Listening to Fire Knowledges in and around the Okanagan Valley

Abstract

By Judith Burr, with Mathieu Bourbonnais, Amy Cardinal Christiansen, John Davies, Jeff Eustache, Don Gayton, Joe Gilchrist, Dave Gill, Sonja Leverkus, David Lind, Wendy Pope, Gord Pratt, Karis Shearer, Daryl Spencer, Sharon Thesen, Nancy Turner, and Kelsey Winter

The Okanagan Valley of the southern interior of British Columbia has been shaped by fire for millennia: by cultural burning by First Nations communities, by lightning fires, and by patterns of settler-colonial burning and fire suppression. In the wake of large and severe wildfire seasons and predictions of worsening wildfires fueled by climate change, there are calls for both interdisciplinary problem-solving among fire experts and for more public engagement to transform how we live with fire in British Columbia. Understanding the history of fire in this place can contribute to better fire use, management, and response that accounts for human and more-than-human ecological health and recognizes multiple forms of important fire expertise. This podcast series explores the ways that fire history informs present and future ways of living with and understanding fire in and around this Valley. It is a contribution to interdisciplinary and public conversations about life with fire. It centers on fourteen oral history and expert interviews and two field recordings. Each interviewee holds specific and often plural forms of expertise and understandings of life with fire in and around the Okanagan. The recorded conversations situate the researcher in this project and allow her to share fire research in a dialogic, relational, listenable format contextualized by archival and secondary source fire history research. This podcast was created on the unceded territory of the Syilx Okanagan Nation.