Fire Ecology and the Human Relationship

4th - 10th grade curriculum

Introduction to the curriculum

The Vesper Meadow Education Program is honored to put forth the Fire Ecology and the Human Relationship curriculum with the support of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. This curriculum is the fulfillment of a multi-year vision to provide teachers with tools to address some of the most critical and misunderstood issues facing Oregon today. The curriculum reflects our principles of encouraging hands-on, joyous experiences for diverse learners, promoting equity and justice for all beings, and embracing multiple ways of understanding our world. Though the curriculum is primarily science-based, you will find that the lessons fulfill other subject areas and are infused with art, historical references, creative writing, geography, and even social media.

The curriculum is intended to expand upon existing wildfire curricula that are more general to lands of the American West and emphasize settler / industrial perspectives. This Oregon-based curriculum covers fire’s connections with biodiversity, Indigenous culture, land management history, climate change, and social impacts today. Many of the lessons contain several classroom activities, and provide opportunities for educators to break the lesson into multiple learning sessions or choose the parts that are best suited to their students. We hope to provide a foundation to effectively teach about the role of fire in Oregon’s ecosystems, how humans have interacted with fire past and present, and engage students to think critically about solutions for a fire-adapted future.

Recognizing that the ecological roles, multicultural relationships, and perceptions of fire are extremely complex, we have intentionally created a flow of lessons that build on concepts over successive grade levels. The lessons for older students draw on basic ecological concepts introduced in earlier lessons and integrate additional scientific and societal frameworks. Further acknowledging that some students may have negative perceptions of fire and/or have been personally influenced by wildfire in their lives, we provide moments for classroom discussion and additional resources to address students’ emotional wellbeing. The lessons are meant to strike a balance of candid information without adding to prior perceptions of fear, and ultimately allow students to think clearly about the material, participate in the activities, and feel empowered to take actions in their lives beyond the classroom.

Building Understanding, Empathy, and Applicable Skills

The lessons in this curriculum are designed to support multiple styles of learning, encourage students to think critically, and provide opportunities for creative, collaborative problem-solving, nourishing the whole student and promoting empathy for other living beings.

Throughout these lessons, auditory, visual, literary, oral, artistic, and technological approaches invite students to engage deeply with Vesper Meadow’s Education Program themes:

• Understanding and celebrating biodiversity

• Rekindling the human-land relationship

• Promoting healthy ecosystems

• Solving problems creatively and collaboratively

Considerations for Teaching Native American Perspectives

When teaching about Native American issues, it is very important to understand both historical and contemporary issues that affect Native peoples. Inextricably, the histories of colonization, land management, and environmental policy shape the fire-adapted landscapes we experience today. The current settler colonial society has created many changes to the environment, family structures, culture, and food sources of Native people. Removal of Native people to reservations caused a loss in their connection to traditional lands. While Native families struggled in new environments, many of their ancestral lands also suffered from the loss of traditional tending practices and the introduction of extractive land-use practices. Native people maintained their Indigenous land management practices through relationships with new lands, rivers, and native plants. Today, Tribes work to regain land access in places that were taken from them. At the same time, many practices used by public land agencies, such as prescribed burning, are based on Native American land management practices. A critical look at these issues is essential to teaching the curriculum.

Prior to the use of this curriculum, students should have an introduction to the original peoples of the lands they inhabit and about who (Native and non-Native) inhabits these lands today. (See Native Land Map for reference: www.ctsi.nsn.us/reservation-maps/) The curriculum invites older students to seek articles and web-based resources that will help them realize the many Native people’s land science and management practices currently happening in Oregon and throughout the United States. We encourage educators to continue learning about Native goals and efforts for land management as time progresses.

Concurrent to the development of this curriculum is the development of a shared curriculum for Oregon under Senate Bill 13 Tribal History, Shared History. See the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians website, Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians | Siletz Tribe located in Oregon (ctsi.nsn.us) for more information and resources regarding the 9 Federally recognized Tribes of Oregon. See Oregon Department of Education’s website for more information and classroom lessons.

A Note on Honoring Tribal Knowledge, Foods and Medicines

Native plants such as the First Foods mentioned in these lessons, are important to the lifeways of Siletz Tribal members and other Native American people. They are foods that keep people nourished, active, and healthy, but also important for staying connected to their families, ancestry, and culture. Many traditional food systems were diminished by colonization and replaced with the introduction of Western diets and processed foods, often with health consequences for Native people. With concurrent changes in land use and degradation of habitats, many First Food plants are now rare or endangered on the landscape.

Many Siletz Tribal members and other Native American people work to restore and reconnect with food, health, community, tribal identity, spirituality, and their ancestral natural world. Traditional Ecological Knowledge of First Foods includes understandings of not only plant biology and ecology, but also about complex human-plant interactions such as cultivation strategies and harvesting ethics. With the rarity of many native plants today, it is most ethical to approach First Foods plants with ‘principles of caution,’ e.g. taking extra time to learn about the plants throughout the seasons, conservative harvesting, harvesting after plants have gone to seed, doing the least harm, engaging in practices that promote future growth of a population, being aware of invasive species, etc. With these understandings combined, we encourage non-Native learners to study and appreciate native plants as First Foods and learn principles of respectful harvest or to refrain from harvesting them.

Why Native-Centric Curriculum for All?

We hope this curriculum will bring Native issues to light for all students, and moreover empower Native students to take action and be leaders in their communities. Historically, education was used as a weapon of forced assimilation. Hundreds of thousands of Native American children were abducted from their families, communities, and Tribes by US government agents and sent to boarding schools where they were forced to refrain from practicing their culture, and were subject to severe physical and emotional abuse, and often death. The forced removal of Native people and cultural genocide of the last two centuries has had lasting effects, including systemic barriers, intergenerational trauma, and huge educational disparities for Native students today. Students continue to learn and celebrate historical events that were notoriously violent toward Native people, such as actions taken by Christopher Columbus and other colonizers, the Gold Rush, and settlement of the American West. This curriculum seeks equity and justice in education, attempting to keep all students engaged by honoring Native wisdom and providing perspectives for Native students to see themselves reflected in the curriculum.

By creating an educational curriculum that looks at fire and land management, we hope to encourage all Oregonians to understand related issues and engage in meaningful ways as community members. We hope this work will inspire further place-based and statewide environmental education that incorporates the knowledge and perspectives of Native peoples. We hope to reverse the trend of underrepresentation of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in classroom topics and discussions and make steps toward addressing racism both in schools and beyond.

Lesson Summaries and Teaching Standards

All lessons include alignments with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS); some include alignments with Common Core State Standards (CCSS), Oregon Social Sciences Standards, Oregon Ethnic Studies Standards, and/or Oregon SB 13 Tribal History / Shared History expectations.

1) Reading the Fire-Influenced Landscape | Topography and Fire

Recommended for 4th – 5th grades

The most significant influences on fire behavior are weather patterns, vegetation, and topography, also known as the “wildland fire triangle.” The geographic region of southern Oregon provides unique case studies of fire behavior due to its geologic diversity and varied terrain.

Students will look at historic photos and modern aerial photos and satellite imagery to learn about how some people have studied fire in the last 100 years and to explore how fire interacts with the landscape. Utilizing interactive satellite imagery from NASA, students will formulate a hypothesis about fire behavior and create a model of their hypothesis.

NGSS: 5-ESS2-1, 4-ESS2-2, 4-ESS3-2

2) Fire Biodiversity Puzzle | Biodiversity and Fire, part one

Recommended for 4th – 5th grades

Plants, fungi, wildlife, humans, and other living things throughout the Western United States have adapted to coexist with fire for millions of years. In the Oregon Cascades and Siskiyou mountains, a region renowned for biodiversity, there are both common and rare species that find homes amongst blacked and regrowing conifer forests, oak savannah, chaparral, and meadows.

Students will learn about local species’ adaptations to their fire-affected habitats by constructing the Fire Biodiversity Puzzle art image. Studying species adaptations is not only fascinating, but may also provide inspiration for how to thrive in a world with fire.

NGSS: 4-LS1-1, 5-LS2-1, 5-ESS2-1

CCSS: ELA-L.W.4.1, ELA-L.W.4.2.B, ELA-L.W.4.3B, ELA-L.W.5.1, ELA-L.W.5.2.B, ELA-L.W.5.3.B

3) Fire Nourishes the Land, the Land Nourishes Us | Fire as an Agricultural Tool, part one

Recommended for 4th – 5th grades

Since time immemorial, Siletz Tribal members and Indigenous peoples have applied fire to the lands of Oregon, using traditional knowledge and skills passed down over many generations. This traditional use of fire can be referred to as a “cultural burning.” Cultural burns are used by Indigenous people to ensure the quantity and quality of First Foods and Materials plants (plants that provide traditional foods and materials for cultural practices). In this way, fire can be understood as an agricultural tool used to nourish the land and plants. In turn, this fire-enhanced landscape nourishes the people and provides materials necessary for basketry, cordage, and other tools.

Students will learn about First Foods and Materials plant ecology, identification, and cultural significance. An understanding of First Foods and Materials plants and understanding cultural burns can provide key insights into sustainable forest and landscape management in Oregon.

Note: This activity is not meant to guide students to harvest and use plants for food or materials without the guidance of an adult with knowledge of plant identification, safe use, plant care, and permissions to use.

NGSS: 4-LS1-1, 5-LS2-1

4) Black to Green Creature Collage | Biodiversity and Fire, part two

Recommended for 6th – 8th grades

Fire is so important to the biodiversity of ecosystems throughout the Western United States that it is recognized as the keystone ecological process. Various intensities of burns, especially in southern Oregon forests, can be characterized as low severity, mixed severity, and high severity.

Students will learn about the interconnections between the fire-affected landscape and biodiversity. Utilizing the southwest Oregon region as a case study, students will think critically about ecological relationships between the fire regimes and wildlife habitat by collaboratively creating a collage.

NGSS MS-LS1-5, MS-LS2-1, MS-LS2-4

5) Burning for Basketry: Engineering Ecosystems with Fire | Fire as an Agricultural Tool, part two

Recommended for 6th – 8th grades

Fire is a naturally occurring part of the dry summers of Oregon, and a dependable fire cycle has created fire-adapted native plant species. Closely linked to natural fire regimes, cultural burns have been used in southwestern Oregon for thousands of years and have also shaped the land and plants within it. Fire suppression policies of the early 20th century deprived landscapes and plants of this critical ecosystem-engineering process in some areas of Oregon. While prescribed burns are now recognized as important by federal land agencies, the reintroduction of fire where it has been suppressed has faced many challenges

In this lesson, students will study cultural burning of hazel and look at the interrelated effects of cultural burning, wildfire, and fire suppression. Students’ evaluations will highlight opportunities that cultural burning and Indigenous cultural practice offer to forest management and fire policy and planning today.

NGSS: MS-LS2-1, MS-L2-4, MS-LS-5

6) Leading the Way with TEK: Understanding Land Use Changes in Oregon | Fire and Land Use History, part one

Recommended for 6th – 8th grades

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) includes knowledge and practices that have been passed down from generation to generation in Indigenous communities, and has been shaped by the close relationship between Indigenous people and their land. Since the displacement of Indigenous people from traditional homelands in Oregon in the mid 1800’s, the land has suffered from the loss of its original stewards’ tending practices like cultural burning. In recent decades there has been an increased advocacy for returning fire where it has been suppressed, and for centering TEK in land restoration.

Students will study the historical shift in Oregon land use from the Long Indigenous Existence to the era of colonization, compare and contrast land management of the two eras, and utilize TEK concepts to design and present solutions for environmental issues influencing fire today.

NGSS: MS-LS2-5

Oregon Social Sciences Standards: 8.23, 8.24

7) When to Burn? Climate Change and Oregon’s Fire Season | Climate Change and Fire, part one

Recommended for 6th – 8th grades

Climate change is affecting fire season and fire intensity across Oregon landscapes. Longer fire seasons and larger, hotter fires pose increasing risks to human, animal, and plant communities. While prescribed burns can help make and maintain fire-adapted landscapes, their ability to be implemented is complicated by factors of climate change, land use history, and an increase in population living in the wildland-urban interface (WUI).

Students will look at patterns of climate change in Oregon, and learn how these affect fire season and the use of prescribed burns. Students will understand the compounding factors associated with prescribed fire and think critically about how to mitigate risks.

NGSS: MS-ESS3-3, MS-ESS3-5, MS-LS2-4, MS-LS2-5

8) Community Preparation and Resilience | Forest Fire and Social Issues Today, part one

Recommended for 6th – 8th grades

By analyzing demographics and natural disasters, it is clear that certain people experience the effects of wildfire and smoke differently than others. Tribal communities, communities of color, immigrants, and low-income families are more vulnerable to climate disasters such as extreme wildfire due to homes located in proximity to areas of risk and exposure to weather through outdoor jobs. Some communities also experience disparities in relief efforts following climate disasters.

Students will examine four case studies of diverse communities in Oregon affected by wildfire, and discuss and present solutions for community preparedness and resilience.

NGSS: MS-ESS3-2

Oregon Ethnic Studies Standards: 6.26

9) Fire Policy and Practices of the Last 200 Years | Fire and Land Use History, part two

Recommended for 9th – 10th grades

Land management is a term that describes how people make decisions and take action with ecosystems and resources. The way in which land is managed has a direct effect on the health of humans and the environment. Students will take a look at land use policy over the last two centuries and how it has shaped forest land management in Oregon.

Students will gain historical perspective for fire behavior today and think critically about how land management decisions can affect the resiliency of landscapes and human communities moving into the future.

NGSS: HS-LS2-6, HS-LS2-7, HS-ESS 3-1

Oregon Tribal History, Shared History SB13 connections:

Natural Resource Management: Historical and Contemporary

10) Climate Change: Mitigating, Adapting, and Taking Action | Climate Change and Fire, part two

Recommended for 9th – 10th grades

Climate change is the paramount context for considering how wildfire impacts ecosystems and human communities. We must continue learning about climate change as research develops, as well as think critically about our beliefs around climate change, so we may develop a sense of

moral responsibility. We have potential to be agents of positive change as community members, parts of ecosystems, and citizens of Earth as a whole.

Students will discuss ways that society can mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change on the fire-adapted landscape.

NGSS: HS-ETS1-1

CCSS: RST.11-12.2, ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.1, ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.6, ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.7, ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.8, ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.9

11) Wildfire Vulnerability and Climate Justice, What Do You Meme? | Forest Fire and Social Issues Today, part two

Recommended for 9th – 10th grades

Historically marginalized communities are at most risk from the effects of climate change and wildfire. Recent studies across the American West are looking at the effects of wildfire on health, housing, psychology and other basic needs. The results of these studies illustrate the need for large scale changes to social systems in order to address climate change and wildfire effects into the future.

Students will learn about disparities in the relative impacts of wildfire on human communities, and research information presented in news media. Students will utilize “memes,” a popular social phenomenon, to reflect on social issues and as a creative outlet and for comic relief.

NGSS: HS-LS2-7

CCSS: 9-10.RH.1, 9-10.RH.6, 9-10.RH.7, HS-ESS2-4

Oregon HS Ethnic Studies Standards HS.2, HS.7, HS.8