Restoring Tribal Ecological Knowledge in Fire Management
As we watched smoke from the Alexander Mountain fire fill the skies last month, and remember other devastating wildfires in Colorado and New Mexico over the past years, it’s easy to see fire as only a destructive force. Wildfires are spreading faster, lasting longer, and burning hotter than ever before.
Following the 2011 Las Conchas and the 2022 Cerro Pelado wildfires, amongst many others, our Tribal partners in New Mexico know firsthand the devastation multiple megafires can bring. Within these communities, though, fire is also deeply respected.
Fire has always been seen as a part of stewardship, and a part of life, for the Pueblos. Over thousands of years, Indigenous peoples have studied and used fire’s effects to sustain the landscape. Low intensity fires maintain healthy, open forests, and some key species even need fire to germinate – at the right temperature, and the right time. In many ways, fires have been understood as a medicine for the land and the people: when respected, used carefully, and understood within broader ecological systems.
Near the turn of the 20th century, fire exclusion, alongside the declining use of wood for daily purposes, began to drastically change landscapes. Smaller competitive trees and brush overcrowded the understory, and the mosaic pattern of low intensity wildfires was overtaken by more infrequent, but widely destructive megafires.
The exclusion of healthy fire from ancestral lands largely coincided with the exclusion of Indigenous stewardship and Tribal Ecological Knowledge (TEK) from many land-management decisions. Today, as we work towards restoring areas devastated by megafires, revitalizing forests, and reengaging fire’s role in broader landscapes, Indigenous communities and their TEK must be at the center.
Over the past several years, we’ve been collaborating with tribes to reforest burn scars in the Eastern Jemez mountain range. Under their guidance, we’ve also come to see the broader picture of forest health: while planting trees will continue to be part of our work, we are also supporting Tribal efforts towards long-term management and landscape-scale restoration.
Reforestation work will include support for local seed collection and nursery infrastructure, helping to address gaps in seedling production, and will be accompanied by broader, Indigenous-led efforts towards watershed restoration, fuels reduction, and drought mitigation.
Tribes are contending with unprecedented temperatures, prolonged drought, and 100 years of accumulated fuels: restoring a healthy relationship with land, and fire with it, will require an emphasis on collaboration, a centering of ancestral knowledge, and heavy respect for the natural forces with whom we must coexist – forces which, when in balance, may also offer new life.
