We Arrive With Fire | Ne-kah Nuue’m Mehl Mech

Since time immemorial, the Yurok people have placed fire on the land. The goal is not to control fire, but to work in collaboration with it—inviting it in when the season is right, when the conditions are amenable, and when the land is ready. Fire cleanses, fire prepares the ground, and fire clears the forest of debris and fuel. Fire makes it possible for many plants to propagate and grow including the hazel and many forest trees. Fire has been used to warm people, cook meals, and purify the land.

Ongoing colonization has separated Yurok people from their cultural fire practices with dire consequences. Colonization has decimated earth-preserving traditions and severed Indigenous peoples from their land and ways of living. More than mere observers of nature, Indigenous peoples have actively sustained the ecosystem by placing fire on the land, gathering plants in sustainable ways, and harvesting.

Yurok grandmother and knowledge keeper Margo Robbins is leading a movement to reunite fire and land. In the village of Weitchpec, California, she established the Cultural Fire Management Council centering the fire knowledge of the Yurok tribe. She is constructing a cultural firehouse to organize and to educate people about “good fire.”

By integrating ancestral wisdom and future learning, fire can be transformed from a force of destruction to one of creation. We Arrive With Fire | Ne-kah Nuue'm Mehl Mech charts the ways in which Yurok people are working to ensure that people, land, and fire remain united now and into the future.