Indigenous fire practices once shaped the Northwest — and they might again

For centuries, settlers suppressed the Native burning and wildfires that enriched and protected Western ecosystems. Four experts explain why we need it back.

Upon arriving in Washington, many settlers assumed that the lands they had entered were perfect representations of unspoiled nature. They explored clearings and meadows that fostered a bounty of plant and animal life richer than any land they had seen before. The idea of “perfect paradise” is one that’s persisted about the Americas for decades since, leading one Smithsonian botanist in a 1991 book to call a part of the New World “a world of barely perceptible human disturbance.” 

This perception is a myth. The indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest shaped their lands with many intentional practices long before settlers came to the continent. One of the most important was controlled burning, which cleared areas of crowded trees, undergrowth and pests, making space for new growth and wildlife.  

But European settlement and disease upended Native populations and culture, stifling these practices. For hundreds of years after, fire suppression became the favored means of management, which brought back woods dense with fuels and higher wildfire risks. 

That’s changing: Research from more recent decades has realized the merit in controlled burning. Some tribes in Northern California have recently partnered with the Forest Service to implement Native approaches to controlled burns. Others, like the Fort Apache in Arizona, were able to bring back the practice of controlled burns as a means of fuel reduction even earlier. Here in Washington, some tribes have continued their usage of indigenous land management practices by conducting controlled burns on a local scale. 

Crosscut spoke with a group of researchers, land managers, policymakers and firefighters who make indigenous wildfire management in Washington a part of their daily lives. We asked them to share more about its importance — how it can both preserve indigenous culture and offer solutions in the West under a changing climate.

Native people used fire centuries before European settler contact. What did this look like? 

Emily Washines: Fire management early on was really about resource management. Whether the foods would need additional help, we noticed that they were weak or there were other invasives coming in, or if the plants just weren't regenerating to be strong enough — then we would do a traditional burn method. And this wouldn't be something that would happen every year. It's something that we would watch and monitor for the plants’ growth. It’s a part of something that's thousands of years old, a data set that we used for land management in early years. 

This was noted in the 1850s through different journals from non-Natives. It was really a source of confusion on their part for not knowing why we did that. To them, we were just burning things up for no reason and it was very peculiar that they would be walking through areas that were charred. They didn't understand why.

Ernesto Alvarado: Some settlers, they saw what Native Americans were doing, and actually thought, "This is the way you clear the land, using fire.” You want more wildlife, deer, then you burn. But the perception among European foresters and ecologists who were trained in Europe was that fire was the enemy. Any flame in the forest was not good — if Indians were burning, they were bad. 

When you have all these Europeans arriving to the West, they didn't know that this place was completely different from anywhere in the world. This is a system that burned. And to maintain healthy ecosystems, you have to burn — either naturally or using prescribed fires. So they arrive here to this place where fires have been happening for millions of years, and they tried to exclude it because that was the best ecology they knew. When you arrive to a new place and you don't know anything about that forest, you apply what you have learned somewhere else. And that was the best knowledge [European settlers] had, but was not developed for these ecosystems.

Cody Desautel: Especially amongst the elders, I've heard the comments throughout my career, "You need to burn more, you need to burn more. We used to always burn that. Why don't we do that anymore?" The elders that grew up in that age, people that would be in their 70s, 80s and 90s now, they grew up with fire. That was a very common practice for them to light areas up in the spring and let them burn to the snowline. 

I think that people didn't recognize how many tribal folks were on the landscape, historically, and didn't realize how much they contributed to burn patterns across the Western U.S., especially. So if you look at reports, Native populations declined by 80% to 95% between European contact on the East Coast and European exploration from disease when, say, Lewis and Clark came out here.

Most people kind of assume that the people that Lewis and Clark saw were all the people that were there, but in fact that was 5% to 20% of the actual population. 

Ernesto Alvarado: The United States were doing fire suppression for many years, for almost 50 years. During the late ’60s, ’70s, the U.S. reversed course and started learning more about fire management instead of just fire suppression. 

The government recognized that the tribes were doing good things, but also, it came as a response to the Boldt court resolution. Some tribes started fighting for their fishing rights, the rights that were signed [into law] back in 1855 when most of the tribes signed treaties with the U.S. government. They reserved the right to produce food their own way. It came as a court decision, the Boldt decision, on fishing rights. It became a movement among the tribes: It was not just fishing. It was also the forest. It was medicinal plants. It was food. It was wildlife. The whole thing. To have clean water, you need a healthy forest. To have a healthy forest, you need fire.

Everything goes back to the treaties. Whatever the tribes have gained, it's not because the federal government is willing to give more to the tribes. They're just asking for their rights. 

How can the relationship between nontribal government entities — like the Forest Service — change to better accommodate the use of indigenous wildfire management practices? 

Ernesto Alvarado: There was a recent paper I read that said something like, "After thousands of years, finally the Western science is catching up." So that tells you that, yeah, Native Americans knew how to use fire. Over the years and generations of using fire, eventually you know how to manage it. You know how to control fire. You know the timing. You know the calendars on when to apply fire. So, yeah, we are rediscovering things that they knew. We are catching up.

Emily Washines: Some federal agencies are now taking a second look at the data that was journaled and the areas where there was burning, and taking that and talking about traditional burn practices. We're seeing now a different application of that knowledge incorporated with modern science. I don't know if that means that modern science is finally catching up, [but] I think it presents very interesting and exciting opportunities regarding how fast and quickly land can regenerate if you utilize a data set that was previously utilized for thousands of years.

What kind of results do we start to see once we start to incorporate different knowledge that's been there? And using modern day technology along with it? The things that we know about now, with mapping and drones and things like that — we didn't have that thousands of years ago. How do we incorporate this all now, together, to have a really strong resource management for the land? I do think there are differences in the landscape now and in our resources. But I think that management is still possible, especially utilizing our Native knowledge.

Cody Desautel: I always struggle when, say, the Forest Service has a desired future condition, "We want it to be pre-European contact from a 100 years ago.” Well, 100 years ago was pre-European contact, but you are describing a specific point in time that developed under a changing population dynamics with Native Americans, and a changing burn dynamic because you just had less people to do that burning. So that's something we'll never recreate, because obviously you can't put that much fire on the landscape anymore. But I think there are options from a mechanical treatment standpoint, and obviously it's a lot more complicated because you have people living all over now where you didn't back then.

Obviously with climate change, most of the predictive models we see point to longer, drier summers. We're probably going to see increased burn acreages for our area of Washington. That prediction says we will have a three to four times increase in burn acres over the next 50 years. So I think we need to shift perspective away from trying to stop fires to making sure that we're doing fuels treatments and forest health treatments throughout the year to make sure that when fire comes, you can have a resilient landscape that can respond to fire.

I think people understand the need. I don't think we have a plan figured out on how to get us there, so people have recognized that fire has won the battle for the last couple of decades. That trend doesn't look like it's going to slow down anytime soon, based on some of the models that I've seen for another 15 to 20 years. So I think people understand that we need to do something different, and that's a good first step, recognizing that you have a problem. And now we'll have to come up with a solution about how we work with fire on the shoulders of the season that it's not a 100% suppression — that we allow some acres to burn under more moderated fire burning conditions.

Secaira, Manola. "Indigenous Fire Practices Once Shaped the Northwest — And They Might Again." Crosscut, 9 Sept. 2019, crosscut.com/focus/2019/09/indigenous-fire-practices-once-shaped-northwest-and-they-might-again. Accessed 9 Mar. 2023.