For millennia, Indigenous peoples have intentionally set fires to care for the land. Colonization and policy largely put an end to those practices, though the tradition endured. As the Mountain West News Bureau's Murphy Woodhouse reports, a new law in California has opened the door to restore cultural burning — a potential model for the rest of the West. Woodhouse follows the Karuk Tribe on cultural burns designed to improve community and environmental health.
Our Living Lands is a collaboration of the Mountain West News Bureau, Koahnic Broadcast Corporation and Native Public Media.
With reforms in place, California’s Karuk Tribe works to reestablish cultural burning as 'common practice'

Murphy Woodhouse
/
Boise State Public Radio