Finding The Good Fire, Again
Spark
I felt, tasted, smelled, and touched climate change in the early summer of 2016. I had just spent my last semester in Bangkok and landed home in Calgary. Within seventy-two hours I was in an Alberta Wildfire Truck with three others on our way to Fort McMurray for our first shift. Our crew was special, one where we instantly clicked: the perfect blend of perseverance and peer support. This was my fourth year as a Helitack Wildland Firefighter, and I had risen to the rank just below crew leader. In previous years, I was exported from my homebase of Shunda to fight fire in the Yukon, Idaho, High Level, and Spreading Creek.
We began our ten hour drive up north to “The Mac,” and like any other export it was like going on a roadtrip to a music festival with your best pals. Excitement blazed around the money to be made and adventures to come. Tunes blared, jokes were flying, stories were swapped, snacks were passed around, and the energy was palpable until we got into Fort McMurray.
All the energy in that truck was extinguished as we hit the city limits. A city built for over sixty thousand people and no one in sight. An eerie feeling immediately struck, along with a profound sense of confusion. What is a playground or an apartment building without the people for which they are built? The only signs of life were the red and blue police lights bouncing off the smoke like a laser show for ghosts. The chatter of the truck was replaced with a silence that spoke what all four of us were thinking:
“This one’s different. This one’s unlike any wildfire we’ve seen.”
We spent two shifts in Fort McMurray that totalled two months on the fire. Our first shift saw intense fire activity where we moved with the flames, shifting objectives over three weeks. Our second shift began after a quick four days’ rest at which point the fire’s encroachment was mostly contained, shifting the focus towards making sure what is contained is extinguished. Mosquitos, horseflies, and twelve hour marches through muskeg hunting for smoke and hotspots filled our days.
Seeing an entire city transformed into a ghost town, burnt out husks of homes and decimated neighbourhoods changed something in me. I was staring right at the impacts of a natural phenomenon that was exacerbated by climate change; smelling and tasting those impacts in the smoke that contained burning forest, muskeg, and houses; feeling the intensity of smouldering fire held much deeper into muskeg than fire normally travels.
Climate change wasn’t happening in research labs, spreadsheets, policy and far off communities. It was in my lungs.
The following winter brought another change. I was twenty-six years old, with four years of wildfire under my belt and a freshly acquired bachelor’s degree. I thought I’d take the winter to enjoy my freedom with the summer’s paycheque until I received a letter from a university asking me to participate in a study on the impacts of smoke inhalation from Fort McMurray.
Why was I receiving these letters? The government never once mentioned that there would be a long term effect on my lungs, an elevated risk of cancer, or anything else past jobsite safety that could result in them being held accountable. That winter, I knew that seasonal work on the frontlines of wildfires could carry a cost that could be measured in my breaths. As more research has come out around the cumulative impacts of wildfire smoke inhalation, I’ve found myself battling more immediate effects of my wildfire career. Since leaving wildfire, I have experienced chronic pain and reduced mobility from a herniated disc. The doctors who have helped me to regain normalcy since this injury agree on two things: 1. it is the result of the aggregate effects of hard labour and poor working conditions during my wildfire career; 2. I will deal with this injury and the pain that comes with it for the rest of my life.
There’s a remarkable moment that occurs when you respond to a wildfire. The helicopter drops you and your crew members off on the fire and then the helicopter will leave to refuel. As the sound of the rotors fades, and you’re faced with a sixty foot wall of flame, it hits home. You’re in the middle of the forest—hundreds of kilometres from the nearest road or hospital, in the backyard of bears, moose, and wolves. The fire is so intense it is melting your facial hair from twenty feet away. All you have is your tools, your crew, and yourself. You either rise to the occasion or you’re consumed by it.
Those who rise will always carry those memories and look back upon them with a sense of positive disbelief and humility. It’s something that we humans have lost touch with in the age of industrialization and urbanization: being humbled by the very nature that we are a part of.
Flame
My time on the fireline made me acutely aware of the hubris, institutional gaps, and cognitive dissonance that led to Fort McMurray. I needed to pivot. Not only the way I was fighting the flame but by pursuing a master’s degree at UBC to develop my understanding of Indigenous fire stewardship and its application internationally in climate adaptation.
At the Wildfire Canada Conference in 2019, a staffer of the United Conservative Party said to me, “wildfires are not a priority for Albertans, the program is being gutted and you’re best to look for jobs with Parks of BC.” The young folks who went into the forest each summer to protect communities, infrastructure, and the economy were worthless in the eyes of austerity when the UCP gutted the wildfires program in Alberta. A forest has to burn in order to regrow, and my forest just went up in flames. That conversation may have been the burn, but at the very same conference seeds were sprouting.
While in Ottawa, I spoke with Lorne L’Hirondelle —a seasoned vet of wildfire with over thirty years of experience and a proud Métis citizen. I was explaining to Lorne that I was Métis on paper but have never really felt Métis. Lorne looked at me with a toothy grin and said, “Dane, this summer you and I stood shoulder to shoulder with other Métis wildland firefighters, protecting the Paddle Prairie Métis Settlement. Taking part in our heritage and serving our community. It doesn’t get more Métis than that.”
For the first time in my life I felt Métis and it was through my connection to wildfire—protecting Métis communities from wildfires. Putting good fire on the land—good fire that is put on the land when the time is right in order to renew forest cycles and minimize the intensity, severity and prevalence of wildfires. All of these things were a continuation of a history and heritage. Being Indigenous is not about colonialism, residential schools, scrip systems, and genocide. At its core, it’s a connection to the lands, skies, waters, and relations we belong to and are obliged to steward in a reciprocal manner.
For me to claim my Métis identity and the Indigeneity attached to it, I have to connect to my place in nature and that connection is through fire.
When I think about the pain of those suffering in Los Angeles right now, using these wildfires as an example, I refuse to join the chorus of armchair experts singing, “I told you so.” I do not believe that fear is how we motivate humanity to see themselves in climate solutions, so please read these words as words of hope.
Climate change is not real until it comes to the doorsteps of the metropolis citadel. January’s fires have proven beyond any doubt that there is no infrastructure, wealth nor innovation that can shield human beings from the will of nature. What we’re left with is the same option that wildland firefighters have when they’re faced with a wall of flames: be overwhelmed or be humbled and rise to the occasion. Learn or burn.
In Spring 2024, I was driving up the Pacific Coast Highway in California and I stopped in at a CalFire base to get some intel on good camping spots and chat fire with the folks there. A wildland firefighter walked into the room with his green and yellow uniform covered in ash and sweat. When I asked where he had just come from, he informed me that he had just come from doing a prescribed burn outside Malibu to reduce fire hazards.
“How on earth did you get public buy-in to conduct a burn outside of Malibu? It’s almost impossible to do that in the remote boreal forest!”
He chuckled and informed me that they didn’t.
Despite their best efforts to engage and educate the public on good fire, a gentleman in flip flops and shorts still managed to threaten to sue the crew for spreading smoke over the community.
I’ve thought about that conversation a lot since then, even more so this past January.
Indigenous, industry, or academia, wildfire experts are in consensus that good fire needs to be returned to the land. But how do we get public and political buy in when we are so detached from the realities of nature?
Burn
Two years after I graduated UBC and “hung up the boots”, I found myself working for the Métis National Council, carrying the voice of the Métis Nation to Federal and International climate change spaces. Carrying the truths stewarded by my ancestors and community to a world that depends on our ability to reconcile them.
In 2022, I stood shoulder to shoulder with my Indigenous kin from every corner of mother earth. We stood to be heard, offered solutions, offered our truth for the betterment and survival of all humanity. I co-led the Métis Nations first ever delegation to COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, a dream held by every single person who fought and sacrificed for that delegation to walk through those doors and be heard. I was fortunate enough to be on the closing panel of the Canada Pavilion alongside First Nations, Inuit and Federal representatives. It was the first of many times I’ve said these words:
“Climate solutions do not occur at the UN. They occur at the landscape level. They occur in healthy ecosystems that sequester and cycle carbon. They do not occur in laboratories or international negotiations, but they are enabled and empowered by them. The world will not know climate action until London, Tokyo, Sydney and Los Angeles know climate change. Until these urban centers that decide how humanity conducts itself have tasted, touched, heard and seen climate change like my Indigenous kin have, there will be no action. Climate change is an amorphous concept to humanity right now. Until climate change takes food off your table, fills your lungs with smoke, takes a roof from over your head, it is not real.”
In my hometown, energy companies drive the economy that has enabled me and my community to enjoy the remarkable quality of life that Calgary offers. Climate change is seen as adversarial to this quality of life. During oil booms and busts I saw family and friends cycle from rags to riches and back. I have seen how this volatility has threatened the livelihoods of some of the most highly educated and hardworking folks I’ve met. I wanted to be part of something that replaced volatility with sustainability for my community.
Coming back to Calgary after being at a UN climate conference is a strange feeling. I came home from Egypt and went for lunch with a close friend employed by an oil and gas company, who was also the impetus for beginning my career in wildland fire. As we dug into our meal we talked about how wild it was to be exposed to the global negotiations and bureaucracy around climate change at the UN.
“I don’t get it Dane. What’s the point? It all just seems ridiculous.”
“Imagine we have on the table right now, two identical job offers. They’re both identical in terms of compensation, team, company, responsibilities, etc. Now one of those jobs is your exact current job and the other job is building the green economy so your kids can one day have the same if not better job with more security and sustainability. Which do you choose?”
He didn’t have to think about it for a second, he chose the sustainable option and the conversation turned to how these negotiations and bureaucracies were integral to ensuring we could build that future together.
Growing up in Calgary, Alberta I had only ever had an urban context. I never had an understanding of my place in nature until I was out on the land, standing in front of those fires, being humbled by nature. Urbanization has detached all of humanity from our connection to the natural world. It has sedated each and every urban-dwelling human being with a hubristic fantasy that we can dominate nature with technology and innovation. We think we are insulated from nature’s will by concrete and infrastructure. We have become so sure of our ability to be beyond relying on nature to meet our needs with agriculture and economics.
I knew this wasn’t true the moment I couldn’t hear those helicopters in the bush. The illusion was shattered. I am a forester, but I am not the master of the forest. I am simply another human being who is fortunate enough to be stewarded by what the forest will offer and unfortunate enough to stand in the way of what the forest needs.
Indigenous Peoples from every corner of Mother Earth know the Truth of this humility. Whether it’s the Sami in Lapland, The Maori in Aotearoa, or the Métis in the Homeland, we have never forgotten this Truth.
Regrowth
Even if people cannot see climate change, they need to see themselves in the solutions. Change is an inconvenience. A blue bin for my recycling? What a nuisance! Another bin for my organics? I’ve got enough on my plate! Eventually it turns into folks feeling like they can only make a small difference in a problem beyond their comprehension.
After I come home from the COP conversations, I cringe every time someone says, “Wow, you’re out there saving the world!” I am not, nor is anyone else involved in climate solutions. The world does not need saving, humanity does. Our cultures, our ways of life, our Sunday dinners, our hockey games, our vacations to somewhere warmer, our future needs saving. The world will be fine. It has been here long before us and will be long after us. The systems we have built to sustain humanity: economics, agriculture, urbanization are all a house of cards built upon the foundation of nature.
The world is telling humanity that these systems cannot be sustained for today or tomorrow through the language of climate change and we are choosing not to listen.
Through my research of Indigenous fire stewardship, I’ve found that the wildfires we are seeing in the last twenty years are not natural, nor are they a direct result of climate change. They are the result of our colonial disconnection from nature that has been exposed and exacerbated by the conditions created by climate change.
From the very beginning of the recession of glaciers from North America some 14,000 years ago, Indigenous Peoples (i.e. human beings) have been there every inch of the way with their fire. What has enabled humans to populate every ecosystem on this planet is our ability to modify landscapes and ecosystems to sustain our needs.
Fire has been our greatest tool in doing this: it has been our bulldozer, fertilizer, wrangler, genetic modifier, and fire guard.
The contemporary public perception of fire has been drilled into our heads by a shirtless bear with a shovel: all fires are bad and only you can prevent them. Even within this propaganda there is some truth—preventing the negative impacts of wildfires requires everyone. It requires that we change our perception to acknowledge the Indigenous concept of good fire. Stephen J. Pyne once wrote that when we severed our connection to putting good fire on the land: “we replaced fires of choice with fires of chance.”
When the first laws banning Indigenous fire stewardship were passed by the British Crown over one hundred years ago, the stage was set. A king who had never seen the boreal forest but stood to gain vast wealth and resources from it imposed their will on a land they had no connection to. The fires that were used to steward the land, boost biodiversity, and create wildfire resilient landscape mosaics were suppressed.
Over the next hundred years, the suppression of all fire on the land whether by lightning or flint strike has become the norm. The knowledge and science within Indigenous fire stewardship has been systematically suppressed and there has been an attempt to extinguish it through cultural genocide and residential schools. The attempt to “kill the Indian in the child” has been part of the colonial attempt to take humans out of nature.
Prior to the colonial suppression of good fire on the land, the North American landscape looked much different. Glass slides from the Mountain Legacy Project depict a landscape mosaic of meadows, portages, clearings and fields created by applying good fire to the land and Indigenous Land Stewardship systems. Digital photos taken under a decade ago depict a sea of trees, a ticking time bomb of densely packed conifers and pine beetle kill.
These colonial systems of “conservation” and forest management have created an unbroken ocean of trees waiting for a fire. Once that fire is sparked, an unstoppable tidal wave of energy begins to pick up steam as it blazes across the land. Prior to these colonial systems, those oceans of trees were stewarded to contain islands of prairie; archipelagos of meadows; continents of grazing land. A landscape in which a wave of flame is unable to gain the same energy as it repeatedly crashes upon the shores of old burns and regrowing forest.
In 2023, the wildfires in Canada alone put more carbon in the atmosphere than the entire global airline industry combined for the year. Sections of forest have burned so intensely that the ground has become sterilized and unable to regrow the trees needed to sequester that carbon. This could have been prevented. It will happen again.
When it does happen again, all of humanity will continue to backslide and lose the ability to steward the forests that we rely on to sequester and store carbon. Politicians trot out the word “unprecedented” as soon as things like this happen.
Slave Lake 2011, Unprecedented.
Fort McMurray 2016, Unprecedented.
Paradise, California 2018, Unprecedented.
Australian Bush Fires 2019, Unprecedented.
Lytton 2021, Unprecedented.
Canada Wildfires 2023, Unprecedented.
Jasper 2024, Unprecedented.
Los Angeles 2025, Unprecedented.
None of these events are “unprecedented” nor are the solutions to preventing them from reoccurring. Reconciling the truth of Indigenous fire stewardship and returning good fire to the land provides the means to protect communities, infrastructure, and economics from the direct impacts of wildfires, while simultaneously reducing wildfire emissions and optimizing forest carbon cycles—enabling people to see themselves as part of nature, climate solutions and Truth and Reconciliation.
The truth is that we as humans are part of nature. We are not above it, but we are more often than not below it. Nature is not to be conserved, nor extracted from, but stewarded so it may steward us.
It does not matter what your background is. When you learn about how culture and society formulated around land stewardship and sustainability on this land—you are part of the solution. When we Reconcile these Truths that existed before colonialism, residential schools, and climate change, we can have our quality of life, and future generations can too.
Photo graciously provided by Dane de Souza.
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