{"id":2480,"date":"2024-12-20T11:31:49","date_gmt":"2024-12-20T19:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/magazine\/?p=2480"},"modified":"2025-01-31T16:08:02","modified_gmt":"2025-02-01T00:08:02","slug":"perilous-paradise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/magazine\/perilous-paradise\/","title":{"rendered":"Perilous Paradise: How Ancient Native Wisdom Could Help California Manage Its Wildfires"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Perilous Paradise: How Ancient Native Wisdom Could Help California Manage Its Wildfires<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n
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\n\n \n For centuries, Indigenous tribes managed California\u2019s volatility. Today, their ancestral knowledge is more vital than ever.\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n By<\/span>Tomas Weber<\/strong>\n \n December 20, 2024<\/span>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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In October 2007, 25 miles outside the Santa Ysabel reservation in rural San Diego County, violent Santa Ana winds, gusting at 110 miles per hour, downed a power line. Sparks ignited a fire that rapidly grew to become an inferno. Flames towered 100 feet high. For two weeks, the Witch Creek Fire burned 200,000 acres, forcing the evacuation of 1 million people \u2014 including the family of Theresa Gregor, then a PhD student in English<\/a> at USC Dornsife.\"Words<\/a><\/p>\n

At the time, Gregor, who is a descendant of the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel (Kumeyaay) and of the Yoeme (Yaqui) tribe, was working as a part-time administrator for the Santa Ysabel reservation.<\/p>\n

Gregor, who earned her PhD in 2010, was no stranger to fire. Like many California tribes, the Iipay Nation historically removed vegetation and performed controlled burns to reduce the buildup of fuel around their homes and in the forest, a practice that has deep cultural significance. Prescribed burns, however, had been outlawed for most of California\u2019s statehood. That blanket fire-suppression policy was leading to more devastating fires, and by the time she went to college, Gregor, who is now associate professor of American Indian studies at California State University, Long Beach, noticed that fires in San Diego County were becoming increasingly severe.<\/p>\n

The Witch Creek Fire, which caused more than $1 billion worth of damage, remains the seventh most destructive in California\u2019s history. As the embers were cooling, the tribe\u2019s chairperson asked Gregor if she could help with the recovery operation. Gregor went to the tribe\u2019s office and reached up for a binder labeled \u201cEmergency Operations Plan.\u201d It was empty.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was pretty scary,\u201d she says. \u201cThe reservation had no power, and without power, there\u2019s no water. At that moment, I understood the extent to which wildfire can result in a cascade of dangerous consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fighting Fire with Fire<\/h2>\n

The Witch Creek Fire made it painfully clear that California\u2019s history of sidelining traditional ecological practices had created vulnerabilities that modern systems were not prepared to handle. It wasn\u2019t just a question of fighting fires \u2014 it was about understanding how traditional knowledge could help prevent them in the first place.<\/p>\n

Realizing that something needed to be done to strengthen the resilience \u2014 not only of her tribe but of those across the state \u2014 Gregor was asked by a consortium of tribal leaders to help them form the Inter-Tribal Long Term Recovery Foundation<\/a> to support disaster preparedness and recovery efforts on tribal lands in Southern California. The nonprofit foundation, which helps communities write disaster relief plans and shares information between tribes, also harnesses traditional ecological knowledge to increase resilience.<\/p>\n

In conversations with tribal members across Southern California, Gregor uncovered a wealth of historical knowledge. Information about areas most likely to flood had been passed down through generations. In meetings with tribal fire chiefs, Gregor learned where fires were likely to spread. This knowledge, passed down through the generations over hundreds, if not thousands, of years, was crucial for knowing where to remove debris or where to light a controlled burn.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was learning the practice of using fire to fight fire,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

At a time of environmental crisis, many Californians hope to learn lessons from communities that have long been forced to adapt to the region\u2019s unpredictable climate. Drawing upon this store of historical knowledge from before California became California can help communities protect themselves from increasingly severe threats. However, incorporating traditional ecological knowledge into state and federal policies is not without its challenges, despite growing awareness of the benefits. Nevertheless, USC scholars and graduates are at the forefront, collaborating with tribal communities and harnessing traditional ecological knowledge to help shape the future of the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know there are tools from the past that have helped Native people survive for millennia,\u201d says Gregor. \u201cSo why not use them?\u201d<\/p>\n

A Volatile Paradox<\/h2>\n

From its earliest beginnings, the land we now call California has been trapped in a paradox. On the one hand, it has long been a comfortable place to live. Its gentle Mediterranean climate made it bountiful. Vast oak savannas produced millions of tons of nutritious acorns. And gigantic kelp forests fringed the coast that was home to an abundance of sea life. At the same time, it\u2019s always been a volatile and unruly region.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call it a perilous paradise,\u201d says Philip Ethington<\/a>, professor of history<\/a>, political science<\/a> and spatial sciences<\/a>. Cyclical climatic and ocean patterns, such as the La Ni\u00f1a and El Ni\u00f1o cycles, create wild oscillations year to year, from droughts and wildfires to violent floods.<\/p>\n

These climatic swings aren\u2019t just abstract events \u2014 they directly impact people\u2019s lives, from the risk of losing homes to wildfires to enduring water restrictions during prolonged droughts. Today, Californians must constantly adapt to this unpredictability, underscoring the importance of Indigenous practices that once enabled communities to thrive.<\/p>\n

Just as plants and animals evolved to deal with these erratic swings, people had to actively adapt as well. For around 15,000 years, hundreds of Indigenous tribes in what is now California developed sophisticated strategies that allowed them to not just survive, but to thrive in an unpredictable environment. These strategies remain valuable today.<\/p>\n

\u201cHistorians used to think that the preconquest period was a static, unchanging world of hunters and gatherers who didn\u2019t change the world they existed in,\u201d says William Deverell<\/a>, divisional dean of social sciences and professor of history, spatial sciences and environmental studies<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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\n How California (Probably) Got Its Name\n <\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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The intriguing tale begins with an imaginary queen and a 500-strong flock of griffins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n

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A common misconception is that Indigenous Californians lived among untouched wilderness, notes Deverell, founding director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West<\/a> (ICW).<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, Native peoples shaped their environment in ways that were every bit as complicated as the human ecological management that we see today,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Native peoples accumulated a rich store of ecological knowledge, which they used to tend to their environments. Controlled burns, many tribes discovered, reduced the risk of catastrophic wildfires, encouraged the growth of native grasses and enriched the soil with nutrients. Indigenous Californians created a complex, actively managed historical ecology that scholars, including Ethington and Deverell, are now working to reconstruct.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor thousands of years, the seasonal fire management of many tribes, including the Chumash and the Tataviam, kept the prairies and the plains open,\u201d says Ethington, who is the principal investigator on \u201cLos Angeles Landscape History<\/a>,\u201d a multi-institutional collaborative study to map the region\u2019s landscape over time. \u201cIt was not a wilderness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lessons From History<\/h2>\n

However, the ways in which modern Californians have shaped the land have often served to make people more vulnerable to threats, not less. Over the past century of rapid growth, adaptation has taken a back seat to development. Buildings were constructed in flood zones and fire corridors, and fire suppression policies have led to powder kegs of fuel in forests. For instance, the 2021 Dixie Fire, which grew to nearly a million acres and destroyed much of the Northern California town of Greenville, was fueled by overgrown forests \u2014 a direct result of decades of fire suppression. It was a stark reminder that ignoring ecological knowledge has real, devastating consequences.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been an abuse of the landscape,\u201d says Ethington, who is now writing a three-volume book of Californian history from the Pleistocene to the present. \u201cAnd it has worsened what was already a dangerous situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s set to get even worse. Climate change is already intensifying the volatile swings between drought and flood, and by the end of this century, Southern California is predicted to see the frequency of very wet years double or triple, with the frequency of extremely dry years increasing by 200%.<\/p>\n

Which is even more reason, Deverell says, to draw lessons from California\u2019s precolonial history. As part of The West on Fire<\/a> initiative, which Deverell helps to run, the ICW is partnering with the tribal-led Sierra-Sequoia Burn Cooperative<\/a> on a project to support prescribed and cultural burns on hundreds of acres in the southern Sierra.<\/p>\n

This work supports the movement away from fire suppression, and it is gaining traction at the state level, too. Last year, California set a goal to expand prescribed burns to 400,000 acres annually by 2025. \u201cI think we have started on a path toward recognition of the critical role of prescribed burns,\u201d Deverell says. \u201cOur tribal partners will tell us that if you start a prescribed burn in the right spot, you can stop a wildfire in its tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overlapping Origins<\/h2>\n

The growth of prescribed burns is just one example of how Californians of many stripes, from forest-management officials to historians, are increasingly rethinking the origin story of the Golden State.<\/p>\n

The history of the region is usually divided into neat periods. The Indigenous period ended in 1769 with Spanish colonization. The Spanish period gave way in 1821 to the period of Mexican rule. The Mexican-American War, which ended in 1848, led to California\u2019s statehood. Or so the story goes. It\u2019s a tale, Deverell argues, that\u2019s far too simplistic.<\/p>\n

\u201cCalifornia history over the last 250 years has been characterized by the sheer velocity of change,\u201d he says.\u00a0 There were people alive in 1850, when California became a state, he points out, who could remember the American Revolution. But this rapid transformation makes it all too easy to overlook the profound continuities that persisted across those periods. California\u2019s origins are more complex than the strict classifications might imply.<\/p>\n

These periods may blur together for non-Natives but, as Gregor notes, for California\u2019s First Peoples, life exists in a continuum of relational and reciprocal experiences and struggles.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith each wave of colonial assault, the state\u2019s First Peoples weathered the storm, preserved their knowledge and culture, and persisted,\u201d she says. \u201cToday, the threats may be different, human-caused versus direct human impositions, but the need to prepare and be ready remains the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

Resilience is a powerful theme. When the Spanish arrived, the region\u2019s Indigenous peoples spoke more than a hundred distinct languages. Despite the diseases unleashed by Europeans, the exploitation of the Mission period, and the genocide in the 19th century, in which the U.S. government and private citizens killed thousands of Indigenous people in California, the state\u2019s tribal nations \u2014 109 of which are federally recognized today \u2014 are still very much present. In some cases, tribes are growing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Indigenous period continues today,\u201d says Deverell. \u201cIt didn\u2019t end in 1769.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nor did Mexican independence put a stop to Spanish influence. The missions, which were used by the Spanish to control Indigenous people, were inherited by Mexico, which used native labor in its ranchos.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach conquering regime stepped into the shoes of the previous one,\u201d Ethington says. \u201cAnd then the Americans adopted similar practices.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Mexican influence lingered long after California\u2019s integration into the union. Mexican culture \u2014 and white people\u2019s reaction to it \u2014 continued to shape the state. Los Angeles came of age in the period of American statehood, but it was built predominantly by Mexican laborers.<\/p>\n

Complex and multilayered stories like these form the foundation of what is, today, the most diverse state in the country. The hope is that rediscovering the region\u2019s distant ancestral past will provide actionable lessons for Californians facing an increasingly volatile future. By integrating traditional practices, such as prescribed burns and sustainable land management, into modern policy, California can build resistance against future disasters.<\/p>\n

As one Indigenous leader, Mark Romero, former chairperson of the Mesa Grande Band of Mission Indians, wisely said, \u201cThe further we are from our last disaster, the closer we are to the next\u201d \u2014 a reminder that learning from the past is essential if we are to protect the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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\n USC Dornsife Magazine\n <\/h2>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Fall 2024 \/ Winter 2025<\/h2>\n

California<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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California\u2019s rich history is often defined by iconic periods such as the Gold Rush, the rise of Hollywood, and the aerospace boom. But beneath these celebrated events lie lesser-known stories that have quietly shaped the state\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPerilous Paradise: How Ancient Native Wisdom Could Help California Manage Its Wildfires<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For centuries, Indigenous tribes managed California\u2019s volatility. Today, their ancestral knowledge is more vital than ever.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/magazine\/perilous-paradise\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ancient Native Wisdom Could Help California Manage Its Wildfires\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For centuries, Indigenous tribes managed California\u2019s volatility. 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