Firelighters: Fire is Medicine
Our relationship with fire is out of balance, leading to catastrophic wildfires. FIRELIGHTERS follows Yurok and Karuk burning rights activists as they share their knowledge and provide solutions to this global problem.Between lightning strikes and Indigenous burns, most landscapes in North America were shaped by fire for centuries.
Indigenous people had, and still have, deep knowledge of the art of using fire. For most of the 20th century, U.S. federal fire policy was guided by a strategy of fire suppression, which has been one of the main causes of current catastrophic fires.
Native Americans face persecution and penalty when they try to use fire in line with their traditions?even on public lands where they often hold treaty rights to hunt, fish and gather.A follow-up to the successful film Apache 8, produced in 2011, FIRELIGHTERS follows the transformative work of women leaders from the Yurok and Karuk Tribes who are building educational resources to share indigenous practices and create policies to take back indigenous burning rights.
