It was a historic day for the city of San Luis Obispo, the county and most importantly the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe.
For the first time in the county’s history, a 15-acre cultural burn took place at the Johnson Ranch Open Space, and according to members of the Northern Chumash Tribe and the city, it went off without a hitch.
“It went perfectly. We had great conditions, great planning, and things are looking good,” said Bob Hill, City of San Luis Obispo Sustainability and Natural Resources Official.
Becca Lucas with the Northern Chumash Tribe says it’s an occurrence that hasn’t happened in hundreds of years.
“We've been wanting to do this for a really long time. We've got elders in our tribe who didn't think that this would happen in their lifetime and it's something we've known that this land, our homeland needs,” she said.
Similar to a prescribed burn, a cultural burn helps with the restoration of land with one key difference.
“This is tribally led," Hill explained. "It was done really under their terms and the way that they wanted to do it. They were able to have ceremony and to construct ways of igniting the fire and carrying the fire.”
On a day that saw near-perfect conditions for the burn, it was a collaboration that allowed the tribe to leave their cultural stamp on the area through an environmental process aimed at conserving the land and honoring their ancestors.
“So proud of our family to be able to do this and bring it back and like, experience good fire again,” Lucas said.
“So good fire is fire on purpose for a purpose, and there's many purposes for it,” cultural burn practitioner Kelsey Shaffer added.
The cultural burn involved CAL FIRE, the City of San Luis Obispo Fire Department, city rangers, and the Northern Chumash Tribe.
