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Good practice Imported

Yunesit'in & Xeni Gwet'in Cultural Fire Stewardship — Reviving Indigenous Burning in Tsilhqot'in Territory (British Columbia, Canada)

Canada · Riske Creek · See the Canada profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 14% 60/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Since 2019, the Yunesit'in and Xeni Gwet'in First Nations have revived spring and fall cultural burning across Tsilhqot'in Territory, British Columbia, training 60+ community members and treating 400+ hectares in 2023 to cut wildfire fuel loads and restore grassland health.

60+
Community members trained since 2019
15
Core fire-steward crew (2023)
400+ ha
Area treated with cultural fire (2023)
2019
Programme running since
Yunesit'in & Xeni Gwet'in Cultural Fire Stewardship — Reviving Indigenous Burning in Tsilhqot'in Territory (British Columbia, Canada)

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Yunesit'in Government; Xeni Gwet'in First Nations Government; Gathering Voices Society
Period
2019-2024
Keywords
Indigenous fire stewardship, wildfire risk reduction, grassland and forest restoration

Context

Following British Columbia's record 2017 wildfire season, the Yunesit'in and Xeni Gwet'in First Nations (Tsilhqot'in Nation, Chilcotin region) partnered with the non-profit Gathering Voices Society in 2018 to rebuild a fire stewardship programme grounded in traditional burning knowledge.

Objectives

Revive traditional spring and fall cultural burning to reduce wildfire fuel loads and restore grassland-forest health, under the guidance of former Yunesit'in Chief Russell Myers Ross and Australian Aboriginal fire practitioner Victor Steffensen.

Activities

Cultural burns have been conducted every spring and fall since 2019 on Tsilhqot'in Title lands and in the Dasiqox Tribal Park, funded through a tripartite federal-provincial-Tsilhqot'in Nation arrangement.

Results

By 2023, a core crew of 15 regular fire stewards, supported by a wider pool of 60 community members trained over five years (youth, women and Elders), applied fire to more than 400 hectares in a single season. Researchers describe it as the longest continuously running Indigenous cultural burning programme in British Columbia.

Conclusions

Programme leadership is candid about limits: Myers Ross has said the community wants to scale up across the full territory but 'we don't have all the tools that our ancestors did.' A 2022 FACETS paper catalogues ongoing legal/regulatory barriers (permitting, fire-suppression policy, liability) constraining scale-up, and a 2025 study notes carbon-finance for this work 'remains only exploratory, not yet implemented.'

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — Community-based crew training and seasonal burn operations; no total programme budget disclosed in source, funded via tripartite federal/provincial/Nation arrangement.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Continuous spring/fall burning since 2019, training built over five years to 2023-2024; still a small fraction of the historically fire-managed landscape.
Staffing & skills
15-person core fire-steward crew, 60+ trained community members (youth, women, Elders), Gathering Voices Society facilitators, fire practitioner Victor Steffensen (advisor)

Conditions for success

  • tripartite federal-provincial-Nation funding arrangement
  • multi-year traditional-knowledge training pipeline
  • access to Tsilhqot'in Title lands and Dasiqox Tribal Park for test burns

Common failure modes

  • legal/regulatory barriers (permitting, fire-suppression policy, liability) documented in FACETS 2022 constrain scale-up
  • leadership itself states the community lacks 'all the tools that our ancestors did'
  • carbon-finance mechanism remains exploratory, not implemented

Where it fits

Governance type
Indigenous-led (Tsilhqot'in Nation) with tripartite government funding
Scale
sub-regional (Chilcotin/Tsilhqot'in Territory)
Income level
high-income country (Canada), Indigenous rural community

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