NORTH AMERICA — As catastrophic wildfires reshape North American forest policy, governments are increasingly turning to Indigenous fire stewardship while beginning to recognize that healthy forests require long-term relationships with the land, not simply emergency response. As Canada’s 2026 wildfire season continues to send smoke across much of North America, forcing evacuations and threatening communities from British Columbia to Ontario, many readers wrote to The Wild Hunt describing hazy skies, poor air quality, and the unsettling reminder that these fires are no longer a distant regional problem. Policymakers on both sides of the border are confronting an increasingly urgent question: how do we learn to live with fire rather than simply fight it?
As Canada’s 2026 wildfire season continues to send smoke across much of North America, forcing evacuations and threatening communities from British Columbia to Ontario, policymakers on both sides of the border are confronting an increasingly urgent question: how do we learn to live with fire rather than simply fight it?
Increasingly, governments, scientists, and Indigenous leaders are reaching the same conclusion: healthier forests require more than larger firefighting budgets or faster emergency response. They require restoring long-term relationships with the land itself.
A red sun during a wildfire in Miami [Photo Credit: MJTM
Native News Online reported that this wildfire season has once again placed First Nations communities among those most affected. In northwestern Ontario, residents of Namaygoosisagagun (Collins) First Nation fled by boat after a fast-moving wildfire overwhelmed the community, destroying much of it in less than an hour. Across Canada, thousands of First Nations residents have been displaced as hundreds of wildfires continue to burn through forests already stressed by drought and rising temperatures.
In response, the Canadian government has expanded support for Indigenous-led wildfire programs, including training Indigenous wildland firefighters, strengthening emergency preparedness, and investing in community-based fire management. While these initiatives help communities respond to immediate threats, they also reflect a broader shift in thinking about how forests should be cared for before disasters occur.
For generations, many Indigenous Nations have practiced cultural burning, carefully managed, low-intensity fires used to reduce hazardous fuels, encourage biodiversity, improve wildlife habitat, and maintain healthy landscapes. These practices were often discouraged or prohibited under colonial land management policies that instead emphasized suppressing nearly every wildfire.
Today, many fire scientists believe that approach contributed to the conditions now fueling increasingly destructive fires. Decades of fire suppression allowed dense undergrowth and dead vegetation to accumulate, creating forests primed for hotter, faster-moving wildfires. Combined with climate change and prolonged drought, those conditions have transformed what were once periodic natural fires into catastrophic events.
Few people have spoken more clearly about that shift than Métis fire scientist Amy Cardinal Christianson, director of fire stewardship for the Indigenous Leadership Initiative. Speaking with APTN News as communities across western Ontario faced renewed evacuations, she described the frustration many Indigenous peoples feel watching landscapes burn after generations of being prevented from practicing traditional stewardship.
She recalled a friend reflecting on the 2024 Jasper wildfire: “This never would have happened if we would have been allowed to continue our cultural practices there.”
Cardinal Christianson emphasized that Indigenous knowledge is not an abstract philosophy but practical expertise developed over thousands of years.
“Our people have survived on these lands for millennia,” she said. “Just not with AI and things like that.”
Her observations point to an important distinction. While emerging technologies, from artificial intelligence to satellite mapping, are becoming valuable tools for detecting and responding to fires, they cannot replace generations of local knowledge about how particular landscapes behave, when fire can be used safely, or how forests regenerate after burning.
That recognition is beginning to influence public policy.
A recent issue brief from the Bipartisan Policy Center argues that the United States faces three interconnected challenges: worsening wildfire conditions, declining forest health, and mounting strain on the U.S. Forest Service. Participants in the bipartisan discussion concluded that restoring healthier forests will require sustained investment, expanded prescribed burning, stronger partnerships with local communities, and better long-term stewardship rather than relying primarily on emergency suppression.
Although the report gives only limited attention to Indigenous fire stewardship, it reflects a growing consensus that forests cannot simply be protected by extinguishing every fire. Instead, they must be actively managed as living ecosystems.
Indigenous Stewardship rooted in place-based knowledge offers insights that extend well beyond emergency response. Cultural burning represents sophisticated ecological knowledge developed through generations of close relationships with specific landscapes. As policymakers rethink forest management, that knowledge is increasingly being recognized not simply as cultural tradition, but as an important contribution to modern conservation and climate resilience.
For more than a century, governments largely viewed wildfire as an enemy to be eliminated. Today, growing evidence suggests that healthier forests depend not on excluding fire altogether but on learning when, where, and how it belongs within the landscape. Indigenous stewardship has become central to that conversation because it offers not only techniques for managing fire, but also a philosophy of reciprocity with the land itself.
As wildfire seasons grow longer and more destructive, rebuilding that relationship may prove one of the most important forms of resilience, not only for forests and the communities that depend upon them, but also for preserving the cultural and sacred landscapes that have shaped human communities for generations.
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