Flames started by Melinda Adams as part of a demonstration of cultural fire Nov. 2, 2024, at the University of Kansas Field Station outside Lawrence. Credit: Meg Kumin / KU Marketing

There is a conceptual thread connecting Australia and Arizona—the places about which University of Kansas researcher Melinda Adams wrote in two recent scholarly journal articles—and the work she’s been doing with the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska based in White Cloud, Kan., to reintroduce a beneficial “fire regime” to their lands.

It’s Indigenous fire sovereignty.

“That has been the ‘aha’ moment for both sets of research,” said Adams, who is KU’s Langston Hughes Assistant Professor in Indigenous Studies and Geography & Atmospheric Science.

Adams was one of seven scholars invited by the lead author, Professor Christopher Roos of Southern Methodist University, to collaborate on a new paper titled “Tree rings reveal persistent Western Apache (Ndee) fire stewardship and niche construction in the American Southwest.”

The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

These dendrochronologists examined nearly 650 sets of tree rings, comparing those from inside the San Carlos Apache reservation in Arizona to those outside it. The trees on the reservation continued to benefit from what are called “cultural burns,” while those outside did not after the establishment of reservations.

“The climactic influence of Apache fire stewardship was the revelation of the paper,” Adams said. “I believe it’s seminal work because it challenges the assumption that dendrochronological records were produced by naturally occurring wildfire, when in fact, reexamining the ring patterns, and from questions that our research team asked, it signals and affirms that it was Indigenous peoples purposely placing fire to those landscapes.”

Adams praised both Dr. Roos and the lead author of another recent paper on which she collaborated, retired U.S. Forest Service Ecologist Jonathan W. Long, for involving relevant Native scholars in the work. Adams and one of the other co-authors on the tree ring paper, Professor Nicholas Laluk of University of California–Berkeley, are enrolled members of Western Apache tribes, and their involvement in the research provided key cultural details, she said.

The article Long organized, “Indigenous Fire Stewardship to Revitalize Disrupted Ecosystems,” is commentary invited by the editors of the journal Global Change Biology.

The authors analyzed a paper published recently in the same journal by Elle J. Bowd of the Australian National University in Canberra titled “Plant Responses to a Re-emergence of Cultural Burning in Long-Unburnt, Threatened Temperate Woodlands.”

Adams said Bowd’s article on the ecological benefits and pitfalls of regrowth in “fire-deficient” places resembles her own work as she consults on and helps conduct ongoing reintroduction of regular cultural burning to Iowa Tribal land in northeast Kansas.

“Bowd’s cultural fire work in Australia is great, but, importantly, the paper is also an example of studies that are co-developed and co-produced with tribes,” Adams said. “As with the Roos paper, having myself and Dr. Laluk as key researchers demonstrates scholarship that is co-produced with Indigenous peoples. The paper also included permission from the Apache tribe to reexamine those dendrochronology records. Both of these approaches point toward responsible research conducted with Indigenous peoples.

“In our review of Bowd’s work, the ecological biodiversity that results from Indigenous fire stewardship is exciting. But research that is ethically done and led by Indigenous peoples was an exciting part of the review, as well.”

She continued, “This work affirms Indigenous fire sovereignty, revitalizing fire stewardship not only as an ancient land-tending practice, but as a current endeavor reintroducing responsible fire into landscapes long deprived of its presence.”

More information: Christopher I. Roos et al, Tree rings reveal persistent Western Apache (Ndee) fire stewardship and niche construction in the American Southwest, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2509169122

Jonathan W. Long et al, Indigenous Fire Stewardship to Revitalize Disrupted Ecosystems, Global Change Biology (2025). DOI: 10.1111/gcb.70411

Citation: Indigenous fire sovereignty aims to bring ‘fire regime’ back to Native lands (2025, November 3) retrieved 3 November 2025 from https://phys.org/news/2025-11-indigenous-sovereignty-aims-regime-native.html

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