Native American community fights to protect its land from California fire

GREENVILLE • For 20 years, Mr Danny Manning has worked to protect his community as a firefighter, becoming all too familiar with scenes of destruction. But this past weekend, he was forced to confront a different kind of loss as he walked among the rubble of his destroyed fire house in Greenville.

"This was our crew rig, this is our brand new engine," said Mr Manning, 41, who is a member of the local Native American Maidu community, and its assistant fire chief.

Yesterday, when the Dixie Fire tore through the tiny mountain town 257km north of Sacramento, he and his fire engine crew were on a mandatory rest day after a gruelling two-week shift fighting the historic blaze. Then, two of the crew's engines, station and office burned down.

On Sunday, Mr Manning, who leads a fire crew of 12 people, most of them Maidu, had returned to Greenville to assess the damage. "I can't believe this," he added, glass and debris crunching beneath his boots. "It hurts."

About a decade ago, Mr Manning had helped establish the firefighting crew with little more than an old truck and resolve. Firefighting is among the few options for steady employment in the sparsely populated Gold Rush region.

Mr Manning said it is also part of a broader effort to protect and conserve the remote, mountainous region - much of it sacred to the Maidu.

By Tuesday, the Dixie Fire had torn through 197,400ha in the sprawling Sierra Nevada, where the Maidu have lived for thousands of years.

"This is our land," said Ms Trina Cunningham, executive director of the Maidu Summit Consortium, a non-profit group that works to reclaim and conserve ancestral indigenous lands in Northern California.

She has also been working with the fire authorities to map and avoid damaging burial, prayer and cultural gathering sites from both the Dixie Fire and the machines used to battle it.

"Our hearts were breaking when it burned through Tasmam Koyom," Ms Cunningham said, referring to the moment the blaze tore through a sacred site, also known as Humbug Valley, near Lake Almanor, which is about 32km north-west of Greenville.

In 2019, she added, the consortium had finally reclaimed that land from the utility company Pacific Gas & Electric, which is under scrutiny for the role its equipment may have played in igniting the Dixie Fire.

The fire has not just damaged sacred sites, however, but also the homes and businesses of several community members.

Some members of the community have refused to evacuate, remaining in the dense forest as the fire rolled down the mountainside, bringing with it plumes of thick, hazardous smoke.

"I'm ready," said Mr Reggie Merino, a Maidu elder who lives on a sprawling property in Goat Canyon, about 16km east of Greenville.

Mr Manning and a colleague had come to visit Mr Merino, and to attempt to convince him to evacuate. Mr Merino refused.

At their next stop, Ms Shiwaya Peck, an elder and basket weaver, said that though she was terrified for herself and her sister, who lives with her and suffers from seizures, she could not fathom leaving her ancestral land behind.

"I've been a nervous wreck just thinking what's going to happen," Ms Peck said, standing in the haze among her grandfather's towering fir and cedar trees. "If I were to die, I would want to die right here," she added. "On my homeland."

NYTIMES