Service | 2024] This Forest Service resource describes Native uses of fire for foods, basketry plants, wildlife, travel routes, settlements, medicines, and other cultural resources across California and the West.

125. Traditional Ecological Knowledge at Karuk Tribe

[Source page | Bureau of Indian Affairs | Indian Affairs Trust Quarterly | 2022] This profile of Karuk fire practitioner Bill Tripp describes Tribal efforts to restore cultural burning and highlights the relationship among fire, cultural resources, forest health, biodiversity, and Karuk responsibility to land.

138. 'Fire Is Medicine': The Tribes Burning California Forests to Save Them

[Source page | Susie Cagle | The Guardian | 2019] Reporting from Karuk, Yurok, and Hupa country explains how Indigenous practitioners view fire as medicine and are working to restore frequent, low-intensity burning after generations of suppression.

139. The Quiet, Intentional Fires of Northern California

[Source page | Lindsey Doermann / WIRED contributors | WIRED | 2019] This feature follows a prescribed-fire training exchange and explores how Yurok, Karuk, and other Indigenous fire practitioners are using intentional fire for cultural renewal and ecological restoration.

140. Traditional Fire Management Could Help Revitalize American Indian Cultures

[Source page | Stanford University | Stanford News | 2019] Stanford reporting examines research showing that traditional fire treatments can increase the availability and quality of culturally important plants while supporting broader cultural revitalization.

113. Restoring Indigenous Prescribed Fires to California Oak Woodlands

[Source page | Don L. Hankins | U.S. Forest Service / California Oak Symposium | 2015] Hankins examines efforts to return Indigenous fire to California oak landscapes and discusses ecological outcomes, community perspectives, biodiversity, and restoration of cultural relationships with oak woodlands.

134. Restoring a Meadow — Cultural Burning in Yosemite

[Source page | National Park Service and Tribal partners | Yosemite National Park | n.d.] This educational feature shows local Indigenous people and park staff using cultural fire to restore a Yosemite meadow threatened by vegetation change and the decline of native plants.

Contemporary Tribal Programs, Education, and Restoration Across the United States

137. How Indigenous Leaders Are 'Carrying Fire' from Northwest California to Oregon

[Source page | Oregon Public Broadcasting | OPB | 2026] Indigenous fire practitioners from northern California are sharing experience with Oregon Tribal communities seeking to revitalize cultural burning while rebuilding place-specific knowledge and community capacity.

132. Indigenous Fire Practices Shape Our Land

[Source page | National Park Service | U.S. National Park Service | 2024] The National Park Service surveys Indigenous fire uses across several American ecosystems and describes how cultural burning promoted food resources, biodiversity, travel, wildlife habitat, and ecosystem resilience.

126. Healing with Fire: The Spokane Tribal Network's Journey to Restore Cultural Burns and Native Foods

[Source page | U.S. Department of the Interior | Department of the Interior | 2023] The Spokane Tribal Network uses cultural burns as part of a food-sovereignty initiative that reconnects community members with fire while creating opportunities for intergenerational learning.

133. Isle Royale Fire History

[Source page | National Park Service | Isle Royale National Park | 2023] The park's fire history places contemporary wildfire within a much longer Great Lakes history in which Indigenous peoples deliberately used fire for foods, tools, cultural resources, and ecosystem management.

129. Native Fire — An Educational Video About the Safe Use and Application of Prescribed Fire

[Source page | Bureau of Indian Affairs | Indian Affairs | 2019] Developed with Southern Plains Tribal participants, this educational resource links contemporary prescribed burning with longstanding Native fire practices and explains fire's role in maintaining healthy ecosystems.

127. A Legacy of Prescribed Fire Treatments on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation

[Source page | Fort Apache Agency | Bureau of Indian Affairs | 2017] The White Mountain Apache Tribe and Fort Apache Agency have maintained one of Indian Country's longest-running prescribed-fire programs, treating large areas to protect communities and sustain fire-dependent forests.

128. Seminole Tribe of Florida Using Water and Fire to Restore Landscapes While Training Wildland Firefighters

[Source page | Robyn Broyles | Bureau of Indian Affairs | 2017] The Seminole Tribe combines hydrological restoration with prescribed fire to recover culturally important wetlands, pinelands, medicines, travel routes, and other resources affected by altered water and fire regimes.

124. Co-Producing Restorative Fire

[Source page | University of Oregon, Oregon State University, Tribal partners and U.S. Forest Service | University of Oregon | n.d.] This interdisciplinary project investigates how cultural burning and selective harvesting influenced Pacific Northwest forests and how Indigenous partnerships can guide contemporary restorative-fire research.