A Prescribed Burn in Superior Provides Pride and Healing

Frederica Freyberg:
In environmental news, a culturally and ecologically important controlled burn happened in Superior this week. Wisconsin Point along Lake Superior was the site of what is known as a cultural prescribed burn. The fire removed invasive species and added nutrients to the soil to nurture native plants. The restoration effort was a partnership with the Fond du Lac Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa. The point was settled by the Ojibwe and site of burial grounds, but the community was forced from the land in the early 1900s and the cemetery desecrated to make way for harbor expansion. The tribe regained the land from the city of Superior in 2022, which called the prescribed burn part of a broader healing process of honoring the land and those who came before. For the Ojibwe, such burns are a sacred connection to the health of the land.

Vern Northrup:
This Great Lakes area, all the plants here are fire dependent. They depend on fire to keep growing. There’s a lot of states that are turning to the Indigenous tribes in the use of fire to promote what their traditions were of, you know, using fires to shape their environment, to slow down the spread of large, you know, large, uncontained fires. But there’s something we learned traditionally was fire, you know, the cleansing. It helped heal us, you know, physically, mentally, spiritually.