{"id":14098,"date":"2020-10-12T10:00:10","date_gmt":"2020-10-12T17:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calcanstaging.kinsta.cloud\/?p=14098"},"modified":"2020-10-11T22:53:43","modified_gmt":"2020-10-12T05:53:43","slug":"reflecting-on-indigenous-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calclimateag.org\/es\/reflecting-on-indigenous-roots\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflecting on Our Indigenous History"},"content":{"rendered":"

In recognition of Indigenous People\u2019s Day, we want to acknowledge the generations of indigenous knowledge and relationships that shaped the landscape we now know and name as California.<\/p>\n

CalCAN\u2019s four staff people, spread out between Sebastopol, Sacramento and Alameda, live and work on traditional territory of the Southern Pomo, Coast Miwok, Chochenyo, Ohlone, and Nisenan people. I write from Sonoma County, the colonized lands of the Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok people, but I am displaced from my people and my ancestral homeland, the yak tit\u02b8u tit\u02b8u yak ti\u0142hini Northern California Chumash Tribe of San Luis Obispo County and Region. My ancestral village site is \u00a0ts\u0268tpxatu, meaning ” place of the whales”, what is now called\u00a0<\/span>Avila Beach on the Central Coast.<\/p>\n

Not only do all Californians live, work and play on indigenous land, we also use traditional indigenous practices as we continue to shape and produce food on these lands.<\/p>\n

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The Pauma Band of Luise\u00f1o Indians (San Diego County)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There has been an increasing focus recently on the indigenous land management practice\u00a0 of cultural burns<\/a> as a means to reduce wildfire risk and spread, as California continues to grapple with a vast and growing wildfire season this year. While this is a record year for fire, burning over 4 million acres<\/a> across the state, it is worth contextualizing this in the longer history of human relationship with the land. Before California became a state, between 5.6-13 million acres of California would burn annually from a combination of lightning strikes and indigenous people\u2019s cultural burning, which was a highly effective and commonly used vegetation management tool.<\/p>\n

An excellent resource for both cultural burning and indigenous food production approaches is Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California\u2019s Natural Resources<\/u> by M. Kat Anderson. It describes several ways that indigenous people interacted and worked with the natural landscape to grow food, fiber and medicine, including:<\/p>\n