Native Fire Restitution

Mentee:

Héctor Fox Figueroa

Mentoring Team:

Kyle Whyte

Paige Fischer

Eric Clark

Partners:

Danielle L. Fegan

Eric Rebitzke

Robin Clark

Paul Thompson

A collaborative project to examine Indigenous Fire Management practices

Purpose

Indigenous people have utilized healthy relationships with fire to steward ancestral lands for millennia, and Indigenous Fire Management (IFM) has fundamentally and indelibly shaped the ecological landscape of the modern-day US. However, colonization led to widespread fire suppression, resulting in ever-decreasing IFM over the past several centuries. Many stakeholders, including Tribal natural resource departments, state and federal land management agencies, and academic research institutions, are invested in revitalizing IFM and helping to mitigate the current fire crisis. 

Intentional burning practices create and sustain biodiverse, mosaic landscapes. However, not all landscapes require the same frequency of fire events to thrive. Indigenous people have millennia of knowledge of landscape specific fire management practices, and huge portions of North America have been influenced by IFM. These practices need to be understood wholistically across different spatial and temporal scales, thus creating larger, collaborative networks across multiple tribal partners is an important goal of the project.

Optimal frequency of fire events in landscapes across Turtle Island 

Approach

Research Objectives 

Sault St. Marie band of the Chippewa Indians IFM project area 

Methodology

We employ a case-study approach, interviewing numerous key actors with multiple Tribes and associated non-tribal land management agencies to describe a roadmap to successful IFM outcomes, as well as highlighting key barriers and opportunities Tribes may face in their attempts to achieve similar outcomes. 

Driving Questions 

How do Tribes engage with partnerships to further their own socioecological research and land management objectives?

What strategies are employed to assure that Tribal sovereignty and long-standing treaty rights are respected?

How can Tribes interested in revitalizing IFM within their lands or territories leverage existing collaborative networks and funding sources to prioritize their land management objectives?

Preliminary Findings

Indigenous Fire Management has multiple demonstrated benefits 

The stage is set for greater cooperation...

Tribes

Non-Tribal Entities

Next Steps