Verbena Fields in Northern California is an emerging model of what decolonizing land via Traditional Ecological Knowledge can look like, supported by partnerships between Native and non-Native communities.
On a rainy December day in 2021, volunteers in Paradise, California, moved along a creek, planting c’ipa/willow and l’yli/redbud. Charred snags of tó:ni/gray pine and other dead trees stood above them on the slope. They were working in the Sierra Nevada foothills, an area devastated by the 2018 Camp Fire, which killed 86 people and destroyed over 18,000 homes and other structures. Mechoopda Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) master teacher Ali Meders-Knight and native-plant expert Raphael DiGenova guided these volunteer efforts to replant the burned-over foothills of Paradise.
Much of the Camp Fire burn scar is in the Mechoopda Tribe’s ancestral homelands. The Mechoopda are a federally recognized tribe and a subdivision of the Northwestern or Konkow Maidu. Meders-Knight launched the Chico Traditional Ecological Stewardship Program in response to the Camp Fire and has run a number of TEK workshops for both Native and non-Native students since then…