Braiding Sweetgrass

are four kinds of fire?” I am expecting his lesson on hardwoods and
softwoods, but there is something else on his mind.
“Well, first, of course, there’s this campfire you made. You can
cook on it, keep warm next to it. It’s a good place to sing—and it
keeps the coyotes away.”
“And toast marshmallows!” pipes up one of the kids.
“You bet. And bake potatoes, make bannock, you can cook most
anything on a campfire. Who knows the other kinds of fire?” he
asks.
“Forest fires?” one of the students tries tentatively.
“Sure” he says, “what the people used to call Thunderbird fires,
forest fires ignited by lightning. Sometimes they’d get put out by the
rain, but sometimes they could turn into huge wildfires. They could
be so hot they’d destroy everything for miles around. Nobody likes
that kind of fire. But our people learned to set fires that were small
and in just the right place and time so that they helped rather than
hurt. The people set these fires on purpose, to take care of the land
—to help the blueberries grow, or to make meadows for deer.” He
holds up a sheet of birch bark. “In fact, look at all that birch bark
you used in your fire. Young paper birches only grow up after fire,
so our ancestors burned forests to create clearings for birch.” The
symmetry of using fire to create fire-building materials was not lost
on them. “They needed birch bark so they used their own fire
science to create birch forests. Fires help out a lot of plants and
animals. We’re told that’s why the Creator gave people the fire stick
—to bring good things to the land. A lot of the time you hear people
say that the best thing people can do for nature is to stay away
from it and let it be. There are places where that’s absolutely true
and our people respected that. But we were also given the
responsibility to care for land. What people forget is that that