Contemporary Western fire science is integrating what Indigenous Peoples discovered over thousands of years of observation, and trial and error: fire is key to optimizing forest vitality and biodiversity. The merging of these two ways of knowing could signal the end to our misguided policy of fire suppression, and the beginning of fire-resilient communities with a new relationship to one of nature’s most elemental and fearful forces. With fire ecologists Chad Hanson and Frank Kanawha Lake.