A collaborative of federal, tribal, and non-governmental fire practitioners conduct a prescribed burn at the University of Minnesota Cloquet Forestry Center on the Fond du Lac Reservation, May 2022. Credit: College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences
Fire is an essential ecocultural process for the health and vitality of 3.8 million acres of Minnesota’s fire-dependent woodland and forest communities. Fire benefits fire-loving plants, such as wild blueberries and Minnesota’s pine trees, and humans and other animals that rely on these forest communities for their wellbeing. However, historical western forest management often viewed fire as purely destructive, fostering a fear-based and reactive, rather than a reciprocal and proactive, relationship with wildland fire. The 2025 wildfire season in northern Minnesota, which destroyed 150 structures and required an $8.7 million emergency response by wildland fire staff and the Minnesota National Guard, serves as a reminder of the complexity of our relationship with fire. While emergency response will always need to be available, it should not be the primary approach to working with fire in our communities.
The Cloquet Forestry Center (CFC) forest stewardship team is working with the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe (FDL), and other partners, to restore a proactive relationship through ecocultural prescribed fire regime restoration across the CFC forest, and elsewhere, in Nagaajiwanaang. In 2025, CFC and FDL conducted three successful prescribed burns that built on previous efforts from 2024 and 2022, all made possible with technical assistance from The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and other partners. These prescribed burns are conducted with prescriptions that enable the safe and effective application of fire to meeting ecocultural objectives including forest health and vitality.
Broadly speaking, ecocultural fire restoration is land acknowledgement in practice. The CFC and FDL staff, along with agency partners, are building and sustaining relationships among and across ecological and human communities through fire. They are working together to understand and acknowledge complex histories and moving forward with increased trust and in the spirit of reciprocity. More specific on-the-ground outcomes include enhanced presence, wellbeing, and productivity of fire-loving plants and medicines, such as blueberries and pine trees, and reduced risk of catastrophic wildfire. The collaborative land stewardship actions have also created research, education, and outreach opportunities for academics, students, community members, and professionals from state, federal, county, and industry agencies with lessons learned already being applied beyond the CFC and Nagaajiwanaang.