Cultural Burning

The Karuk of Northern California are one of many Native peoples with a long tradition of burning their ancestral lands. These practices are key inspiration for an annual prescribed fire training that’s been going on for more than a decade.

The Klamath Prescribed Fire Training Exchange – or KTREX – has been held Northern California since 2014. Part of what sets it apart from similar efforts is the central role played by the Karuk Tribe, and the emphasis on their cultural burning practices. Like many Native people, the Karuk have a time immemorial tradition of burning on their ancestral lands, and many point to it as a key inspiration for thinking of new and better ways to live with fire.

Many Indigenous peoples in North America have long standing traditions of cultural burning, the deliberate ignition of fires for a wide array of purposes. With the robust participation of tribal members, a new paper tries to quantify the scale of past burning by the Karuk people of Northern California.