Indigenous Fire Shaped Oak Savannas
An interview with land manager Mary Parr
Growing up in Grand Rapids, Mary Parr knew from a young age that she wanted to work for the environment. She obtained an undergraduate degree in Natural Resources Management from Grand Valley State University and then traveled around the country working for various conservation organizations. Her experiences helped her realize her passion for restoration ecology and using fire as a restoration tool.
Today, she is the Stewardship Manager at Pierce Cedar Creek Institute in Hastings, where she manages 850 acres of natural land, coordinates conservation efforts, leads the prescribed fire program, and mentors undergraduate students in land stewardship. She is also finishing a Master of Science in Biology, and she will defend her thesis—which explores fire effects in different seasons—in November 2024.
Mary is Indigenous and a tribal member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. She says her work feels connected to her heritage.
Mary Parr
“It’s crazy being a land manager—I think about my ancestors. They were the original land managers,” she said. “I feel a lot of connection in what I’m doing and helping to preserve our natural areas for the next several generations after me.”
Mary has researched the historic and present-day ways Indigenous communities have stewarded the land, with a particular focus on cultural fire. She presented on the topic at The Stewardship Network’s 2024 conference.
Oak savannas and Indigenous fire
“Oak savanna is a very specific and special area, because it has that balance of fire frequency,” Mary said. More frequent and severe fire in years of drought would cause a savanna to become a prairie. Wetter years and fewer fires would give the oaks a chance to grow taller and more fire-resistant, causing prairie to transition into oak savanna. If that continued, savanna would become oak woodland. These communities would move and shift over time.
Most fire-dependent plants, oaks included, evolved this adaptation before humans were present in North America. But humanity’s arrival brought with it an increase in fire frequency, and this likely allowed for oak savannas and prairies to proliferate.
“A lot of fire that historically occurred globally was really because of humans,” Mary said. “How frequently these fires were occurring, especially throughout the Great Lakes area, is directly tied to Indigenous communities that were using fire as a form of management and stewardship of different natural communities that were used for different resources and intentional purposes.”
To understand the details surrounding cultural uses of fire is challenging in Michigan, but we can infer from places where the knowledge and practices have been preserved and able to continue.
“Unfortunately, within Michigan, we’ve lost a lot of the knowledge of what was burned where, why, and under what conditions and weather parameters,” Mary said. “But we do have some neighbors in Minnesota and Wisconsin that have maintained that information, and they are still within the Anishinaabeg people.”
Fire would be employed for numerous reasons: to support hunting, agriculture, and collection of materials.
“Historically, it would have been a community event. There would have been a few people in the community who were the leaders of the burns and would organize different things. A lot of times the women were the ones to say, ‘You need to burn this area,’ because it’s not producing as much as it once was, or the basketry materials aren’t as good.
“The burns themselves sometimes would have a cultural introduction that might have had smudging or drumming to prepare the space and let all the plant and animal relatives in that area know, ‘Hey, we’re coming in, we’re going to be burning,’ as kind of a warning.”
To ignite fires, they might have used bundles of grass or other ignition sources.
“But today, with a lot of the cultural burns that happen, we use drip torches. We use modern tools, because we’re allowed to evolve as well,” Mary said.
The future of Indigenous fire
Despite a multitude of challenges, cultural burns still happen today. Increasingly, Tribal environment departments are incorporating this practice in the lands they manage. Mary sees an opportunity for more collaboration between nonprofits, government entities, and tribes.
“I would love to see more conservation partners engage with Tribal entities to integrate Traditional Ecological Knowledge* into their land management strategies and allow Indigenous people to use the land for collection and other cultural purposes,” she said.
A long history of fire and cultural suppression continues to challenge the revival of cultural burning.
“For a long time, it was outlawed for Native Americans to conduct burns. Even today, a lot of the burns that happen on Indigenous lands have to be conducted through the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” Mary said. “With some of those strict fire management protocols, it doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room for some of the cultural practices to take place.”
Some hurdles are with the National Wildfire Coordinating Group standard, a rigid but safe protocol most firefighters in prescribed fire or suppression must follow. Important elements of cultural burns might be considered at odds with the requirements of the standard.
“Some of that might be like waiting to do a smudge before the burn starts or allowing elders to be on the fire line,” Mary said. Rules include physical capacity tests and certifications that may be out of reach for older people.
“You’re not going to get a grandpa or grandma to be able to pass those things,” Mary said, but their inclusion is important.
Access to land is another hurdle. Treaties govern land that tribes were forced to cede in the 1800s. Rights vary from treaty to treaty.
“We can only collect on Federal and State property, and if you look at the State of Michigan, a significant portion of it is private,” Mary said.
Collaboration between land managers who hold culturally significant lands and Tribal entities could help support the return of cultural burning. These collaborations are beginning to happen, but progress is slow.
“If we can connect and align the land manager, Tribal stewards, and also a prescription of fire at the right time, that would be incredible,” Mary said.
Mary also hopes to see more Indigenous people leading the application of fire as a restoration tool.
“I would like to see more Indigenous-led fire,” she said. “There’s a lot of really good work being done by Tribal environmental departments. Like with any organization, there’s always room to grow. I would love to see Tribal environmental people have more fire capacity internally. That could mean they have individuals who are qualified as Type 2 Firefighters, or they are able to participate in other burns with different nonprofits nearby.”
Mary is living her vision through her career, studies, and teachings. In her work at Pierce Cedar Creek Institute, she continues to be inspired by what fire can do.
“There is so much you can learn from the land through fire,” she said.
*According to the National Park Service, “Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is the on-going accumulation of knowledge, practice and belief about relationships between living beings in a specific ecosystem that is acquired by indigenous people over hundreds or thousands of years through direct contact with the environment, handed down through generations, and used for life-sustaining ways.”