Images presented are from Variations on Boreal Smouldering 2024, by Allan Harding MacKay
Fire As an Agent, More Than a Tool
As alluded to early on, the existing literature suggests that
historically, Indigenous peoples understood that humans
were not the only agents of change in the boreal forest [70].
For Cree people for example, fire is seen as a being that has
a spirit. Offerings (like tobacco or sage) are made to the fire
spirit in ceremony (Phillip Campiou, Cree Elder, personal
communication).5 Baker [72] has documented a creation
story from Bigstone Cree Nation Elder Albert Yellowknee
when she asked about fire use in the boreal forest: “… the
creator breathes fire into two poplar trees for them to become
humans. In this sense, fire is a life-giving force. He reminded
me that everything is interconnected, fire included.” For
many, this understanding of sacred fire persists. More than
simply a form of combustion, landscape fires are understood
as being connected to a wider set of human-land relationships
and, in some cases, agents of change with profound
implications for those that interact with it.
Anishinaabe of Pikangikum First Nation Elders, located
in what is now northwestern Ontario, described fire in
relation to a larger cosmological reality, conferring agency
to beings like beenaysee eshkotay or thunderbirds, and
the process of burning itself. Miller and Davidson-Hunt
[47] explored how Elders perceived forest fires as beings
“which [possess] agency and who intentionally create order
in landscapes.”
Elders also discussed fire as an expression
of agency, a process capable of growth, travel, and both
a source of destruction and renewal. Resting at night and
active in the day, fire is understood as a living component of
the landscape. While fire destroys and takes life, it is also a
source of life. Burned areas are rapidly recolonized by plants
and animals and provide new growth and increased food
opportunity for both humans and relations [47], and have
other impacts on forest renewal.
For Shoal Lake Anishnaabe, as described by Berkes and
Davidson-Hunt [9: p. 42]:
In the Anishinaabe perspective, the Creator placed
the people in Iskatewizaagegan (Shoal Lake) and provided
everything that they would need for their survival
in that place. In return, the Anishinaabe hold
the responsibility to maintain these gifts. Practices
that harm these gifts can lead to consequences for an
individual or the individual’s family. At the landscape
scale, there is a basic duty upon the Anishinaabe not
to influence abundance or distribution of habitats. In a
workshop with elders in Pikangikum, the same principle
emerged and was concisely translated into English
as, “as was, as is”.
The creation of blueberry patches
through repeated burning was not seen as a contradiction
of this principle. Burning or other disturbance
simply reveals the different combinations of plants that
are naturally present in the landscape.
Further east in Labrador, for example, fire also has an
important role for the Innu in their cultural life, being the
center of many ceremonies [41•].
For Indigenous peoples in the boreal forest, fire is part
of a complex network of relationships beyond that of just
humans and fire. Fire is connected to a wide range of species
on which Indigenous communities depend on, and the
presence and absence of fire narrates how these relationships
between humans, plants, and animals transpire. This is similar
to how some other nonhuman entities such as glaciers,
rivers, plants, and wildlife are understood as active agents
and beings in the world [73, 74]. As such, several Indigenous
scholars have described relationships between human and
nonhuman beings in terms of treaties, care, and kinship [75,
76]. In some instances, fire is an important component of
strengthening these relationships [77•]. Instead of conceiving
fire exclusively as a tool, Indigenous peoples see fire,
humans, and other elements of the environment as active
components in the boreal, and link their epistemological
worldviews to the relations between human and nonhuman entities on the land.
Indigenous conceptualizations of fire,
relation and land offer radical alternatives to dominant
approaches to fire and the environment.
The boreal needs
fire [9], and people need the boreal
Conclusions
Indigenous knowledge systems have allowed Nations to
survive for thousands of years in a constantly changing
world [55•]. Indigenous peoples in the boreal have
applied fire on their landscapes for a multitude of reasons.
They understand fire as an active, alive agent. As
an agent, fire is capable of movement, destruction, and
creation, acting on the landscape to create order, within
a living, connected environment. Fire operates on the
landscape, co-existing with and challenging people of
the boreal forest.
This paper summarizes a diverse body of scholarly
literature documenting Indigenous perspectives and
interactions with fire on the landscape. This body of
research “collectively refute[s] the idea that… forests
are essentially unchanged by people, either in the past
or present day” [41•: p. 11]. This paper challenges the
dominant narrative of wildland fire history in the boreal
forest that has to date focused on large-scale fires and
has limited engagement with small-scale fires that often
escape the detection of large-scale measurements. Factoring
in small-scale burning, including Indigenous historical
accounts, allows for a more holistic and accurate
depiction of the place of fire in the boreal. As discussed
earlier, this paper also challenges the dominant narrative
that western biophysical research is the primary way of
knowing. Indigenous knowledges are presented as distinct,
holistic, and robust modes of knowing land and
fire that have been millenia in the making. We call on
our non-Indigenous colleagues who research on and write
about the boreal forest, to include Indigenous peoples
and perspectives in their work — not as footnotes or in
the acknowledgement sections, but as equal peers and
collaborators.
Due to climate and forest fuel changes, Indigenous communities
are at increased risk of evacuations and wildfire
related impacts [29, 62••]. There is increasing interest by
government agencies and non-Indigenous researchers to
“integrate” or “incorporate” Indigenous knowledge about
fire, including cultural burning practices, into colonial management
systems [138]. This enthusiasm to engage Indigenous
knowledge about fire must also include discussions
regarding Indigenous leadership and engagement in forest
and wildfire management decisions, including training, certification,
and liability issues. Indigenous peoples should
not only be informing decision-makers. There needs to be a
shift in power so that they are the ones making the decisions
about their own territories.
Text Excerpted from Centering Indigenous Voices: The Role of Fire in the Boreal Forest of North America 27 July 2022
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Court Painter proudly presenting the work of his Press Attache AHM