Cultural burns. Prescribed blazes. A healthy forest. What exactly is “good fire?” Let’s ask Indigenous fire scientist Dr. Amy Christianson, who is a co-host of the podcast ...Good Fire. This wonderfully generous and informed scholar took a quick break from her Canadian wilderness vacation to fill me in on Indigenous history, thoughts on cultural burns, flim-flam, evacuations, hunting strategies, land stewardship, learning from Indigenous wildfire fighters, Two-Eyed Seeing and more. Huge thanks to her and Matt Kristoff -- who also hosts the Your Forest Podcast -- for allowing us to use excerpts from their Good Fire interview. Subscribe to both podcasts to get more ecological knowledge in your ears.
Listen via Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Follow Dr. Amy Christianson on Bluesky
Check out the Good Fire podcast and the Your Forest podcast
A donation was made to Indigenous Residential School Survivors
Full-length (*not* G-rated) Indigenous Fire Ecology episode + tons of science links
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Sound editing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions, Jake Chaffee, Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media, and Steven Ray Morris
Made possible by work from Noel Dilworth, Susan Hale, Kelly R. Dwyer, Aveline Malek and Erin Talbert
Smologies theme song by Harold Malcolm
