tdneale.bsky.social
Lives in Narrm / Melbourne, comes from Aotearoa / New Zealand, works in Anthropology @ Deakin University | Editor of Science, Technology, & Human Values aka @sthv.bsky.social | timneale.me
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Closing date 14 March - excited to see how AusSTS runs with this⚡ 🤳
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If you want to know more about FN fire, start with FN people, e.g.
We Are Fire: wearefire.ca
Good Fire podcast: yourforestpodcast.com/good-fire-po...
Frank Kanawha Lake (Karuk/Yaruk): research.fs.usda.gov/about/people...
Steffensen's “Fire Country”: publishing.hardiegrant.com/en-au/books/...
+more
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Based on my experience working with FN, I was hesitant to suggest FN have the solution to a very urban + anthropogenic wildfire problem they didn’t make. But wildfire mitigation in the US (+ anywhere) needs to be anticolonial. It needs FN political + territorial sovereignty. It needs landback.
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E.g. "For non-Indigenous people with an established or new interest in this issue, the vital question to ask is: what are we trying to achieve in seeking to support cultural burning? ... After everything, are we still looking for help without reciprocity?"
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But as I + others have written (e.g., after 2019-2020 Black Summer here insidestory.org.au/what-are-whi...), it is a habit of non-indigenous people to rush to FN people in times of crisis and ask them to solve problems not of their making. FN rights and knowledge are ignored until "we" have a crisis
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It didn’t make it into the last thread because one of my main aims was to communicate some common issues around the moment of emergency + crisis response, particularly the fixation of the dominant (colonial) system on control. It seeks control (not coexistence).
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ProPublica have also done great reporting on the pressures places on paid wildland firefighters in the US, and the massive recent exit of experienced staff: www.propublica.org/article/wild...
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Ppl have asked about the statistic re: ~33% of California's state wildland firefighters are incarcerated people. This is from CDCR reporting, and has now been widely reported, e.g. www.forbes.com/sites/dougme... For more, see Feldman's work + Lowe's "Breathing Fire" book (amongst others)
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of course! I've been researching with First Nations peoples throughout the period of working on the book. Ppl can find some of it open access here journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... and onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... and www.naturalhazards.com.au/research/res...
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I'll keep adding bits + pieces to this thread, but here are some places friends have fwd'd / posted about where to donate if you can assist:
www.inclusiveaction.org/workeraid
secure.actblue.com/donate/lafir...
Gofundmes for displaced black families: tinyurl.com/56mztws8
Pls DM me others
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The use of unfree labour is abhorrent. Firefighting, risk mitigation + (good, current, clear, accessible) information about fire risks should be resourced and administered as a free public good.
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We can understand this in a number of ways, including - alongside paywalled fire maps, private weather forecasts etc - as regressive uses of state power to avoid empowering communities to know + manage risks.
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6) there has been some great reporting about incarcerated firefighters in CA. Started in WWII this program has since grown to ~33% of state firefighters. 14 other US states have initiated similar programs, mostly in the last decade (see: the work of Lindsey Feldman www.lindseyraisa.com).
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This is why I (+ others) are sceptical of calling the present moment a "climate emergency". We need radical change in how we address landscapes that burn. But our systems are built to respond to emergencies w/ the restoration of order. Look to responders for help - but not substantial change.
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5) (almost done): emergency management is very stressful work, and is designed to protect the status quo and reestablish it in the aftermath of emergency (see “Performing Control” anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....). That's how it started, that's its guiding logic, that's its job.
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Other things like zoning and land planning, road infrastructures, building codes, public warning systems, utilities funding, climate change, invasive species, privatisation, insurance, and on and on. This is another reason why there are no fixes. There are too many causes, each adding to the risk.
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4) of course there might be some guilty party, in any given case. A power line coupling may fail. Or there was an arsonist. Or, more often, dry lightning. But trying to blame (or control) these things can be a distraction from all the other things that create the conditions for disastrous wildfires.
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Some people may remember that after the 2019-20 Black Summer season Twiggy Forrest promised >$70M to stop dangerous fires with tech by 2025 (the effort was closed down in 2023). Yeah.
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3) but there are no solutions. Fire is an elemental process - chaotic, wilful, necessary - and we can mitigate its risks but not eliminate them. There's a lot of money to be made selling us fixes. Try my drone or AI. Buy my satellites - they’re magical! They’ll stop the next one. But they won’t.
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So, we just need more control next time? More surveillance, more fuel treatments, more firefighters, more planes. More (of the same). In Aus, this refrain has built a multibillion dollar sector that can prevent + mitigate a lot of fires. But it cannot stop them all. It cannot change the weather.
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2) when our attempts at control fail - which is inevitable - we tend to blame rogue actors + double down on this dream. Someone “failed,” we say, and government agencies need to do better. But then we either give those agencies more money, responsibilities, and resources or try to outsource it.
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1) for >70 years, wildfire management has centred on the dream of "control." It operates through "command and control" + is increasingly militarised. The dream is a modernist one: that flammable lands might be made predictable + benign. Probabilities cornered, consequences known, risks neutralised.
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The book makes a few arguments that are maybe relevant to the present moment, and I'll put them out there in case they are helpful to people watching these horrible fires unfold in Los Angeles.
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Damn, I need to get on this Grain-O ASAP
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No. 4, teaching anthropology this year, particularly our "Cyborg Anthropology" unit/class at Deakin. Getting to talk about great STS research with undergrads - it's pretty thrilling sometimes. Next year we're starting a "Digital Cultures" Major that'll have a number of Anth courses like this in it
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No. 3, just the ongoing good time the @sthv.bsky.social editors have working together. It may seem odd to say that working on a journal is one's happy place (or one of them) but it's true in this case.
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No. 2 was the book manuscript workshop we held in June. 7 colleagues/friends + 1 long-time interlocutor/friend reading my draft - lighting a path to the completion of something I've been working on way too long.
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No war but the culture war. 🫠
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*screams in Gadamerian hermeneutics*
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Net zero in northern Australia. Talking to different publics about the embedding of net zero promises in large infrastructures. So, some real crossovers with your work Brit!