UC Davis

Land is central to the identity, culture, and social movements of California Native people. The environmental conditions created by California Native natural resource stewardship included larger salmon populations, more fire resilient landscapes, abundant wildlife, and more productive berry, acorn and basketry plants (Anderson 2013, Lake and Long 2014). In resistance to over a century of direct, state-sponsored genocide and violence, California Native land stewardship practices endure. These practices are described in many disciplines as Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), Indigenous science, or local knowledge. Indigenous knowledge provides a vision of a future that extends beyond the settler visions of crisis that are currently driving land stewardship in California and instead offer specific critiques and replacements for settler institutions. The following chapters offer grounded examples of how Indigenous knowledge, theory, and practice can transform forest and wildlife stewardship in California.Chapter 1: Environmental justice in forest management decision-making: challenges and opportunities in California In this study, we evaluated the forest management decisions made by California’s ambitious Forest Health Program (https://www.fire.ca.gov/grants/forest-health/) with regard to environmental justice policy. Based on our evaluation, we developed inclusive recommendations for improved application of EJ criteria to better recognize rural and Indigenous communities, including a rubric that would help better assess project applications for the Forest Health Program or similar programs. Chapter 2: Back to the Future: Indigenous Relationality, Kincentricity and the North American Model of Wildlife Management Case studies presented here reflect the importance of relational approaches in shifting and expanding wildlife stewardship towards a caretaking ethic that recognizes the agency of wildlife and our collective responsibility to create thriving ecosystems. Indigenous-led wildlife stewardship brings us closer to climate and environmental justice because it expresses an Indigenous futurity beyond avoiding crisis and moves us towards thriving and interwoven social ecological systems. This perspective is a critical expansion of current state-led approaches that rely on the NAM. We conclude that approaches developed based on Indigenous stewardship concepts of kincentricity and radical relationality offer enormous potential for a broader ecosystem focus that is intentional about healing the land and the relationships to culture that ensure long term caretaking both of Indigenous homelands and critical habitat. Chapter 3: Place based learning and cross-cultural partnership for an Indigenous Fire Future In this chapter, we discuss the Keepers of the Flame project, an intercultural coalition developed at University of California, Davis, promoting cultural exchange and experiential learning around fire. We highlight how these cultural burning workshops that are held by Indigenous fire practitioners engage Indigenous fire knowledge; construct healthier relationships between land, fire, and people; and envision Indigenous fire futures based on justice, collaboration, and cultural revitalization. We address concerns surrounding knowledge sharing, specifically the risk of commodification and appropriation of Indigenous knowledge. We discuss how intercultural learning conducted ethically can build collective action fortified against extractive tendencies perpetuated by crisis epistemologies.