Indigenous Perspectives on Forest Fires, Drought, and Climate Change

In the summer of 2018, Sweden experienced most severe wildfire season in modern history. The Norrbotten County was one of the most seriously affected areas. While today forest fires are predominantly seen as a symptom of anthropogenic climate change, seasonal fire management has been part of traditional Indigenous land stewardship for thousands of years. During this time, Sámi journalist and documentarian Liz-Marie Nilsen and I supported Jåhkåmåhkke’s firefighters by cooking and distributing food. May-Britt Öhman, Associate Professor in Environmental History at Uppsala University and Lule and Forest Sámi with Tornedalian heritage, participated in the firefighting activities and documented them with photos and short videos. Thiis led to the making of the co-authored video Forest & Fires (Acosta & Nilsen, 2019), in which an elder from a Sámi forest area narrated how their community helped to fight a wildfire in the summer of 1959. This elder was interviewed at the very site of the wildfire and spoke about the Old-Forest People who fought the blaze with a deep understanding of the territory using knowledge acquired during controlled fires conducted after logging and before replanting
The project document, analyse and draw attention to the local and Indigenous/Sámi stewardship of land—with specific regard to fire management, drought, and other aspects of climate change. The project brings forward forest fires t take on wildfires and other extreme events from a local and Indigenous perspective of the Jokkmokk Municipality. Through small forest fire stories, the project develops interviews with elders and knowledge holders on the control of wildfires, some who had practiced the controlled fires before they were banned in the 1960s. Forest people used to learn to deal with the fire by being “in the fire”, by directing fire towards ditches, and using tools such as hosepipes, pans, buckets and shovel. Combined with deep knowledge of the territory, these techniques were used to direct fire towards swap areas. This knowledge that has passed from generation to generation is mostly lost today and replaced with firefighting techniques that uses water as main component, and is distributed through terrestrial and aerial vehicles.
–