A Necessary Disturbance: Cultural Fire on Washoe Tribal Lands in Lake Tahoe

For centuries, the Washoe Tribe migrated seasonally between the Carson Valley and Lake Tahoe. Their presence on the land and cultural practices helped mitigate wildfire risk, as well as enhance wildlife and resilience to drought.

For more full episode details including the transcript, visit https://www.buzzsprout.com/1819551/episodes/9281800

We interviewed Rhiana Jones, Interim Director of the Washoe Environmental Protection Department, and Washoe Tribal Council member Helen Fillmore. They helped to shed light on how the forced removal of Washoe people and their practices from the land has impacted ecosystems. They also discussed how the MÁYALA WÁTA Restoration Project aims to restore and preserve Meeks Meadow by integrating traditional knowledge and culturally guided burning practices into current land management strategies.

Transcript

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Megan Kay: 0:00

Hey, welcome to the Living with Fire Podcast where we share stories and resources to help you live more safely with wildfire. Hi, I'm your host. Megan Kay, the Outreach Coordinator for the Living with Fire Program, and I'm joined by my boss, Jamie Roice-Gomes, Hi, Jamie.

Jamie Roice-Gomes: 0:34

Hi. How's it going?

Megan Kay: 0:36

We're here today to talk about the episode you guys are about to listen to, which is an interview with Helen Fillmore and Rhiana Jones, environmental specialists with the Washoe Tribe. And we got to talk to them about cultural history of burning on Washoe lands. And also got to talk to them about some great projects that they're working on right now up in Meeks Meadows in Tahoe. So Jamie, you, you, you weren't able to be on the interview because we got, we got busy schedules, but you were able to listen to it. I just wanted to hear your take on it.

Jamie Roice-Gomes: 1:12

To be honest, I was, I thought it was fascinating to learn from Helen Fillmore about what the strongest evidence for fire and cultural burning was with the Washoe Tribe and the elders, just how they they cook the pine nuts, and how they collect the pine nuts and and how that's related. And it just really made me think of the importance of, you know, finding out information from from previous generations, like what they did and how they did it, and, and I don't want to go into that and really kind of like spoil it for the audience, but, and I'm going to bring up an example it's completely unrelated, but kind of related. It just reminds me of, like, you know, my friend's grandma used to put spearmint in her flour. And why did she do that? She did it because the mint in spearmint gum repels weevils. Folks don't really know that, and so it's really, it's really important to find out from previous generations what they did and why they did it, and then implement that into the habits and the thought process and the things that you do today. And it just either, it just resonated me. I know it's not really related, but it just is, is important.

Megan Kay: 2:41

Yeah, I that is something that I have not really thought much about, either, and that really resonated with me. And not to spoil it, because it's a great interview, I know, but yeah, the idea that just kind of, we've always interacted with the land and vegetation, whether it's harvesting, just existing on the land, having to create fires to survive, and the impact that that has on the ecosystem. So it really got me thinking about just how humans interact with ecosystems, and how we've always been doing that, ever since humans were on the land. And measuring that, and taking that in in context, is really important when you think about restoration. Because what are we trying to restore these ecosystems to? And humans have to be a part of that think that that logic and that that process. So anyway, that's a long winded intro to this episode. I hope you guys enjoy it, and here's the interview.

Rhiana Jones: 4:01

My name is Rihanna Jones. I am environmental specialist too with the Washoe Tribe of Nevada in California. I work for the Environmental Protection Department

Helen Fillmore: 4:17

My name is Helen Fillmore, and I am also an environmental specialist for the Washoe tribe. And I am currently, or I guess, recently, our Fire Resilience Project Manager to try to restore and revitalize our cultural burning practices for our within our homelands, but specifically for our restoration projects.

Christina Restaino: 4:41

I'm Christina Restaino, I'm the director of this esteemed program and on the faculty at UNR.

Megan Kay: 4:49

I'm Megan Kay, I'm the Outreach Coordinator for the Living with Fire Program at UNR. So before we dive into the topics of like the work, the work that you're doing, I wanted to get to know you guys a little bit. So why don't we start with Rhiana, and do you mind giving like, letting us know how you got to be an environmental specialist.

Rhiana Jones: 5:10

I grew up in this area. I'm Washoe and Salt River, Pima-Maricopa, down from Arizona, and I grew up on the Hung A Lel Ti reservation, and I went to school in Northern California at Humboldt State for my undergrad. I have an undergraduate degree in botany, and both my parents were artists. I was really into nature and drawing, and so I was like, I'm going to go and learn all the parts of plants and be able to draw them really good and, you know, become a botanical illustrator. But I, you know, that didn't happen. I went another direction, and just really got into the science of plants and botany and environmental science and conservation. And I went on to get my masters in New Mexico at New Mexico State University. And so I have a master's in plant and environmental science there. I studied chile peppers, which was kind of another caveat from my plan. But after that, you know, I wanted to to work for one of my tribes, or any indigenous tribe, really, to kind of take what I learned back to my community and, you know, help others, encourage others to go to school. The youth education was really heavily influenced in my family, and I think it's really important for people to, you know, leave their leave their hometown for a while and get out and see what's out there, and then be able to, you know, learn some stuff and bring it back to your community. So that was my plan. And, you know, I there was an opportunity to work for the Environmental Protection Department, and I've been here about a year and four months. So I'm the Meeks Meadow Project Manager. I work up with the restoration project for the Máyala Wáta Restoration, and we're doing some, you know, COVID kind of stops and stuff, but we're doing some conifer thinning up there, and where we started doing groundwater monitoring, and we hope to have a scientific publication out of that. So I think what I would like to see, and you know why I'm passionate about working for the Department, is bringing a more, you know, scientific aspect to some of the work we're doing. There's, you know, a good cultural aspect, but I think, you know, mixing that with science as well, and in terms of getting it out into the public and, you know, being relevant in the scientific community is, is what I want to see and hope for, for this project, and the groundwater monitoring specifically, and the cultural burning Helen so you can write a paper.

Helen Fillmore: 7:43

It's goofy. I feel goofy sometimes talking about this, I guess, like how I got passionate about this work. But when I was younger, we had a Washoe language immersion school where we were taught by our elders. And it's one of those, like one one room school houses, kind of a situation where there was only 20 of us or so. I'm not exactly sure this the whole number, whatnot, but at the Washoe language immersion school, we took, you know, we were taught everything in our language from our elders. And then for our science classes, we got to learn from like experts in the field, because we would take these field trips up to Meeks Meadow Máyala Wáta, is what we call it, and up to Tahoe, kind of throughout our homelands. And they would, the way that they kind of arranged it was that, you know, we would talk to the head foresters, or talk to some of the head scientists, and they would give, like, these little bit of outreach. And at that time, it was really awesome, because we'd be learning from our elders, kind of in preparation of those meetings, or those like, like on the ground experiences. And you know, our elders would tell us, kind of their version of it, and then it would be reinforced, then by what the scientists were saying, too. And so it was kind of this, really, you know, it was just this environmental science. Ecology was just a discipline that really resonated with, like, our cultural beliefs, our values, things like that. And so I would say my passion start to started to develop at that early age. And then when I got into college, I took a Environmental Management course, and my professor at that time was, he was really awesome, but the first half of the I was at the University of Washington in Seattle, and the first half of the class was kind of general management and things like that. And then the second half of the class, he used Tahoe as a case study, because Tahoe is one of the few areas in the world that's actually managed at the watershed level. And then it's it's all these different memorandums of agreements between different states and jurisdictions and things like that. But he's it was, not only did I realize, like, I can be in a discipline and study something that's really interesting and that's really relevant to our culture, but then I can also study the areas that are specific to, that are most important to me, and I can study them, you know, all the way in Seattle, way far away from home. So in so many ways, like environmental science kept me home, and I always knew like I wanted to return back home. During that time, I was also working as a wildland firefighter out of Carson City, just as a quick way to make some good money and travel in the summertime and to be outside and camp and and I really fell in love with that job during that time. Was planning on kind of pursuing that as a career, but I I decided at some point that I made a pretty good firefighter, but that I'd make a really great something else. And so went back to school, got my masters in hydrology, and this position opened. This wasn't, I guess my my interest has always been more into, like, research and kind of, like what Rhiana was saying, as far as, like, getting more into some of that high, like, not higher, but getting more into some of the more technical, scientific research areas, but with the pandemic, I did really want to start getting more into implementation, and so took this job with the tribe. And yeah, I would say, you know, as far as, like, what keeps me excited? It's like working with people like Rihanna every day, somebody who grew up in the area who has, like, all of the personal relationship and all of that, like cultural relationship that we kind of stem from, but then also has the other perspective too, of like, you know, these are people that we can work With to really make this cultural relationship we have that much stronger. These are people who can support us in those ways. And so it's just been, yeah, I would say it's been, it's, it's really an honor to be working for, like your homelands and your community directly. And I am looking forward to what we can build here.

Megan Kay: 12:22

I like what you said, too about the you're a good wildland firefighter, but you would make a great something else. I think a lot of people, I share that as well with just like, a little bit of wildland fire experience. So it's like, I think I'd be better at something else. The you guys, you guys touched on it earlier, when you were talking about Markleeville and the reservation. But do you just, for folks, listeners who don't know where Washoe tribal lands are, Rhiana or Helen, Would you guys mind just giving a quick overview of the of the tribal lands and also, specifically just the projects where the projects are located that you guys are working on?

Helen Fillmore: 13:01

Oh yes. Oh, yes. So dáɁaw Tahoe is the center of our homelands. And our homelands really kind of extend out from there up into the north and to Susanville down South by Mono Lake, and then kind of just definitely on the like Eastern Sierra Foothills, and then on the side up into the Pine Nut Hills, the western side, up into the Pine Nut Hills. And so we have both, kind of like those Sierra Nevada ecosystems and then those Great Basin ecosystems as well. Where we're located. Currently, our headquarters is in Gardnerville, Nevada. We've our reservation lands are very small compared to our you know, our traditional territories. We have four communities, one located in Hung A Lel Ti, the in Woodford, California, Markleeville area, then one in Gardnerville, and two in Carson City. And that's where the I guess about half of our tribal members reside within those four communities. The other half live off reservation. But the significant majority of our off reservation tribal members live within the area like Reno, Carson City, Sacramento, kind of still like in those, those, like, regular boundaries, and then our project. So our projects are kind of tricky, because we, most of our specific projects are on reservation lands, or that's what we're committed to is our, like, our reservation lands for trust lands, but our biggest projects are on forest service land and on BIA allotment lands. And so those are ones where we have to have, like, more official agreements in place, and like more official funding to come in. And so. And the BIA allotment lands, those are our fire restoration projects, and Romaine Smokey III, he's the one who's managing those projects. And we're getting ready to replant. Tomorrow. We're going to start kicking off our spring planting, and then the Máyala Wáta Project and the Tahoe Basin. We have a couple of acres within the Tahoe basin that are tribal land, but the Máyala Wáta Project isn't tribal land. It's forest service land, but it's our biggest restoration project. And yeah,

Megan Kay: 15:32

Is that the, sorry, I creeped, I creeped on you guys and read your read the Washoe Environmental Protection Department newsletter. Is that the, what, the the the project that's described in that newsletter? Is that the the Máyala Wáta, or is that the the?

Helen Fillmore: 15:49

The Meeks Meadow? Yeah.

Megan Kay: 15:52

Cool.

Rhiana Jones: 15:52

So I think Helen mentioned earlier, Máyala Wáta is the name for Meeks Creek. So we're calling that whole project in Meeks Meadow, the Máyala Wáta restoration project. So the Meeks Meadow and the Máyala Wáta Project are the same one. I'll pick up where Helen left off. Yes. So the main projects we have going on now, like she said, are in the Pine Nut Hills and Meeks Meadow, but we received some funding through it's a tribal wildlife grant to do a resilience garden, where we can be funded to grow our own culturally sensitive and native restoration plans for our own restoration projects. So we've talked about, there's this Skunk Harbor parcel up on Tahoe. The Incline parcel belongs to the Washoe Tribe. Is that accurate to say Helen? Okay, Olympic Valley, and then Meek's, Pine Nut's, and there's also a Babbitt Peak parcel. So all of these could potentially be sites for future restoration or, you know, fire prevention go and thin the trees or the bushes, and, you know, possibly plant some plants up there. But I'll talk a little bit about Meek's, since that's my main project. So what we hope to do up there, you know, COVID stops and stuff, but the plan with the Forest Service and through the stewardship agreement, and we have a lot of other funders, like the National Fish and Wildlife the California, Tahoe Conservancy, Tahoe fund, many, many people have contributed to this project to to get it going. So we have plans to thin the conifers. This year, lodgepole pines have encroached on the meadow. It's 300 acres of meadow, and it's, you know, hardly recognizable as a meadow anymore. So to thin all those trees, and then go in and do some culturally guided prescribed burns, and then plant some culturally significant plants once the water table comes up a little bit. We, you know, those, what we're seeing now through our groundwater monitoring is that those conifers are just acting as straws and sucking up all the moisture in the meadow. So we hope to have that, you know, come back to be more boggy and provide, you know, proper habitat for the meadow plants that were once there, culturally significant plants, plants used for medicine, plants for food. All these important to the Washoe Tribe and as well as basket making materials that are found in the meadow.

Megan Kay: 18:23

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Helen Fillmore: 19:26

One of the trickiest parts about us and kind of about the Washoe tribe and our people in our community specifically, and our relationship to fire, is that we, I would say, the greatest evidence that we have currently demonstrating that Washoe people did burn, pre-contact, pre, you know, pre-colonialism is kind of the state of our ecosystems. So I would say that's the best evidence that we have, because we do have a, our homelands are located in areas where, when settlement started, which for a long time, you know, we didn't get we're kind of one of the later communities to get colonized, just because of access to the Sierras. And there's so many mountains you have to climb just to Washoe homelands, that it wasn't until, like the late till the gold rush, and then when silver was found in the Comstock Lode, that we really like, started seeing a lot of settlement. But when we started seeing settlement in our homelands, it was significant, and it was severe and so and since then, you know, I mean, we can just mention Tahoe at any international stage, and people would know that area, because it's even to this day, you know that the rate of tourism up there is is so high. So with the influence of settlement Washoe people have kind of, well, I shouldn't say, I would say, with the influence of settlement, we haven't our communities, our elders, our families, haven't practiced fire. The entire Tahoe basin was clear cut for timber production at a certain time, and so that completely changed the ecosystem there. And so, you know, even, even finding ecological evidence of, like, how often fires might have occurred is, is a huge stretch that we're kind of trying to to reconstruct and revitalize and so, but is there? It's not that there isn't knowledge within our our communities, or that our elders remember. It's just that we're asking them to remember things when they were three, four years old, and some of them, sometimes it's how you ask the questions, and sometimes it's how you start the stories and and then what you get from those stories. It's also like they might have a story of, you know, a certain fire, story about how to cook pine nuts, or a story about things where fire would be used and to them, it's not, you know, we use fire for a healthy environment. We use fire to keep our plants strong. It was like, Well, this was when we used fire, and this, it was at this point, or this fire was lit because of this other reason that seems completely unrelated, but it also shows like they had this huge and like significant knowledge of fire and how it would move throughout the landscape. And so what we're working on right now really is to try to restore in those areas where I would you know, we've we've together, kind of all of that best knowledge that we might know, or weave together all of the evidence that we might be able to find in a way that is culturally relevant, even though It might not be rooted in very specific stories, or, you know, very specific guidelines and how it was done previously, but ways that it can still be culturally relevant in a way that our like future generations can also carry it on from now and so it kind of means that we're moving a little bit slower than what I think, you know, even the environment wants us to move in when it comes to kind of restoring what what needs to happen and what kind of changes we need to see, but at the same time, I think it is going to be a lot stronger, a lot stronger foundation. If we do it right, it'll have a lot stronger foundation into

Megan Kay: 23:40

Thank you for for unpacking that for me. Because, like, it makes so much sense to what you guys were talking about, like, what inspires you about your work, and so for me, as I'm not a scientist, but it it makes me it's like putting together the pieces and using your science background to come up with the evidence and maybe just shining a light on something that the scientific community has, it has yet to shine a light on, you know, using those skills that you guys have learned, and then, just like, using it to talk about restoration, but in a cultural with a cultural context, and I just, I think that's why that this interests me so much, because it's kind of, it's like a missing piece of the puzzle. And I wanted to follow up too, and kind of ask about, because you were talking about, like, culture, culturally relevant plants that you're trying to to, would it be like, replant? Is that the right term or to just rehabilitate? Do you guys just want to share a little bit of of that, those specifics, like,

Rhiana Jones: 24:47

There's a list of, you know, maybe 60 plants that what kind of plants are you trying to emphasize? And, yeah, that. were chosen as having cultural significance. WEPD did some work with the cultural resources department and some elders to put together this list. Some of those plants would be yarrow, wild onion, swamp onion. These were all food, not yarrow, yarrow is a medicine, mountain alder, service berry, blueberry, green leaf, manzanita, early balsam root, incense cedar, a lot of these plants all have names in Washoe, and some of them are still up in Meeks Meadow. But some of them, you don't see as much, or there might be, you know, one or two. So replanting would be, you know, one thing we do want to do, and that's kind of where that resilience garden would

Megan Kay: 25:35

I was gonna say for the resilience guard would come in to see if we can grow some of these culturally significant native plants that, you know, I don't know if you guys have ever tried to grow native plants, but it seems like only Mother Earth can do it. there? Is there then like a plan put in place to preserve what you guys have rehabilitated, to make sure that it's a that it's a resource for or is it just meant to be sort of, is it? Is it meant to be like a an experiment? Or is it meant to be like a usable resource, like a place people can go to forage these plants?

Rhiana Jones: 26:13

It's mostly meant to be a usable resource so that we could, you know, as funding allows keep these plants growing and have youth and community members come in and learn how to grow these plants and what they're used for, and then also maybe be able to go out to rehabilitate their homelands, you know, I think that's a big, a big part of it, and very important, you know, in order for people to feel that connection to nature is to be able to go out and do the work themselves. So have these plans and then give them to the community. And, you know, maybe I think, like Currently, we have funding to have a community member come in and take care of these plants. But, you know, have them go out and continue to do this for years to come. I think the stewardship agreement for Meeks Meadow goes till 2028, so, you know, as long as we have that, that time frame and and that permission to go and be doing work in the meadow, we want to, you know, get as much stuff done as we can, have as many cultural events as we can up there. Be able to take elders up there again. And, you know, hear those stories. And, you know, maybe they remember going up there as a kid, or, you know, hearing stories about their parents going up as a kid that, you know, my hopes are just kind of trigger those memories by actually taking people out and having them, you know, do more hands on stuff with the plants and the restoration and, you know, planting the plants, digging in the meadow, removing invasive weeds by hand, being able to identify those invasive weeds, that type of thing.

Helen Fillmore: 27:47

Yeah, and I guess, just to add to that too, because it like restoration is such restoration itself, right? Is such a intensive activity to restore an ecosystem, ecosystem from like a devastated or unhealthy state and get it back to a healthy state is labor intensive. It's costly, it's it's really challenging, right? And then you're always evaluating kind of the pros and cons of different activities. Because one activity might, you know, negatively impact a different activity. But when it comes to stewardship, if we can restore these ecosystems into a healthy state and then provide, or, you know, restore some of those cultural practices so that it's truly just stewardship and it's maintenance. At that point it really like, then we don't have to, you know, wait till it regrows in 20 years and then do this other intensive project. Again, we just have this ongoing maintenance, this ongoing stewardship of the area, and by restoring our culturally important plants, that really does kind of restore, well, we have to restore the plants, but we also have to restore the activities that kind of really do improve those conditions for those plants and improve that connection between our community and that area. But if we're successful at all of those different steps, then really, at that point, our community has everything that they need to to really contribute to the health of the ecosystems as well as the health of, like, our culture, our language, our, you know, traditional practices, our, you know, spiritual beliefs, things like that. And so I think the long term goal is that, you know, we don't keep having that we can restore these areas, and then it's just, you know, maintenance and stewardship at that point. It's not these heavy, these intensive restoration projects.

Megan Kay: 29:50

Could you guys help paint a picture of, like, what the ecosystem used to look like, what it looks like now and then, kind of like what. And what you're trying to get it to so like, what, what did these meadows used to look like? Or, if you were to experience it, what would it be like?

Christina Restaino: 30:07

And and more, how did they used to what were the processes and the functions that made them healthy? Right? Because that's how we think about healthy, healthy ecosystems, right? Is, is, how were, what were the functions that were occurring that were evidence that they were healthy to begin with.

Megan Kay: 30:24

Yeah, so, like, three, I guess we're going on a journey here. So we're like, painting three pictures. So like, I guess pre colonization and pre settle, pre, you know, European settlement, and then I guess whatever point you could pinpoint to target, I guess, like right now and then also what you're trying to get to.

Rhiana Jones: 30:45

You know, the Comstock era, like Helen mentioned, changed everything. So I believe that was around 1860 so the meadow previously was a meadow, prior to settlers the Comstock era, it was, you know, still a meadow. And traditionally, Washoes would have their winter camps in the Carson Valley, and then go up to Tahoe for their summer camps and spend the summer there, hunting, fishing and, you know, gathering these medicinal plants and the foods that grew in the meadow. So this, you know, happened for 1000s and 1000s of years, and then after the Comstock era, they cut it all down for timber. The meadow, I believe, was used for cattle grazing. And so it just completely changed the ecosystem. And, you know, Washoes were driven out of Lake Tahoe. They weren't allowed to continue their seasonal migration to and from Lake Tahoe for their summer camps. And so they stopped, you know, essentially managing the land. And when I say managing the land, you know, you talked or asked a little bit about the history of fire. And so when I think about that, it's like, you know, they didn't call burning the meadow cultural burning. Fire was just a part of life. You had a fire. And from what I've read that fires were when they left the summer camp, fires were left to burn, and then it would just kind of smolder around the area, burn whatever trash or sticks they had cut down or used for tools, and then that kind of just smoldered out and kind of, you know, cleaned the area for the next, season's use, so there wasn't like, a bunch of buildup and trash out there. I've also heard people tell stories. It's like, oh yeah, you know, my father would burn the meadow. And I was like, Well, what was it for? Because, again, you know, asking an elder if they did cultural burning, you're not going to get the answer you want. So it's, you know, a process of trying to trying to, trying to ask the right questions, like Helen said, and figure out, you know, how they use that fire. Was it for cooking? Was it for, you know, just warmth? Was it for cooking pine nuts or drying materials? You know, there's, there's information there that we were still getting at. But I think prior to the Comstock era, it was the seasonal migration that essentially was the land management of clearing out trees that were in their way, in the way of their camps, and maybe burning those trees. As simple as that.

Helen Fillmore: 33:15

It's really easy to explain when you look at the history of fire in the area too. Some of the other things, like, even when we're talking specifically about meadows, it gets a little bit more nuanced, because people don't understand, like, oh, there's all these, you know, vascular plants that won't grow if they don't have enough water. But why do those even matter? Because we'd rather go up into the hills and eat berries instead. So. But when it comes to fire, and the history of fire, like what we're seeing right now, for example, are these huge, mega fires, then they're spreading so rapidly, and it's become, it's a state of emergency all summer long, every summer. And how did we get to that situation? And it's been, you know, the removal of fire, but also kind of the removal of indigenous practices within the lands. And so the removal of fire is a huge like fire is a disturbance, but it's a necessary disturbance. Our gathering practices are a disturbance, but they're a necessary disturbance. Our cooking practices were a disturbance, but a necessary disturbance that these ecosystems have also adapted to. And so when you remove a disturbance, just like if you remove an apex predator from the ecosystem, it totally changes that ecosystem and the health of that ecosystem in the way that it functions naturally. And so finding a way to incorporate that disturbance into the the system, again, in and not just incorporating it, but incorporating it in the way that it would lead to the health and the like the natural state of that ecosystem originally. And so that's kind of, I would say, where we're getting at as far as, like, what why restoration is needed on these areas specifically, is because we've removed these really important parts of the ecosystem, and then we've stayed hands off, and we've left them alone. And now these ecosystems have grown and changed into these really unhealthy states that then create further devastation. And so the meadows are a really nice area. As far as identifying like, really, I don't want to say easy, but the meadows are a kind of perfect opportunity to just show how bad things get if we aren't actively managing it. So in forested areas, it kind of takes a little bit longer to see how, you know, you might do a prescribed burn and that'll kill some trees. And then it just kind of like people walk by and they think it's so sad and and horrible for so long, until it finally, eventually gets to that state. But in these meadows, you can look out to these completely. Even stands where you can't even see through them. You wouldn't be able to walk through them. The wildlife can't get through them. There's no corridor. They're completely separated. And then once those trees establish, the rate of then the rate of establishment just keeps going up because they're able, like with meadows, good functioning meadow is wet enough that those conifer species can't grow there, because they get they're drowned. Basically, they get too much water and they can't survive. But as soon as they start to establish themselves, and usually in drought, drought years, they start to suck up more and more of that water, and then all of the sudden you don't have a meadow, you have a really dense, really scary, really intense forest. And so at that point, it does take really heavy restoration work to remove it and get it back to that state. But then, because meadows are such a annual ecosystem that even you know, after your first year of burning, the next spring, when everything grows, all the meadow plants, not all of them, but a lot of them grow back. And anything that had kind of that seed bank that's still in that area grows back in their luscious and they're green and they're beautiful. And so it's really a great, a great focus right now, I think, as far as kind of really trying to to restore these practices in places that are really like, really need it, like at a critical state right now,

Megan Kay: 37:57

Communities located in wildfire prone areas need to take extra measures to live safely. There are many ways to prepare communities and properties for wildfire, including creating and maintaining adequate defensible space and hardening homes to withstand wildfire. This could mean altering or replacing certain components of the home. Our wildfire home retrofit guide will help you better prepare your home and communities for wildfire. You can find the guide and resources section of our website at livingwithfire.com.

Christina Restaino: 38:23

I want to hear a little bit more about the Fire Resilience Project and thinking about the kind of, you know, three different ecosystem types, if you will, right, you have the Sierra Nevada, the PJ Woodland and the Sagebrush Ecosystem. And so what does, what do targets for cultural burning look like in those three very significantly different eco regions, if you will, that we have here.

Helen Fillmore: 39:05

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. So the Fire Resilience Project really came out of the Máyala Wáta cultural burn, because we're we really our department is like environmental protection focused, so we don't have like a fire suppression focus, or something like that within our department. And so when it came up that, like, you know, fire is a stewardship practice, what is that going to look like for like, what do we what skills do we need? What resources do we need within this department to then be able to use fire as a stewardship practice on our projects for environmental protection, and so that's kind of how the conversation got started, and what we're what we're looking at. But then it's tricky in these different ecosystems. So again, fire and meadows, it's obvious that meadows need to be cleared out when they start, when those conifers start to encroaching, encroaching on them, and.

Christina Restaino: 40:00

Even in general, in Sierra Nevada mixed conflict forest, it's pretty obvious. But then in these sage brush woodland ecosystems with cheatgrass invasive species, implementing fire becomes this very complicated thing to tackle.

Megan Kay: 40:18

Yeah, because isn't there? Isn't there more fire than there historically was in those ecosystems?

Helen Fillmore: 40:23

Yes, and it's and the fire's devastating, right? Because pinyon pines, they're like these little shrubs that are close to the ground. They don't have a thick bark. If fire gets to them, they're gone for the most part. And so trying to figure out what fire may or may not have looked like in the Pine Nut Hills is a little bit trickier, but I have some theories, kind of based off of because so the one thing that's different about Tahoe and the Pine Nut Hills is that we do have a much more recent and stronger cultural memory about what happens in the Pine Nut Hills, because we, our families, kept our, like, tribal allotment properties in the Pine Nut Hills because they were so significant to our culture, based off of, like, what we can find, they didn't. They never, you know, just did an understory burn, or tried to do an understory burn in the Pine Nut Hills. Based off the I think, like the evidence from our culture, I would say the evidence from an ecological standpoint, however, is also weak at best. As far as what change happened in the mid 1850s that led to this high encroachment of Pinyon-Juniper, both kind of in filling within the forest areas and then also spreading. So I do, on a personal note, feel like some of our theories from a cultural standpoint, are a little bit stronger than what we might be able to find out from a like a scientific or ecological standpoint. And there is starting to be come they're starting. There are some studies coming out about this is going to get kind of heavy for a second, but studies in the southwest talking about depopulation. And so when settlers came here, when they first started showing up, our communities were already decimated because, like disease had come before them. It it pre like it followed them beforehand. We used to have very extensive trade routes. And so even before we started interacting with settlers, we were interacting with people who interacted with, who interacted with, who interacted with settlers, and then kind of already experiencing that devastation from disease. And so we might not know what our population was pre colonization, but we can estimate that it would be a lot larger than what it was when they did come here, or when they did start, kind of making estimates about that. And so with that becomes a huge land use change, right? Because people aren't even they're just less people in the environment using the resources. I mean now we have over as a country, over population, potentially. I mean as a world, you know, we're really putting our resources at their third capacity to a large degree. But in those times we were they were being underutilized for for at least a few decades right before well that, I would say they're still being under utilized to what they're kind of ecologically adapted to do, because not only with Washoe people, but for the Numu and Newe, the Paiute and Shoshone people in the Great Basin, the pine nuts were the reason why we've been able to survive for 1000s of years, because it was a food source that you could store for multiple years and that you could and because you could store it, you could save it and store it, you could live off of it, even If there's a bad crop. So we have these climate of this, like, you know, high I always it's the most variable climate in almost the world, because we have so many different mountain ranges. We have hot summers and cold winters. So both in, like, a regular, you know, yearly climate. But then in our annual look at some years where we get a lot of snow, and then some years followed by no snow. And so you have to have some sort of a food source that you can store for multiple years if you're going to live. And so these areas were heavily, heavily used by our communities. And then when you remove people from that situation, then they're no longer being used. So I think some of our strongest, our strongest evidence of fire and cultural burning, or what, you know, what did we do to keep those areas healthy for the future? And I really do think a lot of it comes from the. How we gathered pine nuts, how we cooked pine nuts, and how we stored them. And so when we gathered pine nuts, we'd clean, I should say not when we'd like, not past tense, but when we gather pine nuts, we clean out the duff underneath these trees. And that's really important, especially when you go out there, because if fire can get into that Duff, it can get up into the tree really easy. So we clean out that duff because it creates kind of this clear area that when we knock the pine nuts onto the ground, then you can get them. And then the other part that we do is that we call it a , but it's like a big, long stick, and then use that to knock the pine cones onto the ground. And when you do that, you're also thinning, like trimming the trees, because these these trees don't knock their own. They're not the type of conifer that knocks like prunes themselves. So they have to have, like, to get rid of dead branches. They need assistance. And so when we're hitting those trees with that, it's getting rid of those, like those dead branches, and, you know, thinning that area out so in and of itself, even just how we gather it, it creates a more fire resilient tree, just from gathering alone and then with that death and that those dead branches. So when we cook our pine nuts, we cook them in like earthen ovens. We cook them under the ground. So you take that dead duff, those that branches, and you use it to start these like fires, to cook the pine nuts, and you cook the pine nuts. And so then you're also getting rid of all of the fuel that would have been accumulated by these original practices. And then it would have been done kind of for months in the fall time, because everybody would go up into the Pine Nut Hills. And our co worker, Shelley Wyatt, she was even talking, we were talking earlier this year, and she was talking about how her her dad would remember, because everybody go to the same camps. And so they would look out, like across over the hill and see like smoke coming up, and they'll say, oh so. And so must have just got up here from wherever and and they always knew that. So it's something that not only did they do it every year, but it was something that people were so comfortable with, and they just spend, you know, the fall time up there, and even kind of into more recent years, but now, like, what you're saying with cheatgrass? I mean, I don't even know, like, we don't know what the solution is right now. We know that we're our community is experiencing that devastation. Our elders are always asking us, like, what are we doing to protect the Pine Nut Hills? But with that invasive like, there it, I hate to say, like, there's not a whole lot of hope we're going to do our best no matter what, and anything we can do to kind of help, like, the next person that's going to have to pick that up and do it too, I think is worth the effort, but, but, yeah, it's a is definitely a tricky conversation once we start talking about like fire in the face of climate change, in the face of invasive species, in the face of things that you know are a little bit harder to

Christina Restaino: 48:18

You know, I also would think that the control. gathering of the duff and the litter and the branches and everything and burning all throughout probably kept down seedlings from encroaching right so it's not only was it making it more resilient to fire, But it was also reducing kind of in growth, which is becoming a problem in those regions also now, right? And so it's that, that dynamic, it, it reminds me, I went on a trip in the Inyo with some tribal elders there, and they were explaining the Piaget trenches on the Jeffrey pine trees and how they gather the larvae of the Pandora moth and they but historically, they would clear the duff around all of the big Jeffrey pine trees. And those are some of the oldest, most kind of iconic, beautiful pine trees that that exist on the east side because they were culturally maintained for generations. And, you know, those trees have survived multiple wildfires in the contemporary era because of that. And so I think that that logic is really sound, right? That that's what was happening in the pine nuts, that it's this mix of you kind of grooming the ecosystem, if you will, managing it. And then, you know, having that ecosystem adapt to that management over time, and then you remove that entirely. And, well, you. You don't get that anymore. These sites that need to be restored are the sites where that kind of, you know, multi generational understanding of ecosystem, process and function has been removed, right? And it's that, that very key, you know, whether it's suppressing giant wildland fires, whether it's removing cultural practices, any of these kind of critical maintenance regimes that were occurring that are now gone. That's why we are working so hard to quote, unquote, restore our, our, our, our our ecosystems, is to find that balance again. But just like you said, the target of what that balance is is changing so significantly, with invasive species, with climate change, with encroachment of more humans and the wildland urban interface, right? So you know, bringing in the lessons learned as much as we can is so critical, but it is hard sometimes to feel like we are. We are keeping up with the pace and scale that's needed. And it's all sorts of human interactions, right? Because it's like we need to think about contemporary human interactions in the current system that we're engaging with, right? And and all social scientists, which I'm trained as an ecologist, but have worked a lot side by side with folks in the social sciences, you can read dozens of, hundreds, thousands of academic papers showing ecological resilience is social resilience is, you know, right? There are these. You can't have one without the other. I still think we're having to convince agencies and folks that this social, cultural resilience is just as important as ecological resilience, and you can't have one without the other. And I'm seeing all the heads nod here on the Zoom screen. But you know, I think that one of the issues that I tend to have is that, you know these planning processes that we need to go through in order to implement any management actions on the landscape takes such a long time that by the time we get to implement them, that it's like, well, now the target has changed, and we need to be rethinking how we're you know, yeah, it's just we have so much data and science and information and suggestions out there. We just need to do.

Helen Fillmore: 53:41

The other part too is like, when it does come to that social component, what we're also facing right is that even, I mean, we want people to reconnect and with the land, but we want them to reconnect with it in the right ways. So like, one of the things that we're really struggling with in our Pine Nut Hills is, like, off road vehicle use and they, they're creating, like, way more bad disturbance than they are any kind of good disturbance and and so I think that's the other part, is like, making sure that we're, we're telling, like, the the right story, that it's not just, yeah, it's not just Kind of going up there, and I don't know, I mean, cultural appropriation has been such a huge issue that we've also experienced that having like that conversation can get tricky. But I think one of the things like about our work is that we really do get to work directly, like with the tribe and for the tribe, and so everything we do really is kind of not appropriative at that point. It really is about kind of getting doing the right things that are, you know, there are families that their families have already been doing for so

Megan Kay: 54:52

we're already talking about it, to transition to kind long, of like this what you guys see is the future of fire and stewardship on, I mean, I guess you can whatever you could be in the US in the world, but also, like, specifically, just on Washoe lands, like, how, what? And I would, I would, I would ask you, not just like your hopes and dreams for the history of fire, but also, like, based on your experience like working with inner agencies, like, what are some successes you've seen some inspiring things, and also just some challenges to, like, these stewardship endeavors.

Rhiana Jones: 55:36

In terms of working with other agencies. You know, I kind of started that process, and what I have found is, when it's not fire season, they are very, very receptive and willing and open to working with tribes. And, you know, they understand our need for wanting to bring fire back to the land. You know, talking about cultural burning and prescribed fire, it's gotten a lot of, I don't know what's the word momentum this year, with respect to California being on fire, and, you know, just kind of rethinking about our land practices, not just as a tribe or as an indigenous person, but as somebody who lives in California, or somebody who lives in the Great Basin, just, you know, like, what we're doing, you know, isn't working any longer. It might have worked in the past with suppressing fire, but now it's gotten to the point where these forests are so overgrown that it's like, okay, let's take a step back and look at maybe how, you know, indigenous people managed land before, and if this is the right direction to go. So they've been very open and receptive. We've also been very fortunate to have other tribes come and do training for our community, the Greenville Rancheria and Danny Manning, and then also Bill Trip from the Karuk tribe in Northern California, and Ron Good from, I believe the East Fork, Mono tribe, or is it mono? I never.

Christina Restaino: 57:12

It's mono. They always say mono disease, its mono.

Rhiana Jones: 57:18

right? My dad better not hear this. Is going to give it to me. So those tribes and those particular people have been, have been working towards the school for some years. They've, they have, you know, the proper connections, the the path you need to take to do what we want to do, which is, you know, kind of be in charge of our own, our own burning, perhaps have a native fire program that is just in terms of being like more self sufficient, or a sovereign nation, like be able to have our own, our own fire crew that protects our own homelands. So I think, I yeah. I think people are receptive and open to it, and this is the perfect time to be starting a program like this, because of the situation that you know, California has been in with, with the wildfires these past few seasons, and climate change and whatnot.

Megan Kay: 58:26

Thank you for listening to the Living with Fire Podcast. You can find more stories about wildfire and other resources at livingwithfire.com the Living with Fire Program is funded by the University of Nevada, Reno Extension Nevada Division of Forestry, Bureau of Land Management and the United States Forest Service.