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Gavin Newsom can’t clear brush, but funds ‘cultural burns’

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom has allocated millions of dollars to a program that funds Native American “food sovereignty,” owl counting and “cultural burns,” in which tribal groups use traditional fire techniques to clear brush from the landscape and preserve their “close kinship” with plants, animals and “other natural relatives.” 

Since 2023, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CalFire, has awarded $24 million to tribal groups and other nonprofits as part of its “Tribal Wildfire Resilience” program.

The man effectively overseeing the program, Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot, believes that California was founded on a “state-sanctioned policy of genocide” and that the state has pursued “decades of land dispossession, discrimination, and disconnection.”

The Newsom administration, he said, was making progress in returning the land to the “leadership of California Native American tribes.”

As part of this commitment to “cultural burning,” California has created separate fire-certification processes for nontribal and tribal populations.

White, black, Latino and Asian fire bosses must receive technical certifications, including a 40-hour burn-boss course and, in some cases, a federal certificate.

“Cultural fire practitioners,” by contrast, are certified through simple tribal recognition that a person has “substantial experience” burning for cultural purposes. 

The “cultural burns” themselves follow various rituals. Some begin with drumming, sage burning and a........

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