Indigenous Cultural Practices 

“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

            With wildfires raging near where I live in California, those in charge are trying to understand what is happening and why.  The blame game is popular, but answers are few and far between.  It is much too late to stop the destructive and tragic situation, but it might be useful to take a serious look at the historical forest management processes of the Native Californians before their “Acorn Culture” was interrupted by those who thought they knew more.

            The acorn tree was more than a food source.  My first anthropology professor, long ago, defined culture as “everyday life.”  In the everyday life of the California Native Americans, acorns were a major part of their life for thousands of years.  The many varieties of acorn trees provided medicine, dyes, food for animals, and much more. 

            When one speaks of subsistence practices <itsallaboutculture.com>, the livelihoods of Indigenous Californians consisted of a lot of practice.  Those practices, conducted among acorn-productive trees of the Coast Live Oak, the Valley Oak, the Blue Oak, and the California Black Oak, were handed down over generations for at least 4,000 years.  

However, before acorns were gathered and processed into various foods and other uses, the acorn “orchards” or forests had to be managed. Acorn/oak trees covered about a third of California’s land.  Proper forestry management led to highly productive acorn harvests.  The Indigenous peoples of what is now Los Angeles County were the Tongva, the Tataviam, the Serrano, the Kizh, and the Chumash.  Every tribe knew their land was a hub for wildfires if there was no rain and if there were high winds that could assist fires to spread over long distances.

            In 1769, Captain Gaspar de Portola camped in what is now Los Angeles.  He and Franciscan missionaries and explorers made notes in their journals and diaries while traveling through harsh terrains in Alta California.  They wrote about, and complained about the smoke from fires made by Indigenous peoples for land management. They viewed these fires with curiosity and concern because they were unaware of the ecological benefits such fires provided. 

            The following University of California website, on April 6, 2022, has a great discussion and some videos about the practice of forest management, which is documented as “good fire.”  The people in charge of LA County’s current ongoing fires should have a great interest in this discussion by Robyn Schelenz and Jessica Wheelock.  

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/how-indigenous-practice-good-fire-can-help-our-forests-thrive

                  The Indigenous Californians knew how to use “good fire” to help their acorn trees flourish.  They understood ecology in a very personal way.  The “burns” they created were protection from the “bad fire” that can come unexpectedly in many ways.  How did they know that?  According to the article, “Ecological records and oral Indigenous history alike describe how fire, sparked by lightning or planned by tribes, played a vital role in shaping California’s landscape for thousands of years.”  This seems to concur with the diary and journal writers of the 17th and 18th centuries who made first contact with the Indigenous populations of California.

What the early explorers were witnessing was cultural burning.  Ron Goode, Chair of North Fork Mono Tribe wrote on April 1, 2022:

Cultural burning is about culture. And it is not about restoring the landscape. It is not about enhancing or restoring the resources. It is about the sustainability of the culture and the practitioner, the traditionalist, and the traditional way of life of the tribal group, their culture. —Ron Goode, Chair North Fork Mono Tribe

All the fires in LA County weigh heavily on those responsible for the clean-up and rebuilding, but it is estimated that 70 percent of the population will not return to their property locations that the fire has destroyed.  None of those who experienced the loss of life, loss of homes, or loss of whole communities may belong to an Indigenous tribe, but they still belonged to a cultural group or neighborhood. Had “cultural burns” been carried out for long-term forest management in the areas where the fires caused the most damage, the outcomes may have been different.

The following article about “Using Fire to Fight Fire,” documents how contemporary Native Americans, like the Miwok and Chukchansi Tribes, still practice “cultural burns.”  It tells how Indigenous fire management is being brought back to the landscape.

https://www.americanindianmagazine.org/story/using-fire-to-fight-fire

            Besides the benefit of protecting the acorn oak trees for the livelihoods of Indigenous peoples, other species benefit as well. Ecosystems depend on the coordination of many environmental/ecological conditions.  The Acorn Woodpecker is just one of the important coordinates within the California landscapes.  They depend on acorns, too, for their primary food source.  They create what ecologists call “granary” trees.  The picture below illustrates how the Woodpecker stores acorns for future use.  This process of storing the acorns may inadvertently distribute the dropped acorns on the ground.  The acorns then germinate and sprout, and perhaps Emerson’s comment is not too far off.  Over thousands of years, a thousand forests may result from one acorn.

Woodpecker Granary Tree – Photo Creative Commons, Public Domain

            There are different perspectives on fire management, and Indigenous practices have been misunderstood by scholars and experts alike.  Nevertheless, their everyday life and “Acorn Culture” was a very integral and important part of maintaining the health of California’s ecosystems. Studying past cultures helps both the present and the future.

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