Good Fire: Tending Native Lands offers a thoughtful look into the long-standing fire practices of Native communities in Northern California, presenting fire not as an agent of destruction but as a carefully guided force for renewal. For generations, cultural burning has shaped landscapes, revived ecosystems, and supported community traditions. By centering Native fire practitioners, artists, ecologists, and cultural leaders, the exhibition brings attention to these enduring relationships between people and place, relationships often overlooked in mainstream environmental narratives.
Visitors encounter a wide range of materials that reveal how deeply intertwined cultural burning is with ecological health. Fire-dependent plants, ceremonial regalia, basketry, and filmed cultural burns provide insight into how purposeful fire supports both biodiversity and cultural continuation. Archival photographs and charred tree sections stand alongside contemporary works by artists such as Saif Azzuz, Renée Leann Castro-Ring, and Brian D. Tripp. Together, these elements trace the impact of land dispossession while underscoring the environmental consequences that followed the suppression of Native fire practices.
The exhibition also highlights present-day efforts to heal landscapes and restore sovereignty. Initiatives such as prairie renewal projects, Land Back movements, and the work of groups like the Cultural Fire Management Council illustrate how Native-led stewardship is bringing balance back to ecosystems long disrupted by colonial policies. These initiatives demonstrate the resilience of communities who continue to advocate for their ancestral knowledge and its role in shaping the future.
By reframing fire as a tool shaped through experience, respect, and generational learning, Good Fire: Tending Native Lands invites viewers to reconsider long-held assumptions. It asks us to imagine a landscape where fire is once again used with intention, where cultural knowledge is honored, and where ecological well-being is understood as inseparable from the wisdom of those who have tended the land since time immemorial.
Image: Margo Robbins (Yurok), of the Cultural Fire Management Council, leads a beneficial burn on Yurok homelands. The group starts the burn using me-chaa-nep (wormwood) torches. Photo by Kiliii Yuyan.
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