Over the course of 2025, the Mountain West News Bureau and Our Living Lands rigorously documented efforts among the Indigenous Karuk of Northern California and the Washoe of both California and Nevada to revive millenia-old traditions of using fire to care for their ancestral territories. In a time of wildfire crisis, cultural burning practices offer a compelling and provocative counterexample to the dominant suppression-first posture toward fire that has caused enormous ecological harm across the region and beyond. This selection of stories from the series highlights the key lessons that can be learned from the example of these fire people – that a more balanced relationship with flame is not only possible, but that such harmony has a time immemorial history on the continent.
FOR JUDGES: The three links below will take you to a page with playable audio at the top.
STORIES
1. The Washoe Tribe brings back cultural fire to restore forests, plants amid climate change
2. Indigenous people learned to live with fire. What can we learn from their traditions?
