“CA Fires Impacting CA Indigenous Peoples, Sustainability, & Environmental Grief”

American Indian Airwaves

With the National Interagency Fire Center reporting 79 large uncontained fires burning across the Western United States, and California experiencing almost 7,900 fires destroying or damaging a total of 6,200 structures since the beginning of 2020, along with California recently experiencing more than 3.4 million acres burn; what are the impacts, implications, and consequences the California fires are having and will have on California Indigenous peoples and their respective First Nations and all plant and animal relations? How is cultural sustainability envisioned given the precarious times we are in? What does California Indigenous nations’ cultural fire management practices mean in terms of traditions today and future generations? With the compounded effects of the twenty-year drought; the intergenerational, violent settler colonial forms of violence perpetuated against all relations, how are California Indigenous peoples responding and how does land loss contribute to historical trauma and environment grief? Guest: Don Hankins (Miwok Nation), Professor of Geography and Planning at California State University, Chico State.