home to creatures both strange and wonderful. amazing things happen up in the trees. this blurry picture of my mom and dad from 2018 was taken in las vegas. i took it because i don t have that many pictures of my parents together, because they ain t together. it was an unusual event made more unusual because we d all gone to vegas to escape this. devastating news out of california. the camp fire. the camp fire. the camp fire. houses and flames, forests being scorched. the most destructive fire in california history. agh. lucky for us the fires hadn t made it to where my family lives in oakland, but the air had
fire started when a c-hook on one of pg&e s electrical transmission towers broke. this caused a high voltage cable to fall. the sparks from the resulting short circuit ignited the dry brush below. although pg&e s records were unclear on specifics, it was estimated that the broken c-hook along with other components of the tower had been in use for about 97 years. yeah. they had inspected that transmission tower and had reported that they were going to replace the critical parts, but they never got around to it. and the camp fire is not the only time pg&e s negligence caused major fire damage to california. investigations have concluded that pg&e were responsible for starting the deadly zogg fire, the kincade fire and most recently the dixie fire that destroyed greenville. so i spend my time working for free as co-counsel on the
it through the forest, the way we were all taught not to do as children. so the idea is not that we re never going to have fire here again. but when we do, it won t be hot enough to kill all these trees. it will stay low to the ground. yeah. we re looking great here. all with pitchforks with start coming in here. fire is a very social thing. if you can have the family involved, it should be like second nature to have that level of comfort in the culture around fire. wow. look at that. look at that over there. whoa! i mean, if i was just walking and i saw fire this high, i would be ahh! but very quickly out there today, i sort of was like this is what we re supposed to do. i think that s where we used to be going back 150 years or more, and that s where we need to be. you want to come out here and light something with a torch? yeah, sure. light one right there. and let s light every one step, okay. okay. fire is the teacher.
a tragedy compounded by the fact that until recently, native wisdom about how to co-exist with the fire had been suppressed. it said before the whites came here that people could ride horses like three side by side all through these forests around here, that it was that open. wow. danny is a seasoned firefighter. he helped establish a native-run fire department for the greenville rancheria. talk about the importance of the firehouse led that was led by your tribe? we teach more of the traditional knowledge, not just putting out the fire, but taking care of the earth. and if you take care of the earth, the earth will take care of you. you know, the old native ways. to learn more about this, danny invited me to sit down with tribal member trina cunningham who is directorate of a consortium and a tribal conservation specialist. one of the important aspects of it to me is the relationship of humanity with nature. and it seems that we ve
this would not have happened? 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