After a sharp increase in uncontrollable wildfires across the northern U.S. and Canada in recent decades, the Bureau of
Indian Affairs and the U.S. Forest Service have been open to new approaches and ways to address the inherent weaknesses
of their bureaucracies. Due to their lack of historical understanding of past fire management methods, they turned to
archaeologists, who have collected information on more than 10,000 years of human activity. For their approach, these
government agencies studied the perspectives and wisdom of Indigenous peoples offered through shared oral histories.
Outreach and deliberations by federal officials led to the creation of the People, Fire, and Pines working group in
2018. The working group was formed with support from the Coalition of Archaeological Synthesis (CfAS).
Thanks to the advances in technology and the accumulation of an increasingly detailed global data set of human history,
modern archaeology has more usable information for government and society than in decades past. CfAS, one of the leading
early drivers of this approach, helped the working group conduct two workshops in 2018 and 2019. These workshops
attempted to bridge a gap between Western and Indigenous perspectives to create a more holistic understanding of human
fire use in North America since the most recent ice age. The participants of the workshops studied the Indigenous
knowledge of the Border Lakes region, developed across the millennia of living on and with the land, along with
archaeological and tree-ring data gathered by researchers from red pine forests in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area
Wilderness (BWCAW) and the Great Lakes region.
The first workshop reached out to members of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the Bois Forte Band of
Lake Chippewa, focusing on “Indigenous fire stewardship” and the “Western concepts of wilderness.” The second workshop
was held at the Lac La Croix First Nation Reserve and delved further into the discussion on ways to propel collaborative
efforts. The workshops, along with other outputs from the group, including museum exhibits, documentaries, and
peer-reviewed papers, have helped reshape the perspectives surrounding Indigenous fire stewardship and the damaging
effects of settler groups, who actively disrupted the long-standing relationships between people and their environment.
In a 2020 paper, People, Fire, and Pines project organizer Evan Larson, a dendrochronologist and professor at the
University of Wisconsin-Platteville, along with two University of Minnesota researchers, analyzed tree-ring data from
500 years of red pine forest growth in the BWCAW of northern Minnesota. This research began with a focus on the scars
left behind by forest fires and co-occurring cultural modification of bark removal for medicinal and utilitarian
purposes, and it later broadened to include the historical relationship between people and fire. Though the Indigenous
peoples fundamentally changed and shaped these landscapes with fire for centuries, the Western population, who later
moved into these lands, designated culturally relevant landscapes as “wilderness” and inaccurately defined these areas
as “untrammeled by man,” under the Wilderness Act of 1964. In fact, humans have shaped the region of northern Minnesota
for thousands of years through fire and forest management practices.
The research conducted in the BWCAW and facilitated through CfAS support continues to expand the understanding of
Indigenous fire stewardship through the Wisconsin Sea Grant-funded project Nimaawanji’idimin giiwitaashkodeng. The
“Fire, blueberries and treaty rights” episode of the podcast, “The Water We Swim In,” offers a glimpse into the story
that emerged from this work. In the episode, members of Nimaawanji’idimin giiwitaashkodeng, which translates to, “We are
gathering around the fire,” share their experiences with cultural fire use and gathering blueberries among the pine
trees. In the context of paleoecological and archaeological data, the ecological evidence of past surface fire activity
obtained from the study confirms that the BWCAW was periodically burned to achieve forest conditions that were more
desirable to the Border Lakes Anishinaabeg community and are linked to the resilience and ecological health of pine
forests throughout the region.
Many other North American ecosystems burned periodically as well—sometimes through forest fires started by lightning
strikes, but more often through intentional fires set by Native American communities. More than a mere tool for survival
and achieving agricultural goals, fire became integral to and deeply rooted within the culture of Indigenous groups. For
example, the Ojibwe of the Great Lakes region regarded fire as a sacred force, identifying more than 700 uses for it.
The Ojibwe spirit of fire, Oshkigin, was a symbol of renewal and transformation.
Fire is one of our most ancient and important tools for human modification of local environments. Prescribed burning or
controlled burning, when used responsibly, is particularly valuable in forest management. For instance, one of the ways
in which managed fire benefits the ecology and ecosystem health of forests is that burning unwanted vegetation from the
forest floor allows for new seeds to germinate, which increases variability in the type and height of plants growing.
Red pine forests, like those found in the Border Lakes area, especially benefit from this use of fire as their seeds
require exposed soil to grow. Moreover, a greater balance between woody and grassy/herbaceous plants improves food
availability for livestock, wildlife, and pollinators. Clearing dead or dry vegetation in this manner also allows for
fire-dependent species and important food sources to grow, such as the blueberry in the Great Lakes region. Blueberries
used to proliferate in the region due to fire-based interventions from the Ojibwe community, who cleared patches of the
forest floor and made them conducive to berry bush growth. In addition, reducing the amount of dry vegetation on forest
floors also limits the potential severity of future wildfires by minimizing the available fuels.
The arrival of European settlers to the North American continent, however, brought about a turning point in the
relationship between people and fire. While North American Indigenous groups viewed fire as a great assistance to
landscape management, the Europeans only saw it as a destructive force that needed to be avoided at all costs, and this
led them to implement policies that suppressed all fire. The shift in attitude within the continent and suppression of
Indigenous culture caused a significant loss in traditional fire knowledge and practices, leading to ecological
consequences and large wildfires. As a member of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Melonee Montano,
mentioned in the podcast episode “Fire, blueberries and treaty rights,” the land has “literally been waiting” for fire
and fire-based intervention.
By studying material cultural resources, such as evidence of bark collection and forest fires left behind in the form of
scars on trees, archaeological researchers gain insight into past societies and the environments people lived in during
those times. In the case of wildfires, a better understanding of past human involvement in shaping local landscapes can
help prevent catastrophic fires in the future.
Collaboration between researchers, forest management agencies, such as the U.S. Forest Service and National Park
Service, and descendant communities creates an opportunity to reassess current practices and policies surrounding
wilderness management. Since the formation of the People, Fire, and Pines group, fire management plans have been revised
in partnership with the Lac La Croix First Nation to include prescribed fire in the Quetico Provincial Park of Ontario,
Canada, where “[t]hese fires are important in allowing the regeneration of red and white pine and maintaining their
presence on the landscape.” Burn plans for the Cloquet Forestry Center in Minnesota were also changed to include
cultural fire use through a collaboration between the University of Minnesota and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior
Chippewa. This initiative was funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Since the change in burn plans, multiple
successful prescribed fires have been conducted by Ojibwe firefighters in the Cloquet Forestry Center.
The resurgence of cultural fire practices, stemming from the initiatives started by the People, Fire, and Pines project,
underlines the value of combining Indigenous and archaeological knowledge. By reclaiming controlled burns and
implementing centuries-old fire practices to support effective forest management today, the relationship between people
and their surrounding environments can be reestablished. This restoration will not only benefit all parties in the
Border Lakes region and beyond but will also increase forest ecosystem diversity and resilience to fires, offering a
hopeful future for forest management in a changing climate.
The success of these initiatives sets a precedent for other institutions, which may benefit from a similar collaborative
approach by the sharing of temporal data among researchers, archaeologists, and descendent communities. Organizations,
such as CfAS, have begun to change the context of archaeological research by fostering collaboration across multiple
institutions and disciplines.
Analyzing prehistoric data to better understand the root causes of modern issues that originated in the greater global
past, like human contributions to climate change, conflict, and disease, can be used to facilitate solutions to current
issues and avoid greater ones in the future.
Author Bio: Irina Matuzava is a contributor to the Human Bridges project.