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Gavin Newsom’s ‘burn’ grants insult fire victims

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Gavin Newsom has been funding “cultural burns.” No, not the Burning Man festival — though that might be a better use of the money — but rituals by Native American tribes that claim to be reviving indigenous practices of brush clearance.

The Manhattan Institute has revealed that the state of California is spending millions of dollars on grants through a “Tribal Wildfire Resilience” program.

Local tribes cite the ancient, precolonial practices of controlled burning that cleared brush and allowed for useful plants to be grown.

The state grants are part of an effort to revive those cultural practices, while also aiming to assist with wildfire prevention. 

Perhaps it’s helpful to use indigenous brush clearance, since the state has been particularly bad at the modern kind in recent years.

Unfortunately, as Christopher F. Rufo and Austen Hufford point out, while some........

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