Archived from 2020
We would like to thank our strong partners at McKenzie River Trust for their support of an emerging project with the Long Tom Watershed Council.
We are working in collaboration with Tribes in our region to heal relationships among each other and the land. The project centers Native voices, relationships, and bringing back good fire to the land together, all while learning to undo colonial entitlement to Indigenous land.
As part of the proceeds from their recent Upstream event featuring Robin Wall Kimmerer, McKenzie River Trust will be donating at least $5000 + your gifts to this project, and every dollar will go directly to Tribes in our region.
You can hear from LTWC’s Ecologist Katie MacKendrick about the approach in this short video clip:
“Relating with Fire as our Guide” Project Overview
This work is centering Indigenous voices in restoring a healthy landscape and community.
- While this is a young, emerging project, every dollar raised will go to the Tribes in our region. We have work to do yet to hear from the Tribes how they’d like to use the funds.
- The Long Tom Watershed Council is committed to learning how to relate to the First people of this land, give back to Tribes, and have their consent on land work we carry out; (and collaborate with MRT on this work. – feel free to change the MRT connection/commitment to your liking, but not the LTWC part)
- Kalapuya people shaped the lands we care about with cool fires that kept the land healthy, productive, biodiverse, and open. Because of Indigenous people and the reciprocity they established with the land, the Willamette Valley attracted European colonists, who forcibly removed Indigenous people and cultural burning.
- For more than 150 years, we have excluded Indigenous people and fire from the land we care about and advocate for. This history has severely affected and continues to affect the health of Indigenous people and the health of the land.
- “Relating with Fire as Our Guide” is grounded in relationships and centering work in the Willamette Valley to reintroduce fire across land ownership boundaries on learning what the Tribes want to teach us about cultural burning so we can best support their empowerment to manage their lands and lands within their historic territories.
- Because we need each other and the land, and the land needs fire. We ask for your support of this emerging project to reorient land work to center Native voices, and heal our relationships with each other and the land.