Other than the Manson Family murders and trial of the late 60s, probaby so, yeah.
California Teaches Native Americans How to Light a Fire
The state has approved funding for “food sovereignty,” owl counting, and “cultural burns.”California Governor Gavin Newsom has allocated millions of dollars to a program that funds Native American “food sovereignty,” owl counting, and “cultural burns,” in which tribal groups use traditional fire techniques to clear brush from the landscape and preserve their “close kinship” with plants, animals, and “other natural relatives.”
“Food sovereignty.” “Cultural burns.” “Natural relatives.” Yep, that’s California all right. But does it get even more California still? Of COURSE it does; we haven’t even gotten to the “throwing millions of taxpayer dollars right down the toilet” part of it yet.
Since 2023, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CAL FIRE, has awarded $24 million to tribal groups and other nonprofits as part of its “Tribal Wildfire Resilience” program. The man effectively overseeing the program, Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot, believes that California was founded on a “state-sanctioned policy of genocide” and that the state has pursued “decades of land dispossession, discrimination, and disconnection.” The Newsom administration, he said, was making progress in returning the land to the “leadership of California Native American tribes.”
As part of this commitment to “cultural burning,” California has created separate fire-certification processes for nontribal and tribal populations. White, black, Latino, and Asian fire bosses must receive technical certifications, including a 40-hour burn-boss course and, in some cases, a federal certificate. “Cultural fire practitioners,” by contrast, are certified through simple tribal recognition that a person has “substantial experience” burning for cultural purposes.
The “cultural burns” themselves follow various rituals. Some begin with drumming, sage burning, and a prayer. Attendees sometimes go around in a circle, introducing themselves to the land. In the words of Ron Goode, chief of the North Fork Mono Tribe, the land listens to the incantations, and the intention is “to make sure that everything on the landscape—Mother Earth, Creator, everybody—understands why we’re there and what we’re there for.”
OH yeah; turn a bunch of welfare-dependent lowlifes loose in a tinder-dry forest with matches, no instructions, and no supervision and have them light up the shrubbery and get a drum circle started—THAT’S gonna work out well. I mean, what could possibly go wrong, amIright? Ahh, but here comes killjoy Chris Rufo with some more of those pesky, annoying facts to ruin the party.
While any group is entitled to preserve its heritage, taxpayers are not obligated to subsidize it. California Democrats have sought to mask their handouts to the tribes as a public good, but these are reckless expenditures for a fiscally strained state, with massive risks. The dry season is approaching—and California politicians are playing with fire.
Of course, and as usual.