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Our Living Lands is a collaboration of the Mountain West News Bureau, Koahnic Broadcast Corporation and Native Public Media.

Learning from Karuk burning practices

Man with a short beard, wearing a black baseball hat sits, with a garden hose slung over his shoulder, while monitoring a small grass fire.
Murphy Woodhouse / Mountain West News Bureau
Bill Tripp, the Karuk Tribe’s natural resources director, keeps an eye on a burn near a pump house that supplies water to an Orleans, California neighborhood.

Last week, Mountain West News Bureau reporter Murphy Woodhouse brought us a story about major developments in cultural burning efforts by the Karuk Tribe in Northern California. Woodhouse joined Our Living Lands Producer Daniel Spaulding to further discuss Karuk burning and its implications across the West.

“It’s hard for me to overstate how important the example of the Karuk has become to me as I’ve tried to understand our current wildfire crisis and - more importantly - potential ways out of it,” Woodhouse said.

I joined Boise State Public Radio as the Indigenous Affairs Reporter and Producer for Our Living Lands, a weekly radio show that focuses on climate change and its impact on Indigenous communities. It is a collaboration between the Mountain West News Bureau, Native Public Media and Koahnic Broadcast Corporation.

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