Fire: ecological process, cultural keystone, being, spirit, teacher. Many who work with fire understand this, and many who work in stewardship work with fire. As we continue in the current moment of resurgent relationships among people, knowledges, and the land, fire is serving as a catalyst to promote good and important changes to how we understand ourselves as members of the broader community of life and our responsibilities for taking care of the places we love. This change is hard and slow in some cases, as we work through the catastrophic effects of hundreds of years of cultural suppression and disruption that affected Indigenous ways of being and land-tending practices, a century of fire-suppression mentality, and the reality of a rapidly changing world driving us into novel climates, technologies, and ecological communities. At the same time, there is growing support for Indigenous Fire Stewardship and a rapid emergence of a new fire culture among settler cultures that is weaving Western and Indigenous ways of knowing to inform and inspire efforts to restore fire in support of the rich biological diversity of North America. Join us for this episode to learn about recent collaborative efforts to restore fire to Minnesota and Wisconsin Points, at the head of Lake Superior, along with the creative works that are helping move this effort forward: a new scientific paper, an award-winning film, and an illustrated children’s book, all telling the story of fire to reach the diverse audiences needed to create lasting cultural change.
