An Inspiring and Motivating Interview With Christopher Adlam

Indigenous and prescribed fire in Oregon

Hello Fires Readers!

You’ve hung in with me! Thank you! I am so happy to bring you this interview with Christopher Adlam, a regional fire specialist for southwest Oregon-OSU extension fire program. I interviewed him way back in November. I’m sorry I’ve taken so long to get it to you, but I am very grateful to say that my health seems to be improving and this will be the first of many interviews being released within the next two months.

Chris and I spoke about fire history in Oregon, the barriers to Indigenous fire practices and prescribed burning. I really enjoyed the hopeful attitude Chris has. He emphasizes how much one person’s work can matter in the world of cultural and ecological fire, and how healing working with fire can be. Enjoy.

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Chris: I’m a Regional fire specialist for OSU. My region is Southwest Oregon, which is like five counties. It's pretty large area in Southwest Oregon. And the FIRE program is basically a team. We have specialists across all of Oregon, just started last year. So I've been at this job for a year. So it's a brand new program. It's for a state that has a FIRE program with like a whole specialist for every region and everything. Looks like California's going to do something like that too soon. And going back in time how I got to this point is, well, way, way back... well, it's not that long ago, not ancient times, but in about 2014, I was really interested in ethnobotany because I was really interested in sustainability and feeling like the only examples of real sustainability that we have is indigenous cultures.

I mean, long-term, real, thousands of years, or even hundreds of years level sustainability. And so I was very interested in the writing of people like Nancy Turner and Kat Anderson who wrote a lot of interviews with indigenous people about their knowledge of the landscape. And I lived in the Willamette Valley at that time. And just the idea that the whole landscape was the product of indigenous management for thousands of years that without cultural burning, basically that whole landscape would've looked just completely different. Species would not exist today. I mean, just totally different landscape, most likely. And so that blew my mind and I went to the tribe actually.

And I was like, I'm interested in botany, to the Grand Ronde tribe. And I was like, could I volunteer for you? Or do you have any internships, whatever, I'll do anything. And they were like, why don't you go and get a PhD, Chris? I was like, I'll get a PhD. Fine. I was at a dead end at the time professionally, I was doing seasonal wildlife jobs, which little known secret they don't lead anywhere. So I was like, that makes a lot of sense.

When I went to UC Davis, I originally went to work with Kat Anderson. She ended up retiring and it didn't really work out, but I worked with some other really great people, including Beth Rose Middleton, who was actually a student of hers.

And at the time I wasn't actually going there because of fire. My project was on other sorts of horticultural practices and chemists and root digging. But then I got to California and I was like, oh, shit, everybody here's talking about fire. That's the thing on everybody's mind. And I was like, but digging roots, cool. Right? Then Frank Lake was like, that's a women's thing. And then they were going to talk to you as a man. They don't want to talk to me. They're not going to talk to you. I was like, oh, legit advice, Frank. Thanks.

So I just started going more into the fire thing and honestly. Of course since I was a kid, I thought fire was the coolest thing. Right? But I never already thought about working in fire or doing so... I don't know. I always thought people cooler than me worked in fire. I didn't really want to do that, but everybody's pointing me that direction. So that's where it ended up going and definitely was the right thing. That's why I started working with some indigenous fire practitioners and just got interested in prescribed burning and forest restoration and the use of fire across the world and especially the use of fire outside of agencies and that democratic use of fire by ordinary people, which is a mind blowing idea, I think for most of Western society.

So then when the OSU job came up, it just seemed like a great fit because I can help people to get back to using fire both native people, hopefully ideally, I mean, that's the priority for me is of course the original fire practitioners, being able to use their knowledge, but then even broadly across society, settlers and whoever wants to use fire. So I was like, great, that's good. I didn't see myself doing full-time research. So something more like why I get to help people light fires. That sounds good.

Stacy: That's great. I'm interested to hear how that's going. Do you still work with the Grand Ronde tribe? You're in Corvallis now. Right? Is that where you're at?

Chris: No.

Stacy: Oh, where are you at?

Chris: Because I'm a regional specialist, I'm actually in the Rogue Valley.

Stacy: Oh great.

Chris: And just outside Medford.

Stacy: That's awesome. Actually, my first two years of fire were out of Eugene, so no Oregon. I started on Contract Crews, so I worked two years for a Contract Crews out of Eugene. And then went to the hotshots.

Chris: Was that Oregon Woods or?

Stacy: No, it was Skookum and I don't know do they still exist even? I don't know.

Chris: I think so. I think I’ve heard about them.

Stacy: So I worked for them for two years and then, and then went to California but I love Oregon so much. So I'm interested in what's happening right now, as far as the Rogue Valley or even the Willamette Valley, what projects you're working on and I think that, the SB332 that just got passed in California, of course, one of the reasons that was so important, although it hasn't solved all their problems obviously is because as of all the impositions by CAL FIRE and more larger agencies that just will not allow indigenous people to maintain control over their use of fire. And so I'm interested if there are things like that happening in your region and what you run into, roadblocks around burning. How is agency being given back to indigenous people is really what I'm interested in.

Christopher Adlam // Photo: Kiliii Yuyan

Chris: And the tribes are well organized. They have tribal council that has a lot of power usually in the tribe and casinos. And so that just shifts everything just a little bit. On top of that, in my region particular tribes were forcibly removed (refer to my Oregon History newsletter for more info on this forced removal). So, the Grand Ronde and the Siletz. Well, I mean, they're like a long way away from this part of the ancestral lands. So the obstacles that you have to overcome are just subtly different. And the way about it is a little bit different.

Like, I don't know, but in California it seems like a lot of tribes, particularly the tribes that aren't recognized by the Federal Government, they actually do a lot of outreach maybe to compensate, to be like, Hey, we are here. We're not recognized, but we're here. They aren’t federally recognized but they do a lot of work to establish the fact that they are there, that they practice their ancestral traditions, all of these things that if they one day want to get federally recognized, they'll have to demonstrate. But here, tribes are a little bit more, I feel maybe inwardly focused. So you can't just show up and be like, Hey, what's up with the cultural burning? Let's do some stuff. That you have to go through government to government relationships but then again, it's complicated because not all the tribal members are down with their government. In fact, a lot of them don't like their government, in different tribes.