The reflections here are meant to accompany the hard daily fight in the United States to defend our elections, protect our neighbors, demand justice for survivors of unthinkable abuse, and to stop more devastation to our social systems and environmental protections.
What if what we are experiencing is not just unspeakable destruction and disruption, but also an unexpected, prescribed burn?
In the world of land stewardship and reciprocity, fire is a welcomed friend. Fire carries wisdom, and is a tool, a healing medicine, a way of tending landscapes, which have become choked through neglect, imbalance, and extraction. Prescribed burns are an ancient practice honed over thousands of years by Indigenous peoples across the globe and involves the intentional and controlled use of fire to restore health to an ecosystem. A purposefully designed burn is a meticulous, reverent process guided by deep knowledge of fire ways of being, ecological cycles, weather patterns, soil composition, plant and animal relationships, and the sacred balance between humans and the land.
Prescribed burns are invaluable to land tending and fecundity. They reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires by clearing underbrush, improve biodiversity by renewing native vegetation, manage invasive species, and promote healthier, more resilient ecosystems. This is a process that cannot be rushed or improvised but rather requires knowledgeable planning. It involves crafting detailed burn plans and preparing the site to monitoring weather conditions, smoke dispersion, and post-burn regeneration. Safety is critical to this work, but so is ancestral, experiential, and ecological knowledge.
Indigenous communities, such as the Yurok, Karuk, and Hoopa peoples in Northern California, have practiced prescribed burning for generations. Their fire knowledge is not only technical, but also spiritual, communal, cultural, and ceremonial. In this way of understanding, fire is a respected force to work with in land tending. Prescribed burns are low and slow, guided by precision and respect, clearing underbrush and opening canopies so that light can reach the forest floor. Fire makes space for new growth, for seeds that have waited sometimes years for the heat to crack them open. Areas that have been carefully burned create food systems for animals and humans, regenerate medicinal plants, and renew ecological balance.
So, what if what is happening now, in this moment of horrific polycrisis, is not a wildfire spiraling out of control, but an opportunity for a prescribed burn?
Not the kind we would have chosen, and certainly not one carried out with the wisdom of Indigenous firekeepers whose knowledge has been systemically silenced, erased, or co-opted. But it is a burn, nonetheless. It is a blaze that is clearing the ground whether we are ready or not, leaving us raw and exposed, yes, but also perhaps newly prepared. In the wake of a prescribed burn, after the air clears and the smoke disperses, there is potential and there is space. The soil is now rich with transformed memory, lessons, and nutrients, capable of holding something new.
This foundational transformation matters significantly, because what was here before wasn’t working, not for most of us, and not for the planet. And, as tattered veils lift, what is being exposed is far more vile and horrific than many of us realized. The institutions we have been operating in, our so-called justice system, our schools, our healthcare, our government, our borders, were not built on justice, equity, empathy, truth or care for the Earth. They were designed by colonization and patriarchy, instilled with greed, perpetuated by genocide, and made efficient by racism and domination. These institutions and ways of being do not serve liberation, the roots do not support well-being, and the DNA carries the legacy of violence. America is built on stolen land with stolen labor that is calling to be remedied.
Rebuilding these institutions “better” using the same foundations will only bring back the illnesses of society that we see today—patriarchy, racism, colonization, and extractive economies. So, the inquiry is not how we fix what was, but what is it we are rebuilding and how?
Instead of reconstructing what was lost, we need to use this terrifying moment to imagine what has never yet been built. This is a time to resist the reflex to recreate a version of the world that was already untenable and instead focus on designing something with a new origin. A system that does not reward hoarding and hierarchy, but nurtures reciprocity and reparations. A society that does not center control at the top, but collaboration. An economy based not on endless extraction, but on mutual care and collective well-being. A world where justice means repair and where land is not owned but honored. A way of life that welcomes a living Earth. Many people have been imagining a world of justice and collective thriving for a very long time, and this is work already well underway, but it needs space to grow.
This discourse may seem naive to some given the extreme moment we are in, but what we have been calling realistic for the last centuries has been a brutal fantasy, such as the idea that some lives matter more than others, that the Earth is ours to plunder without consequence, that peace with each other and the Earth can coexist with hierarchy and supremacy. That fantasy has failed. That dream has burned, and here we are, in the ashes.
And no, this is not the way most of us wanted transformation to come, but harrowing and enduring warnings and lessons from Indigenous, Black and Brown communities were not heeded or tended to for generations. Women and girls have not been listened to or respected. Far too many have been, and are, suffering, dying, and being killed. There is no beauty or winning in the wreckage of communities, lives broken a part, and burning landscapes. In the way this is happening, and who is being harmed, this is not a revolution I celebrate. It is one I grieve deeply.
Instead of fostering belonging, love, and connection to one another and the Earth, we find ourselves in a world where those in positions of power are further generating exclusion and hatred. And now, the colonial project, this imperial machinery, and its toxic notion of supremacy have reached a zenith. The authoritarian oligarchs and extremists, detached from any sense of communal spirit and land-based connection, are planning for controlled techno-cities, massive private bunkers, or dream of launching themselves into space, escaping the very Earth they are bent on destroying.
Yet what are the techno-billionaires and authoritarian oligarchs really running from? It is not just the Earth they are fleeing, but the very essence of belonging. Where has the deep sense of belonging to the Earth, to each other, to community gone? This is a sickness, a deep-rooted separation from the living world, which has morphed into a violent, disjointed worldview where the wellbeing of neighbors, land, water, and forests no longer matters unless it serves the machine of profit or a false sense of domination.
Additionally, this is a constructed existence with the delusion that security comes from othering, and that casts difference as danger. Supremacist thinking pursues an illusion of perfect safety and happiness that ultimately yields a spiritual hollow rather than wholeness because there is no connection, no relatedness. In this gaping emptiness, endless consumption, control, domination, and greed try vainly to fill the desolation. This illness has generated a system of infinite extraction, infinite growth, without regard for anything or anyone but the financial gain of a select few. This sickness, this illness of the spirit is causing the burn.
And still, it is what we have. We are standing on an Earth that is being scorched.
Then, I remember that some seeds need fire to germinate. Trees such as redwood and eucalyptus carry their future in cones or seed pods that are sealed shut with resin, and only the intense heat of fire can melt them open. When a fire sweeps through a forest, the resin melts, and the seeds are released into the freshly cleared, nutrient-rich soil, ready to sprout and renew the forest.
These trees did not simply survive fires; they evolved because of them. The life cycle of these trees depends on fires. Maybe, like those fire-dependent seeds, the new world we long for and are calling forth cannot grow without the fire that has swept through us. Perhaps the visions, the values, the wisdom, and the possibilities waiting inside us have been locked tight by years of injustice, denial, disconnection, and oppression. They have been sealed by the very systems that refused to allow them to see the light.
I am hoping with the depth of all I am, that with the old world burning away, those seeds of a healthy and just world can fall into the soil and take root. We the People, need to stand together courageously with love and care to make this so. It is not going to happen on its own. We can see the immense strength and bravery of communities in Minnesota. They are holding up a brilliant lantern in the darkest time to show us a way forward. We the People are not going to back down, and every day we are gaining more ground. We are dancing in the streets to the sounds of Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio and broadcasting his message, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”
We also need to study and love the land that sustains us all. We can remember and uplift the fire knowledge and the brilliant keepers of this wisdom that have always been here and survived against all odds. We can honor the practices that were here long before this empire rose and will be here long after it falls. We are unlearning the ways of domination and relearning the art and practice of tending.
