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With fire season winding down across many parts of the US, it is not unusual to find people doing deliberate burns to eliminate slash or improve habitat.

Outside Eugene, Oreg. recently, a group of Native youth and state and tribal agencies conducted a cultural burn.

Brian Bull of Buffalo’s Fire reports.

Five interns with the Long Tom Watershed Council’s Traditional Ecological Inquiry Program (TEIP) and a few dozen staff members, fire bosses, and agency employees gathered at the Chaa-lamali Reserve.

The oak savannah here provided three acres for the interns to apply their knowledge of fire as a tool.

“I’ve learned that a small spark can start a whole field of flames.”

Kanim Cushman-White Eyes is with the Chinook Indian Nation and a middle schooler. He’s setting fire to a meadow with a flaming pitch stick, while water trucks, and crews with shovels stand by to help keep it within the designated area.

“The best thing about using fire is that you can learn so much about it, and like a little amount of time, and that it can be very healthy for the land.”

Nearby, TEIP program manager Rachel Cushman helps her other son, Isik, set a few fires and keep aware of his surroundings.

Fire can reduce acorn weevils, or help coniferous trees re-seed the area.

Cushman says this part of the Willamette Valley has always been a fire-formed landscape.

“It’s been unhealthy because fire has been missing. And so we’re awakening the land. We’re building that relationship back up and healing it through this this practice of cultural fire.”

A few yards away, TEIP curriculum director Joe Scott helps a few interns extend the fire closer to a camas meadow.

Scott is a Siletz tribal member who did a training exchange with the Yurok Tribe. Now he’s applying all of his accumulated experience to teach the TEIP interns on “good fire.”

“Youth have come up seeing fire as the enemy, as a destructive force. And this is a perfect example of fire being a constructive force.”

Scott says with the fall rains, ash and nutrients will replenish the soil and help the camas prosper.

Ten women will be inducted into the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame Tuesday including Joaqlin Estus, a pioneering Alaska Native journalist.

Estus most recently was a national correspondent for Indian Country Today and also worked as news director at our flagship station KNBA.

Estus is Lingít with ties to Wrangell, but she is not the only Alaska Native to be honored.

“Another Alaska Native is my great grandmother, Tillie Paul Tamaree. She was a civil rights leader in the early 20th century.”

Estus says it’s an honor to be inducted along with her great grandmother.

Two other Alaska Natives are being inducted into the Hall of Fame: Katherine Gottlieb, a Supiaq leader in Native health care who served 30 years as president of Southcentral Foundation, and the late Ada Blackjack Johnson (Iñupiaq), the sole survivor of a doomed Arctic expedition in the 1920s.

Tribes across the country are recognizing Domestic Violence Awareness Month and sharing resources, including the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma.

The Chickasaw Nation Department of Family Services says it offers support, including domestic violence prevention and intervention with a focus on tribal cultural values.

The Chickasaw Nation also operates a shelter.

A candlelight vigil is planned Thursday for Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Chickasaw Nation Director of Violence Prevention Janie Loch says one of the most important things they want to communicate is that victims are not alone and services are available.

 

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