![]() Pockets of forest haven’t seen any fire, intentionally or naturally sparked, in nearly a century. No longer subjected to regular culling, invasive plants have helped form fuel ladders capable of carrying flames into the canopy. Now, many of the largest, most fire- and drought-resistant trees have been logged, and denser stands of younger trees have grown up in their place. What was once an interconnected mosaic of burns painstakingly conducted during different seasons for different purposes had been subdivided into neighborhoods, private ranches and industrial timber holdings whose owners had varying approaches to maintaining the land. Those who were displaced included Coats’ father and grandmother, who is one of the tribe’s oldest living elders and can still recall the trauma.īy then, the landscape surrounding the park had been transformed. The last Southern Sierra Miwuk were not fully removed from Yosemite Valley until 1969, when park staff burned all but one of a small number of their cabins under the guise of fire training. Flames severely scarred the land and destroyed resources that were once available for gathering. The fire damaged cultural sites, including prehistoric roundhouses and bedrock mortars where acorn grinding took place, said Waylon Coats, vice chair and cultural resource manager of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, who worked as an archaeologist on the fire. ![]() “Some people weren’t even able to make it home to try to get stuff so they have the car they were driving and the clothes on their back - that’s it.” “We have a lot of people left with nothing,” said Clay River, who at the time of the fire was director of the Miwumati Healing Center, which serves as the hub for tribal health and social services. Its operations are supported by volunteer work, donations and grants received through its associated nonprofit, the American Indian Council of Mariposa County, which raised more than $100,000 through an Oak fire relief fund. As an unrecognized tribe, the group is ineligible for many types of government aid. ![]() The following month, the fast-moving McKinney fire - which killed four people - destroyed a building that housed Karuk tribal archives and resulted in a massive die-off of fish in the Klamath River, a hub of ceremonial activities.įor Vasquez and other Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation members, recovery has been complicated by a 40-year legal battle for federal recognition. ![]() In July, multiple members of the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation were displaced by the Oak fire, which destroyed more than 100 homes in Mariposa County. The Mountain Maidu saw their Greenville Rancheria office and health facilities destroyed and the landscape severely damaged when the Dixie fire tore through the heart of their homelands the following year. Members of the Karuk Tribe lost homes when the Slater fire burned hundreds of properties in Siskiyou County in 2020. Indigenous residents are over three times more concentrated in California census tracts that see fires most frequently and where the most acreage burns, according to a study by UC Irvine researchers published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. And, in a cruel irony, Native Americans are among those most affected, they say. Now, many experts say the lack of regular, low-intensity fire in some California ecosystems has contributed to an overgrowth of vegetation that has made wildfires grow larger and more severe. Cultural burning - the practice of using controlled fires to tend the landscape - was once widespread among many Indigenous groups, but ended with the arrival of European settlers.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |