In March 2020, Karuk Dept. of Natural Resources (KDNR) employees and volunteers knew food security would be a top priority as the pandemic crashed across the region. Even as employees were put on administrative leave due to the shutdown, they were adamant about ensuring their communities had food. Fallow organic farmland owned by the Tribe became the Tishaniik Community Farm (the Farm) while, independently, a foodbox distribution program took shape. One year later, these now-intertwined KDNR efforts have grown, shifted, and adjusted, but food security for the community remains central.

This spring, Jasmine Harvey, KDNR Outreach and Sustainability Planning Coordinator, is looking forward to a “bigger head start” for the Farm as they explore self-sustaining activities. Central to the Farm mission is that it is in service to the community, and that the crops grown and harvest distribution remain culturally appropriate. After all, as KDNR Director Bill Tripp reminds, “we’ve avoided becoming farmers for over a hundred years” (despite constant pressure from colonist governments). And, at the same time, Karuk members and all those within Karuk Ancestral Territory do eat a lot of farmed produce. KDNR remains centered on revitalizing traditional food and fiber resources in the Territory while simultaneously investing in increased community access to fresh fruits and vegetables through their farm and food box programs. New developments include hiring a Garden Manager and investing in a tractor with implements and preservation equipment (for canning and drying). Additionally, KDNR anticipates leveraging cultural food distribution networks (identified as key to food security under a previous Karuk-UC Berkeley Collaborative project) as they expand Farm and foodbox distribution systems.

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In September and October 2020, the Slater and Devil Fires burned over 150,000 acres and devastated the town of Happy Camp, located within Karuk Ancestral Territory. Earl Crosby, Deputy Director of Karuk Dept. of Natural Resources’ (DNR) Watersheds Branch, was assigned as a designated Tribal Representative to that fire. He recounts how he and other community members, designated or not, did their best to ensure communities stayed together even as Siskiyou County officials tried to forcibly evacuate residents. During the fire, he witnessed how Pacific Power & Light “ran roughshod” over people and places within and around Happy Camp. Their clearing of right-of-ways to restore power took out any tree, live or dead, hardwood or softwood, that got in the way of power lines. Crosby and Bill Tripp, Director of KDNR, call out how even Black Oaks, an important cultural species, were cut and dumped without consultation. Ever since the fire until now, KDNR has also been interfacing with the US Forest Service as they plan post-fire salvage logging

As he has spoken on and written about many times (see here and listen here), Tripp says the 2020 fires and the official US response and recovery efforts are all “precursored by a century or more of mismanagement.” By taking local Indigenous people out of the system and moving to extraction-based land management, the US has put the Karuk and other Tribes into “a situation where we have to respond to the fact that they’re responding to the mess they’re creating.” Tripp views this situation as a fundamental and major socio-environmental injustice. He calls out that species like the Blacks Oaks will be the real saviors. The name of Happy Camp in Karuk translates to “the place where Hazel creek flows through.” And where does Hazel grow? It grows where Black Oaks grow and where healthy fire is, Tripp noted. Collaboration between Indigenous governments and communities and the US government and settler communities is happening more and more. But the entire situation in and around the horrific Slater Fire set some of those relationships back and “revives that generational pain of cultural genocide.”

Read on for inspiration about post-fire transformation...