Almassi, Ben (2024) Revaluations of 'Paiute Forestry': Prescribed Burning as Traditional and Scientific Ecological Knowledge. In: UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

The relationship between traditional and scientific ecological knowledge is a dynamic one. Consider the use of fire in land management. In the 1910s and 1920s, Aldo Leopold and other US foresters dismissively campaigned against burning as 'Paiute forestry', denigrating and driving out indigenous land management as though it had never existed, as though there was no credible ecological knowledge proir to settlement. Fire suppression as a longstanding policy across the US and Canada not only failed in reading historical tribal burning practices and in applying that knowledge to settler resource management, but also systematically undercut tribal ecological knowledge. A century later, scientists and restorationists are coming to better understand the dangers of fire suppression, benefits of burns, and the fact that these are not really new insights but epistemically marginalized ones. If prescribed burning is a complex assemblage of epistemic practices, and settler-colonial reactions have perpetrated epistemic injustices against indigenous peoples, how can modern (tribal, settler, and collaborative) burning practices and policies be better?

In this project, I offer a close reading of early 20th Century light-burning debates, with a particular focus on Leopold’s characterizations of indigenous ecological knowledge. I then turn to critically evaluate several 21st Century prescribed burn projects and policies for their reparative potential in both social-ecological and social-epistemic terms.

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Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (UNSPECIFIED)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Almassi, Ben balmassi@govst.edu
Keywords:	cultural burning; ecological knowledge; environmental policy; epistemic injustice; fire; forestry; indigenous knowledge; prescribed burning
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Biology > Ecology/Conservation General Issues > Social Epistemology of Science
Depositing User:	Dr. Ben Almassi
Date Deposited:	14 Dec 2024 13:11
Last Modified:	14 Dec 2024 13:11
Item ID:	24401
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Biology > Ecology/Conservation General Issues > Social Epistemology of Science
Date:	2024
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/24401

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