To Manage Wildfire, California Looks To What Tribes Have Known All Along

A collaborative experiment between Indigenous community activists, tribal officials, loggers, nonprofits, and the U.S. Forest Service is delivering firewood to residents who need it for heating and cooking. The program, called Wood for Life, also doubles as a forest management initiative to thin out Arizona’s forests to prevent deadly wildfires. The shuttering of a local coal mine and the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this home heating crisis and group members in 2020 delivered a total of 650 cords of wood to several Indigenous nations.

Indigenous women in British Columbia are leading the revival of cultural burning practices and integrating Indigenous knowledge into wildfire management. Organizations like the Salish Fire Keepers Society have led to policy changes and an increase in Indigenous representation in firefighting roles.

Communities across the United States combat and adapt to extreme weather with local solutions. In California, drought-striken Orange County recycles wastewater into safe drinking water, and the Karuk Tribe prevents forest fires with controlled, cultural burns. A farmer in Iowa practices no-till farming to prevent soil erosion from heavy rain. Indigenous tribes on the Louisiana coast gather empty oyster shells and use them to create artificial breakwater reefs that slow down erosion from rising ocean waters.

The WTREX program runs prescribed burn camps to provide hands-on training for Indigenous women. This training allows them to reclaim parts of their culture and bring cultural burns back to their land in a safe learning environment.

A viral campaign from Indigenous activists, TikTok creators, and documentary filmmakers led to about 6.3 million letters being sent to federal agencies encouraging them to halt fossil fuel development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. They created social media content and a toolkit for creators to use on their platforms that made it easy for the message to spread.

A community gardening project growing the guajiro bean has allowed Wayuu farmers in the Colombian desert to achieve food security despite the effects of climate change and external pressures. While scaling this agricultural success to other Indigenous clans can be difficult, using a low-tech irrigation system and red earthworm compost has allowed one settlement to feed its community and make their soil fertile again.

The Swinomish tribe in Washington state is combining traditional knowledge and science to combat the effects of climate change and improve the health of its land, water, and people. In recent years, their salmon harvest has diminished due to warming waters, but they’ve instituted salmon recovery efforts by restoring tidelands and channels and planting trees along stream beds to cool the waters. Their focus on ecosystem and community health could be a model for other Indigenous tribes looking to create their own climate plans.

Indigenous communities in Louisiana are working with scientists to restore wetland ecosystems and protect tribal mounds along the Gulf Coast through backfilling projects. Depleted oil wells and canals in the area are often abandoned, creating reservoirs of stagnant water that affects freshwater plants and animals. The group has started to identify priority canal sites to fill in and seek funding to kick off the project, which can be challenging to get.

Women “warriors” of the indigenous Guajajara people in Brazil use drones to patrol their territory of the Amazon rainforest in an effort to prevent deforestation. Because of their work, they have been able to cut deforestation down to just 63 hectares in 2018 compared with 2,000 hectares in 2016. While the work can be dangerous and difficult at times, the women are committed to protecting the forests as a way to combat climate change. “If we don’t act, there would be no forest standing,” says one of the women warriors.

Armed with data, local activists are taking on environmental justice campaigns. In the absence of action on the part of the Federal Government, local organizations in Mississippi and across the South are working to increase transparency, generate data on public health issues, and mobilize action on climate change.