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The Ohio Country Episode 4: Fire

A member of a fire crew bends over and adjusts his torch during a Huffman prairie spring prescribed burn.
Chris Welter
A member of a fire crew adjusts his torch during a Huffman prairie spring prescribed burn.

Shawnee and Miami people (among numerous other people from American Indian nations) intentionally burn land, which has helped create a sustainable mosaic of ecosystems in the Ohio River Valley over the millennia.

But when settlers, traders, and colonists came to the Ohio Country, they did not embrace that practice. And today, researchers and conservationists want to bring it back, saying it would improve Ohio's soil health and ecological diversity.

Evan Larson, professor of environmental sciences and society at the University of Wisconsin - Platteville, at Cloquet Forestry Center, showing evidence of past prescribed burns in tree rings. he is standing outside holding a slide of wood.
Chris Welter
Evan Larson, professor of environmental sciences and society at the University of Wisconsin - Platteville, at Cloquet Forestry Center, showing evidence of past prescribed burns in tree rings.

Research on Indigenous prescribed fire in the Ohio River Valley

Two experts we interviewed in this episode, Mike Gonella and Dave Nolin, have published research about Indigenous prescribed fire in our region.

  • Gonella included chapters in his dissertation about the Effects of dormant season Indigenous harvesting and burning on 173 growth and reproduction of dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum L., Apocynaceae) and the Effects of Indigenous Miami harvesting and burning regimes on 124 growth and reproduction of common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca L., Asclepiadaceae). You can find his full dissertation here.
  • Nolin’s paper called Ecological Impacts of Anthropogenic Fire in Southwestern Ohio, USA, Documented from Public Land Survey Records from 1802 and 1803, was published in 2023. Read it here. In conjunction with the academic paper, he released an interactive GIS map called 1800 NATIVE LANDSCAPES OF DAYTON, OHIO REGION (see below).

  • Nolin also co-presented with Talon Silverhorn (Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma) at a "Roots of Stewardship: Native Land Management and Settlement Patterns in the Dayton, Ohio Region" event this April that the Beaver Creek Wetlands Association put on.
  • Also, check out this Illinois Prarie 101 guide from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources for a comprehensive history and information about the future of prairie burning in our region.
University of Minnesota’s Cloquet Forestry Center in June 2022 after a prescribed burn conducted in collaboration with the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Ojibwe). Ojibwe people’s homelands include what we now call Ohio.
Contributed
University of Minnesota’s Cloquet Forestry Center in June 2022 after a prescribed burn conducted in collaboration with the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Ojibwe). Ojibwe people’s homelands include what we now call Ohio.

Significance of Fire (and fire-dependent species) for the Miami, Ojibwe, and Shawnee

The place-based Myaamia lunar calendar, developed centuries ago in what is now Ohio and Indiana, connects two months in the fall with burns. The first month is the grass-burning moon, or šaašaakayolia kiilhswa – from Sept. 5 to Oct. 3 this year. The second month is the smoky-burning moon or kiiyolia kiilhswa. It’s Oct. 3 to Nov. 2 this year.

The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma's Myaamia Ethnobotanical Database (mahkihkiwa), a collection of plant references derived from over a decade of research and interviews regarding the historical and contemporary use of plants by the Myaamia People, also includes numerous plants that
are fire-dependent.

Our colleague, WYSO Environment and Indigenous Affairs Reporter Adriana Martinez-Smiley, recently published a feature about Miami (Myaamia) fire practices.

The White Oak tree (a fire-dependent species) is important to the Shawnee. The leaf of the White Oak is on the Shawnee Tribe’s flag, and the tribe’s ceremonial grounds are on a 155-acre cultural preserve in White Oak, Oklahoma. However, due to a lack of prescribed fire, the White Oak and other plants and animals that depend on it are declining in the Shawnee homeland today.

Flag of The Shawnee Tribe
Flag of The Shawnee Tribe

Some of the photos in this story come from a trip that Chris Welter took to Northern Minnesota in 2022 with the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources. Chris and other journalists from around the country met with non-native conservationists and people from the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Ojibwe), who are working together to reintroduce burning practices at the University of Minnesota’s Cloquet Forestry Center. Read more about that initiative here.

Neenah Ellis has been a radio producer most of her life. She began her career at a small commercial station in northern Indiana and later worked as a producer for National Public Radio in Washington, DC. She came to WYSO in 2009 and served as General Manager until she became the Executive Director of The Eichelberger Center for Community Voices where she works with her colleagues to train and support local producers and has a chance to be a radio producer again. She is also the author of a New York Times best-seller called “If I Live to Be 100: Lessons from the Centenarians.”
Chris Welter is the Managing Editor at The Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO. Chris got his start in radio in 2017 when he completed a six-month training at the Center for Community Voices. Most recently, he worked as a substitute host and the Environment Reporter at WYSO.