Indigenous Cultural Burning Practices

photo by Diego Cordero, Santa Ynez Chumash Environmental Office

Indigenous people traditionally used low intensity fire to shape landscapes, ensure the abundance of culturally important plants, create clearings for wildlife and open understories for access to foraging areas.  Today, Good Fire has functionally been removed from our landscape due to the loss of cultural burning traditions combined with more than 100 years of aggressive fire suppression. LegacyWorks has been partnering with local Chumash to revitalize indigenous cultural burning in Santa Barbara County. In late 2021 the Chumash Good Fire project was launched by the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians Environmental Office, the Community Environmental Council and LegacyWorks with funding from the Santa Barbara Foundation. 

In 2022, our partnership completed an inquiry process to understand the fire control, biological, political, policy, and regulatory needs and concerns in Santa Barbara and beyond by interviewing community members and leaders. We learned about permitting requirements, professional certification needs, agency collaboration, burn plans, community connections, wildfire monitoring and past, present, and future fire ecology research findings and needs. In 2023 with the help of funding from The Chumash Foundation, our partnership held a convening with the members of the Chumash community to share the learnings of our exploratory work, receive input, and discuss getting Good Fire on the ground. Looking ahead, we are planning a celebration to engage the broader Chumash community and to build support for workforce development to engage tribal youth. The partnership is currently seeking funding to host a Chumash led Good Fire that achieves cultural goals in combination with a feast and celebration in 2024.

This work builds on our wildfire resilience work as the integration of indigenous burning practices was identified as a priority project in the Regional Priority Plan for Wildfire Resilience and Ecosystem Health. See our Insight post for more information about what Good Fire is and how it was used by native peoples.