Abstract

The Keepers of the Flame project aims to connect students, community-members, researchers, policymakers and Indigenous fire practitioners to learn about cultural burning and discuss ways to support its revitalization. The project uses a community-based teaching approach, meant to demonstrate socially responsible and respectful ways for university instructors, students and researchers to interact with California Indian nations, communities, and individuals. Indigenous Fire Workshops are organized in collaboration with cultural burning practitioners to highlight the benefits of this practice, create opportunities for networking and mentorship among cultural practitioners, and educate students, community members, and key regulators and policymakers. We also offer a UC Davis course open to both undergraduates and graduates which engages and educates participants on planning for and implementing Indigenous-led burns, and protocols for respectful learning through personal interaction with Indigenous community members. Thanks to the generosity of Indigenous partners, including the Honorable Chairman Ron Goode, Diana Almendariz, Danny Manning, Valentin Lopez, Julie and Carly Tex, Frank Lake, Don Hankins, and others who share their time, knowledge, and homelands, the  ongoing Keepers of the Flame project has left workshop participants and students with deep and transformative insights into living with fire in California.

Biography

Prof Beth Rose Middleton Manning is Professor and Chair of Native American Studies at UC Davis. Beth Rose’s research centers on Native environmental policy and Native activism for site protection using conservation tools. Her broader research interests include intergenerational trauma and healing, rural environmental justice, Indigenous analysis of climate change, Afro-indigeneity, Indigenous land stewardship, and qualitative GIS. Beth Rose received her BA in Nature and Culture from UC Davis, and her Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from UC Berkeley. Her books, Trust in the Land: New Directions in Tribal Conservation (University of Arizona Press 2011), and Upstream: Trust Lands and Power on the Feather River (University of Arizona Press 2018), explore Native applications of conservation easements, and the seizure and reacquisition of Native lands at the headwaters of the State Water Project in California. 

Deniss Martinez is a PhD candidate in the Graduate Group in Ecology at UC Davis and a Health Policy Research Scholar with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  Her work seeks to understand how California Native Nations navigate power differentials in natural resource stewardship collaborations.  Her research addresses questions of Indigenous science, environmental justice, and governance.  

Melinda Adams belongs to the N’dee, San Carlos Apache Tribe of Arizona. She is a second year doctoral student in the Department of Native American Studies at the University of California Davis- Patwin [Southern Wintun] ancestral homelands. She holds her Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science from Haskell Indian Nations University and her Master of Science in Ecology and Environmental Science from Purdue University.  Melinda’s doctoral work “Storytelling through Fire: the Reclamation of Indigenous Culture Fire in Northern California”, privileges Indigenous wordviews at the intersection of ecology, environmental policy and is rooted and routed in Native American Studies methodologies.