Wildfires can be devastating for communities and the environment, like those in . But fires also can be intentionally lit to benefit the ecosystem. These are known as prescribed fires.
Indigenous communities across the world founded the practice of prescribed fires in their respective homelands. And in our region, the Myaamia tribe was one of those groups.
Since local Indigenous communities engaged in this practice for centuries, some environments, like prairies, depend on fire, says Michael Gonella.
鈥淎ll these landscapes were managed by Native peoples, and fire was the main tool they used to manage the land, to keep it fertile, productive and good for hunting. The fire kind of resets it ecologically and revitalizes it,鈥� Gonella said.
Gonella is a professor of botany at Santa Barbara City College. He鈥檚 worked closely with Myaamia tribal members to identify plants referenced in historical documents about the tribe.
Most Myaamia people were removed from their homelands in the Great Lakes. And with that, they lost many elements central to their culture, including access to traditional plants and practices like prescribed burns.
That鈥檚 according to George Ironstack, enrolled member of the sovereign and scholar on Myaamia history at .
鈥淲hat settler colonialism does to a people includes this cultural suppression that sometimes even precedes a complete severing of our relationship with the land,鈥� Ironstack said.
Myaamia people have worked to revive parts of their culture. That includes the recovery of the place-based Myaamia lunar calendar, developed centuries ago in what is now Ohio and Indiana.
The calendar connects two months in the fall with burns. The first month is the grass burning moon or 鈥� Sept . 5 to Oct . 3 this year.
The second month is the smoky burning moon or . It鈥檚 Oct . 3 to Nov . 2 this year.