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- By Chez Oxendine
- Energy | Environment
The Karuk Tribe has secured the first agreement under California’s new law returning control of cultural burns to tribal leadership, marking an important step toward reclaiming traditional forest management practices.
The agreement with the California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) effectively delegates regulation of cultural burning to the Karuk Tribe’s council instead of state agencies. For Karuk Tribe Natural Resources Director Bill Tripp, the restoration of cultural burning practices offers benefits far beyond wildlife prevention.
A controlled burn, he said, can revitalize a forest choked on its own overgrown resources: burning away leaves can clear the way for flowers that bees need for nectar, while clearing out bug-infested acorns can leave better ones for deer and birds in the area. A blue jay carrying a good acorn creates a new tree elsewhere, and the growth continues.
“Subsequently you reduce some of the fuel that can catch embers in the summer and cause you problems in wildfire season,” Tripp told Tribal Business News. “There’s a million different connections like that between your goals when you’re doing cultural burns.”
The agreement follows implementation of California Senate Bill 310, which acknowledges tribal sovereignty to perform cultural burns in their own territory, had come into effect. The law reaffirms California’s commitment to addressing historical wrongs when state laws criminalized Indigenous burning practices and disrupted Traditional Ecological Knowledge. An 1850 state law imposed severe punishments on practitioners, part of a systematic effort to eliminate Indigenous cultural practices.
"SB 310 is part of that broader effort to correct those older laws that have caused harm, and really think through: How do we respect and support tribal sovereignty, respect and support traditional ecological knowledge, but also meet the climate and wildfire resiliency goals that we have as a state?" Geneva E.B. Thompson, CalNRA Deputy Secretary for Tribal Affairs, told the LA Times.
Under S.B. 310, states policies now defer to tribal regulations where possible, allowing CNRA and local air districts to enter agreements that shift regulatory duties to tribal leadership. In an interview with Tribal Business News, Thompson said the agreement — the first such compact under SB310 — was a “natural fit” for the Karuk Tribe, who championed the bill’s passage through the California legislature.
“They were the sponsoring tribe, and then when the governor signed it in September, they called me the day it happened and said ‘let's start the agreement,’” Thompson said. “They have been the thought leaders, the drivers, the movement behind 310 and a lot of the work.”
For the Karuk, that means bypassing complex bureaucracy and permit requirements for each burn. The autonomy leaves the Karuk free to do burns on their own time, maximizing their ecological impact without having to worry about labyrinthine planning processes with other agencies, Tripp said.
The CalNRA-Karuk agreement also secures grant funding to support capacity building and burn planning within the tribe. The Karuk are working with multiple agencies — including CalNRA, the US Forest Service, and local nonprofits — to improve forest conditions.
“It's been so long since fire has been used in the right ways at a meaningful scale that it can be dangerous to just go out there and start doing it,” Tripp said. “We're getting to the point where we're getting thousands and thousands of acres treated.”
Karuk Chairman Russell “Buster” Atteberry called the agreement a “victory” for the tribe’s traditional practices.
“Our people have been hurt for over a century by fire suppression laws that have drastically impacted our resources and communities by preventing us from feeling safe to conduct cultural burns to manage our forests and steward our lands, as is our inherent responsibility,”Atteberry said in a statement. “This victory acknowledges our true sovereignty and supports us in protecting our lands, just as our ancestors did.”
Brian Edwards provided reporting.
