Page 4 - Impact Winter 2023

Ojibwe firefighters restore fire to the Cloquet Forestry Center
Embracing the role of Indigenous fire in shaping the Center’s forests
Last spring, Vern Northrup stood beneath the red and white pines at the U of M’s Cloquet Forestry Center (CFC) and lit the first prescribed fire the
forest had seen in 20 years. As a firefighter for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, he had lit prescribed burns like this many times before. Today, however, was different. Northrup, an elder of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, was restoring fire to the CFC, a 3,400-acre forest within the Fond du Lac Reservation which his ancestors would have once regularly stewarded with fire, a practice rooted in both Ojibwe culture and landscape management.
In early 2022, collaboration between U of M staff at the CFC, the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs was formalized, setting the stage for collaborative burns at
the CFC. In May, firefighters from the Fond du Lac Band, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bois Forte Band of Chippewa, Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, and The Nature Conservancy gathered with U of M staff at the CFC to burn 75 acres.
Before U of M management of this forest began in 1909, Ojibwe land stewards regularly burned there. For many, the burns last spring were long-awaited, signifying both the return of fire to a fire-adapted ecosystem and the restoration of the deeply-rooted Ojibwe cultural practice of burning.
“Bringing fire back to this landscape isn’t just about the ecological benefits,” said Damon Panek, wildfire operations specialist for the Fond du Lac Band. “For us, burning is about fulfilling our role in the relationship we
PHOTO COURTESY OF KYLE GILL