Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Char Miller, "Burn Scars: A Documentary History of Fire Suppression, from Colonial Origins to the Resurgence of Cultural Burning" (Oregon State UP, 2024)
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Char Miller, "Burn Scars: A Documentary History of Fire Suppression, from Colonial Origins to the Resurgence of Cultural Burning" (Oregon State UP, 2024)
Fire is a means of control and has been deployed or constrained to levy power over individuals, societies, and ecologies. In Burn Scars: A Documentary History of Fire Suppression, from Colonial Origins to the Resurgence of Cultural Burning (Oregon State UP, 2024), Pomona College professor Char Miller has edited a collection of documents and essays tracing the history of fire and human interactions in the West and across North America. Indigenous people in California and elsewhere used fire for their own benefit, allowing naturally occurring wildfires to replenish landscapes, and controlling "light burns" to better suit their own hunting, gathering, and agricultural means. It was only with the arrival of first the Spanish and then other European and American settlers that fire took on a decidedly "uncivilized" connotation. As Americans instituted fire regimes across the continent, wildfires grew larger and forests unhealthier. It's only been in recent years that Native people, using traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and settler forest science have begun to combine as a means of restoring fires as a central component of forest health.
Char Miller is the W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies
View all episodes
By Marshall Poe
4.3
103103 ratings
Fire is a means of control and has been deployed or constrained to levy power over individuals, societies, and ecologies. In Burn Scars: A Documentary History of Fire Suppression, from Colonial Origins to the Resurgence of Cultural Burning (Oregon State UP, 2024), Pomona College professor Char Miller has edited a collection of documents and essays tracing the history of fire and human interactions in the West and across North America. Indigenous people in California and elsewhere used fire for their own benefit, allowing naturally occurring wildfires to replenish landscapes, and controlling "light burns" to better suit their own hunting, gathering, and agricultural means. It was only with the arrival of first the Spanish and then other European and American settlers that fire took on a decidedly "uncivilized" connotation. As Americans instituted fire regimes across the continent, wildfires grew larger and forests unhealthier. It's only been in recent years that Native people, using traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and settler forest science have begun to combine as a means of restoring fires as a central component of forest health.
Char Miller is the W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies
More shows like New Books in Native American Studies
View all
Democracy Now! Audio
5,701 Listeners
The Book Review
3,907 Listeners
New Books in History
209 Listeners
New Books in Psychoanalysis
189 Listeners
New Books in Military History
161 Listeners
New Books in African American Studies
164 Listeners
New Books in Political Science
63 Listeners
New Books in Sociology
46 Listeners
New Books in Philosophy
110 Listeners
New Books in World Affairs
24 Listeners
Lectures in History
741 Listeners
New Books in Intellectual History
61 Listeners
Jacobin Radio
1,445 Listeners
For The Wild
1,167 Listeners
Ben Franklin's World
1,552 Listeners
The New Yorker Radio Hour
6,680 Listeners
The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker
2,135 Listeners
Sidedoor
2,215 Listeners
The Blindboy Podcast
1,788 Listeners
Throughline
16,242 Listeners
Know Your Enemy
2,012 Listeners
TrueAnon
3,299 Listeners
The Red Nation Podcast
997 Listeners
5-4
3,471 Listeners