“Indigenous Relationship to Fire Is All Year Long” Q&A with Dr. Amy Cardinal Christianson

*Dr. Amy Cardinal Christianson putting fire on the land.*

June 24, 2024

After the devastating wildfire season of 2023, Canada is bracing for more record-breaking fires. Indigenous knowledge offers a way to navigate this new era. Indigenous-led stewardship takes a holistic view of fire on the landscape. It’s not just about suppressing fire, but also about putting fire on the land where it is needed to help prevent out-of-control fires. It’s a year-round, ongoing relationship with fire.

Dr. Amy Cardinal Christianson, who recently joined the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, is a research scientist with expertise in Indigenous fire stewardship, Indigenous wildland firefighters, and wildfire evacuations. She shared the following insights about Indigenous approaches to fire.

Q. What is the role of fire on the landscape?

Many forests in Canada are fire dependent, including the Boreal Forest. It needs fire for some plants to grow and propagate. Jack pine, for instance, needs fire to open its cone to release seeds. Without fire, raspberries start getting tall, spindly, and overgrown, and they produce fewer berries, but a low-intensity fire produces plump berries and makes bushes fuller and healthier.

Lightning strikes would cause fires in the boreal. Because we weren’t trying to exclude fires, these fires would happen regularly and produce a mosaic on the landscape. A mosaic is where were we see different types and ages of forest in a smaller area, so the fires wouldn’t grow as big. These fires create diversity on the landscape, supporting old growth and younger trees, meadows, berries, and other plants.

Q. How would you describe cultural fire?

Cultural fire is putting fire on the land to achieve certain cultural objectives. Indigenous People have been on the land for millennia, and the land is a good teacher. People have witnessed fire on the landscape and seen what plants came up afterwards. Over time, Indigenous People learned how to use fire to their advantage. They would put fire on the land in low-risk times of the year to achieve certain objectives that helped their culture.

Indigenous People have learned when it’s safe to burn and when landscapes need fire. In Canada, it’s often in the early spring or late fall, often associated with when snow is melting or going to fall. We call it good fire because it has good effects on the land. It’s good for subsistence and for relatives like deer, moose, and rabbit that eat the young grass coming up on those burned areas. And it’s good for culture, including activities like basket weaving. Willow needs to be stewarded so it produces longer sticks without pests that can be used in baskets.

Q. You talk about living with fire in a better way? What does that look like?

When you talk to Elders, they often say, “the forest needs to be cleaned.” By using fire on the land when it is safe to burn, you are burning underbrush, dead branches, logs, and grasses. You convert it to ash, the nutrients go into the ground, you stimulate a seed bank of new native plants and different types of trees. Good fire helped Indigenous Peoples produce diversity near where they lived. It was like creating an orchard of resources around your community.

Because we haven’t had proper fire on the land, some Elders say, “it’s a hungry forest.” Because it becomes a monoculture of trees that are the same species and same age across a huge landscape, so you have to travel a far way to get what you need.

Q. What are some examples of Indigenous leadership on fire management?

There is a lot of positive movement in Indigenous fire. The Muskrats to Moose team are doing great work in the Saskatchewan River Delta, where an invasive grass species has taken over. The grass has low nutritional content, and muskrats can’t eat it. The muskrat population has dropped and those remaining are very thin. Now they are using cultural fire to burn this invasive grass and restore native plants. They have done pre-burn and post-burn studies to measure the weight of muskrats, and they have really seen the benefit of removing the grass. [Watch a short video about the project here.]

Unfortunately, many communities are still constrained by colonial government restrictions on their ability to burn. We often see government supporting one small burn project here and there, but that misses the bigger picture of using fire on the landscape level. A key part of culture burns is intervals: vegetation grows, so if you’re not burning frequently, you’ll lose the benefits. The interval for grass should be every few years—so one-off burns aren’t enough.

Q. What do you see as the role of Guardians in fire?

I am very excited about the role of Guardians in fire. There are already successful programs building. Every landscape in Canada will burn, and with climate change, fires may become more frequent in areas we wouldn’t expect, like the coasts. By having well-positioned, well-trained Guardians, we can make a big difference—especially in the Boreal Forest where there are lower staffing rates at agencies.

I see two approaches for Guardians in fire.

The first is training Guardians to respond to fires. Guardians have intricate knowledge of the land and know important areas for their communities. Provincial and territorial agencies often focus on buildings, industries, and infrastructure, but that might not be all that matters to Indigenous People. Think of a trapper’s cabin in the North. An agency might save the cabin, but if the entire landscape around it burns, how can you trap? It won’t be usable for generations. Having Guardians on the land can help advise positioning of fire resources.

The second is training dedicated fire Guardians. They would be employed year-round doing fire response but also cultural fire, prevention, education, evacuation planning, and recovery after a wildfire. We often forget the post fire recovery period; Guardians can go out on the land and assess what’s needed to restore the land and cultural values.

Q. What kind of fire training would be required for Guardians?

My preferred approach is “meet and exceed.” You meet the colonial requirements, such as standard firefighting training and occupational health and safety requirements. But the beauty of Guardians is that they learn from knowledge keepers and fire carriers. They go out on their territory with Elders and learn when to burn, what kind of fire should be put on the land. That exceeds the colonial standards. The Firesticks Alliance in Australia takes a similar approach.

Many Nations want to assert their sovereignty over who is knowledgeable about fire and who can make decisions about fire in their territory. Guardians can develop best practices for training and certification for Nations working to establish other fire programs. And when we show the knowledge Guardians have on the land, we could eliminate some colonial standards and create some of our own Guardian standards.

Q. How can Guardians and other Indigenous fire carriers help manage fire in the age of climate change?

I often hear that Indigenous knowledge is not applicable in the face of climate change. People say, “It’s great you burned 100 years ago, but the land has changed since then.” But Indigenous People have always adapted to their landscapes, and they are still active participants in their territories. They see the changes. Most Elders say, “We can’t burn on the land yet. First, we need to do land hand or mechanical thinning, then we can put good fire on the land and continue intervals of burning.”

Even with climate change, burning has been identified as a good adaptation to reduce fire intensity.

Good fire is based on a cyclical calendar. You are given indicators for burning of the land, not because it’s April 1 and trainees are coming. Instead, it’s about the berry bush budding, birds getting ready to nest, and trees leafing out, then it’s time to burn. Climate change may shift those cycles, but our knowledge systems are highly adaptable.

Q. We are heading into what looks like an intense fire season. What are you concerned about this year?

My main concern is the Boreal Forest. It’s a highly fire dependent ecosystem, but because of management policies, it has become more of a monoculture, with the same stands, same age, and predominantly same species. When fires get rolling in those conditions, they burn hot and move quickly.

The drought is intense in the northern boreal. And there are holdover or zombie fires—fires that smolder underground even under snow and come back to life when it starts to melt. These holdover fires increase the risk for the season.

Q. What gives you hope?

What gives me hope is the Guardians. That’s part of why I joined the Indigenous Leadership Initiative. It’s where I see the future of fire. The solutions are local. We have tons of Indigenous knowledge and western social science telling us that gains won’t come from urban centres. They will come from where people know their land.

We have good examples in the United States and internationally, where people have repeatedly used good fire on the land around their homes, and it has lessened the intensity of fires and the impact.

Indigenous People have known this for millennia. Now we see settlers rediscover that this might be a good solution. Most Indigenous People are saying, “Yes, we told you. Now give us the space to put this in to practice.”

We have the evidence. What we need now is action. We need to support continual, long-term Guardians programs putting good fire on the ground.