this fire absolutely would not have happened if it were cared for by tribal people. and we want to be able to share our knowledge, and people are continually asking us, can we do cultural burning. well, are you tribal? and why would you want to do cultural burning without us? ooh, yeah. look what happened when the white man got yoga. look how that went. we re starting to try to sway the agencies to think about native burning. yep, yeah. and that s passing on that traditional knowledge that it does have value, even if you re not indian. like here and now today, how can we change human behavior, and how can we rebuild that relationship of humanity to this earth? only way to maintain these forests is quit fighting mother nature. because mother nature is going to win. yeah. you know, even in the talk about how the climate is changing, we act like the earth is coming to an end. no, the earth is still going to be here. we just may not be here with it. yeah.
for starting over 1500 wildfires. this includes the camp fire. and that one pg&e pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter. for many in northern california, including me, pg&e has become a four-letter word. i m just taking a poll of everybody i talk to. word association. pg&e. fire. corporate greed. outdated. outdated. fall guy. lacking. my word is accountability. accountability, yeah, that would be nice. fighting for that accountability is mark tuolumne, the executive director of the utility reform network. we re an organization that s been around for about 50 years fighting for customers of pg&e. and law professor katherine sandoval from santa clara university. she is a former commissioner of the cpuc, the body that regulates pg&e. so pg&e was convicted of
dispatched to tackle the blaze in their own backyard. i want to talk about the camp fire and how that affected this community, how it affected the three of you. matt and joe both lost their homes there. so that s what was different about the camp fire is that it finally hit our home community. just a blanket statement. i han uthe camp fire much. okay. hopefully i don t choke up. i haven t had to get that out of my system yet. yeah, you know. even with the work that you do and the work you do every day, it s got to be hard to think about this side of it and this side of it, you know. so i understand. yeah, so i was off-duty, and i got a text message from a buddy of mine who was in the valley. and he goes hey, man, a pretty big fire. and he sent me a picture of this header. and i thought he was looking out to the west side of the valley. and he said no, bud, that s you. and literally, i looked up and i went oh, man. hopped in the truck and went to work. it s got to be hard
called greenville home for generations. here, we don t have a reservation. we re part of the community. so the tribe is a big part of this town. . long before it was ever called greenville, these were the sacred ancestral lands. you know we used to be large around here, but you got to remember that we ve already been through the apocalypse. 97% of our tribe was either murdered or died from disease, because this was ground zero for the gold rush. the white settlers temperature search for power and mountain lion. but danny and his people have not given up. you know, we re always trying to protect our sacred mountains and what we got left of our culture, real parts of our creation story all happened right here on this ground. it s understandable then that the tribal members of this community who have already experienced so much intergenerational trauma were hit hard by the fire.
ago there was five-foot flames. now it s sort of out. it s super fascinating. is there a reason for optimism like this? i don t think that we re going to be able to prescribe burn our way to help the entire landscape be safe. but i think it can help. i think we are heading in a good direction with it. now the state is finally at the point with policies that came forward today to recognize cultural burning. so it s now codified in some state law, and i was able to work on some of that policy development. the state has a plan that s coming forward. we re targeting the to burn 5,000 acres by 2025 within the state. that s not enough, but it s a starting point. and i think that the more that people get used to this idea, then it will happen. so that we can have fire on our own terms out here. first time lighting fire, not getting yelled at by my mom. this is this is kind of cool.