Maria's introduction: Even though the so far most deadly fire of Northern California is over 100 miles away it fills the air with an acrid smoke that has obscured the sun for days now. The town of Paradise went up in flames.
Itâs a little over 20 years ago that I recorded the documentary that you will hear again. My visit to Mountain Grove, Oregon, opened up a part of Native American history and culture and forest practice. That gave me hope that maybe we could undo and heal the damage that Western European settlement and industrial forest practice had done to the peoples and the lands of what is now California.
In Washington, DC, Trump is sending out tweets that the fires are due to poor forest management and he threatens to cut federal aid, implying that all would be OK if there was more logging and mining and drilling going on. Trump has that power and may yet exercise it since nearly 60 percent of California forests are under federal management, and another two-thirds under private control.
When Spanish Conquistadors rode up the West Coast they were astonished to see that they entered forests that looked like parks with widely spaced trees. Church and military records show that in the early 19th century Californiaâs forests were carefully tended.
The catastrophic wildfires of today were extremely rare. California Natives used controlled fires to create these parks but the use of fire was outlawed by the Settlers from 1850 on. There is now talk about bringing back controlled burns - but how complex, interwoven with intimate knowledge of the web of life that practice is, was beginning to dawn on me when I set out to Mountain Grove for a three day visit with Dennis Martinez.
Dennis Martinez is of O'odham/Chicano heritage, and helps traditional communities with the restoration of ancestral lands. He is well loved writer and lecturer. He is a seed collector, vegetation surveyor, restoration tree thinner and ethno-botanist.
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