Thoughts from a Karuk Research Ecologist on Fire and Ecology
Frank K. Lake discusses the pitfalls of SB 332, ecological health, a utopic vision, and why fire is medicine for land and people.
I was first going to interview Frank K. Lake pre-pandemic, when I was in the UK, but because of our conflicting schedules we missed each other several times. Finally I got to sit down over Zoom and ask him some questions. This is not a transcript, but more of a short essay, engaging with his answers. Anything he said is quoted directly— the rest is my own writing and thoughts.
One of the first things Frank and I discussed with the trauma of having one’s ancestral land stolen, which is a trauma that has echoed through generations of both Indigenous Californian and Indigenous folks throughout the United States and around the world. This trauma doesn’t only affect the people whose lands were stolen, but the land itself. Since the removal of its caretakers, ecological health throughout the United States has declined, particularly in the west— creating landscapes that are primed for megafires.
A key part of how land was removed in Northern California (where Frank K. Lake is from and where his work is concentrated) was the failure of the U.S. government to ratify its treaties. In order to entice Indigenous Californians off their homelands, government officials had them sign treaties promising land rights and payment, but these treaties were never ratified by the government and many are still unresolved.
Many of this enforcement was assumed by rangers, which monitored formerly Indigenous land and forced Indigenous Californians to extinguish fires. From Frank:
“The early Forest Service rangers; one account where ‘we had a firebug problem and I rounded up all the few Indian men and told them they either work on our suppression crew or they go to jail.’” (loosely quoted from an historic document).
“Can you imagine being 15, 19, 20, being a Karuk man who was trained from your grandfather to be a fire medicine owner…someone who has that spiritual responsibility, for their family, for their village, and being the person who inherits that, and being told that everything you were told to do for fire is rejuvenating, for world renewal, for balance…originally taught through the creator— as the first instructions given to human beings and how to live in place, and you have that cultural responsibility and spiritual position; then being threatened to be round[ed] up and put on a suppression crew because the government actually doesn’t have funding yet?
“Then, in that process that you’re putting out the fires, you’re also told to turn in ‘arsonists’ who are probably your family members who are burning for spiritual and for subsistence reasons. The hardship that that person would have faced, being taken into forced labor.”
I responded here to say this this sounds like a kind of genocide— a cultural erasure. A mental element of genocide is "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”
Lake spoke to the “legacy of erasure” in the Forest Service and the need for reconciliation. He noted that the term “ranger” originated from militias that hunted Indians in California when federal resources were otherwise engaged, funded by the state. That word “militia,” he noted, is still used today (within government agencies) in reference to the “fire militia,” or “local militia,” and even in reference to working with local Indigenous people. Many people working for these agencies may not be educated about the California Genocide or other violent historical events that occurred against Indigenous Americans.
What Lake is referring to here is a lack of historical education throughout state and federal agencies— many (specifically white) people working within these agencies are unaware of the cultural legacy of their own agencies, and the way they condone and reinforce those violent legacies through their use of militaristic language.
For many Indigenous Californians (and other Indigenous groups across the United States and beyond), fire was an integral part of their culture and life. Children burned under the direct supervision of elders, and developed a comfort with and knowledge of fire from a very young age.
I can attest to how fire knowledge comes from doing. As a hotshot, we burned often. I spent months of my life burning for sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. Once you watch fire that much, you can look at a piece of land and know how fire is going to move, know what’s next.
But even with the passage of SB-332, which claims to grant more sovereignty to Indigenous fire-bearers, fire cannot happen legally without state sanctioning and approval. As Lake and I discussed, this means that if an Indigenous fire practitioner sees a good day for burning— a window which often lasts a day, a few days, or a few hours— they must contact a Cal Fire official and get their approval to burn, even if it’s on their own private land. In addition, Cal Fire requires the use of a private burn boss, which costs upwards of $1,500 a day, and personnel. This is grossly prohibitive, especially because state agencies are often understaffed and unresponsive, or can be voluntarily unresponsive (we’ll discuss that in my next interview missive).
I asked Lake about Cal Fire. From my own research and interviews, I’ve gotten the impression that, in some regions, Cal Fire sometimes inhibits Indigenous burning practices for various reasons (many of them not necessarily safety-related). What were his thoughts on this, and does he see SB-332 as progress? He said that he wasn’t able to speak directly to the policy in his agency capacity, but did say that, “it’s an acknowledgement of the need to increase the scale of cultural burning and the recognition of that role.”
He mentioned his own personal experience trying to burn as a cultural practitioner on his own property after the passage of SB-332, and how deeply prohibitive it was because there wasn’t a streamlined way to contact the right officials, and that the officials he did contact were misinformed regarding the intricacies of the law (for instance, someone he contacted said it only applied to tribal lands, which isn’t true). He went through all possible avenues, and was never given burn approval. The area was less than one half acre, fully lined, with a hose-lay installed.
There is always the risk of burning without the proper permits or approval being categorized as an act of arson, which has been a weapon against Indigenous fire practitioners since colonists arrived in California (and other states).
So, despite SB-332, things are still difficult for Indigenous fire practitioners. Tribal members are still reluctant to burn without going through proper avenues because they fear reprisal, yet there is no clear chain of command for them to go through.
Lake’s question is: if all the proper avenues are exhausted, and a fire practitioner can’t reach final approval, will they be prosecuted and punished for cultural burning? There’s currently no clear answer.
Lake grew up having his and his family’s tribal practices monitored and regulated by the state, and watched agencies plow over sacred sites for extractive purposes.
“…at the time, there was the controversial G-O Road that was pushing a big logging road to access an area of the northwest California and the Siskiyou Mountains, that was…going right through the sacred high country. I was a child during that era. I [saw] Forest Service rangers and law enforcement show up and question why Indian people were doing what they were doing. I saw the contentiousness around my dad with elders talking about the protection of sacred sites and the responsibility.”
Lake went on to say that the road was stopped, but not for the sake of honoring sacred land, instead it was stopped for environmental reasons.
He also mentioned cultural harvesting, such as cutting down cedar snags with his grandfather to make the dance pit houses and then being stopped by Forest Service officials claiming they needed a permit and threatening citation.
“My grandfather [saying] ‘hey, we’re doing this to reconstruct our ceremonial house. These trees were here since the time that my grandparents were here. This is our Indigenous right.’ And then having that just, you know, as a teenager, you’re supposed to be trying to get the logs in the horse trailer, seeing my grandfather argue with the person in the green suit, in the green truck.”
Thus began Lake’s entrance into what would become, thus far, a lifetime focused on integrating Indigenous rights and knowledge into a wider body of western knowledge, and advocating to Indigenous rights as well as prioritizing Indigenous knowledge. Lake sees himself as a kind of translator, weaving Indigenous knowledge into his work with fisheries, agroforestry, and the Forest Service.
When asked about common misconceptions people may have regarding forest health and fire, Frank responded:
“I think it’s a major cultural shift in the psyche of non-Indigenous American society vs. Indigenous people. [American society sees] forest health is health out there, fire is something that’s different than them, that’s bad, whereas an Indigenous person sees it as forest health is your health and responsibility, fire is part of your responsibility as a fire dependent person. And so it’s the dichotomy versus the, well…if the forest is sick, we’re sick. In American society…they say that forest health is a problem that is separate from them, in their developmental and physical well being. Fire is an issue that is out there, unless they’re feeling direct impacts from smoke, [and] is always seen as a negative thing rather than, ‘Oh, I see smoke, I see fire, what good of that is going to come?’.”
Lake highlighted the way Indigenous communities have historically seen fire as rejuvenating. The presence of fire meant growth, renewal, and subsistence. This is in sharp contrast to the way most Europeans and white Americans saw fire: Gifford Pinchot, founder of the USFS and one of the most staunch fire suppression advocates (who later came to admit that fire was important), said, “fire has always been and seemingly will always remain the most terrible of elements.”
To Pinchot, Muir, and other “naturalists,” land in the United States needed to be preserved. The focus has always been on keeping the land “wild” and “pristine;” in perfect condition for recreation rather than integrated into the lives of all Americans. Agriculture was catastrophically seen as separate from “wild” landscapes, with the exception of timber.
I asked Lake about grasslands versus forests—throughout my research I’ve come to the understanding that we simply have too many forests, too many trees, and this is causing drought and worsening wildfires. I asked him what an ecologically healthy landscape would look like to him, in his region:
“[There’s a lot of] propaganda [saying] green is good, right? Like on the fires that we see going through Oregon, a healthy forest is a green forest? Well sometimes healthy forest needs a little biochar and scorch in it, and some holes blown in the canopy, right? So when you have a culture of people, not Indigenous but colonial settlers, who go to a forest and don’t even recognize how degraded it is, because they don’t have an appropriate baseline from which to have a frame of reference, and you take a tribal person to the same place and all they can feel is grief and hurt because they see snagged out hardwood that’s covered by young fir. They see an understory that’s [without] medicinal plants. So, if you’re a native person, and the environment that’s dependent upon fire and yourself is your hardware store, your supermarket, your pharmacy, and your church? And you see all those things [resources] completely degraded and choked out and indicators of the birds, the wildlife. everything that’s in relation to nature is sick and not well? That’s the thing that gets me, is that, you know, the recreational American public, go to these places and they think it’s okay, because that’s the narrative they’ve been taught. Because they haven’t needed to follow subsistence or ceremonial aspects of the fire, they don’t have a frame of reference.”
He continues:
“Ther’s a gold standard for that stuff, and I can tell you right now that this is way departed from what it should be. What you’re (the American public and agencies) saying it’s not providing critical owl habitat— what you need— an owl is a symbol of sickness and death and sorcery. This is what’s being perpetuated here.”
When Lake mentions the dark forests of Europe, he says that’s what we’re perpetuating. That our land isn’t meant to be dark. That elk and deer and other ungulates follow burned areas and find the freshest, most tasty food there.
“How perverted has been the perception through media…there’s all these different lenses that have made American society blind to the value of fire. Soon enough you’ve got coke-bottle thick lenses and you can’t even see the benefit of fire.”
I asked Lake what his fantasy scenario would be, for his region. What would radical change look like for him?
“It would be an education campaign to teach people through that Indigenous lens, about the gold standard.”
He mentioned his own five-acre acorn orchard, and what it’s like to bring people there and say “this is the gold standard.”
“You don’t have many places on the land to take people to; even tribal use, to say ‘this is what it should be like or can be like’ and I’m trying to do that with my research right now through data in the forms of, like, what is stand composition and species that are fire adapted, have structure that’s more facilitating cultural use quality like broad grounds for hardwoods, open understory with a diversity of plants that are good for pollinators, that produce fruit, nuts and seeds, nutritional forage, and being able to relate that and say, ‘this is what good fire is, because it created this.’ To be present, to gather from it, to consume the foods and nutrients from that, to look at the amount of fat on the deer’s ribs and hindquarters and the health of the organs.”
Before colonization, Indigenous Americans lived deep connection to their lands. It’s not enough to say they experienced it, they lived it. Those connections have been traumatically severed for many, yet many Indigenous Northern Californians still live on or near ancestral land. There’s an opportunity here to learn from them and help their perspectives shape the way we approach fire. Lake spoke about many Americans’ disconnection to the land, specifically how often people sell their houses and move to entirely new landscapes without a second thought. Lake called this “nature deficit disorder,” and sees fire being part of the solution, as well as education regarding Indigenous land tending practices. He wants to “rekindle a deep human relationship with the natural environment.”
“When are Americans going to seek to be residents of place?” -Frank K. Lake “What’s your sense of pride as it relates to your sense of environment? Not as it relates to your own extractive use, but your human responsibility to environment and how that will take care of you and your future generations.”
In essence, what Lake is saying, is that with a deeper connection to environment, one wouldn’t need these extractive methods, nor would they see them as sustainable (because they aren’t).
In California, the definition of arson is: “a person is guilty of arson when he/she willfully and maliciously sets fire to, or burns and causes to be burned, or who aids, counsels or procures the burning of any structure, forest, land or property.”
One cannot prove malicious intent. If one is practicing cultural burning, can they be charged with arson? This is the question.
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Love this piece. As someone who descends from both Native People and European Americans I share your concerns about the traumatic experience of having one’s Native lands stolen. Not only did my Indigenous ancestors experience this but the State of California used Eminent Domain to destroy my ancestral land, home, and neighborhood for a freeway overpass and BART station. Thanks.