New docuseries Wildfire features episode on all Indigenous firefighting crew
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Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Windspeaker.com
Knowledge Network is launching a five-part docuseries titled Wildfire on April 29.
Filmed in 2023 during one of the worst wildfire seasons in British Columbia’s history, the series captures the spirit and cutting-edge tactics of frontline B.C. Wildfire Service responders.
Wildfire was created by Optic Nerve Films’ Kevin Eastwood and CK9 Studios’ Simon Shave and Clayton Mitchell. Both Shave and Mitchell are former wildland firefighters.
Knowledge Network is British Columbia’s public education broadcaster. Available throughout the province on television and on streaming platforms across Canada, it features Knowledge Original documentaries commissioned from B.C.-based producers, curated dramas, fact series and documentaries from around the globe, as well as programming for pre-schoolers and parents.
Included in the Wildfire series is an episode highlighting the all-Indigenous Salish unit crew. The show explores how these firefighters navigate their commitment to the forest and their communities during devasting situations.
From initial attack crews to specialized air attack, parattack, and rapattack teams, Wildfire captures units across B.C. banding together in an effort to save the land and rebuild in the aftermath of some of the worst fires in the province’s history.
Viewers will be provided insight into fire behaviour, Indigenous fire keeper knowledge, and cultural practices that shape wildfire management.
Eastwood, executive producer and co-director, said after brainstorming with the other producers and directors about the documentary concept, his research indicated there had been attempts to create such a series in the past.
“The broadcasters I spoke to said it’s all about access,” said Eastwood. “You see, wildfire services just wouldn’t allow us, a (film) crew, to be on the frontline.”
Wildfire producers decided to take their concept to B.C. Wildfire Service, leaning into the team’s firefighting experience.
“(We) presented them with the idea and said ‘look, if it were these two (Mitchell and Shave), who are obviously very well trained and have trained a lot of people that work at these wildfires, a lot of the ground crews, would that be something different?’ And they said ‘yeah, with them this would be different’,” said Eastwood.
In 2022, the team filmed a few short pieces showing they knew how to handle safety protocols without becoming a distraction or disrupting the work of the actual firefighting crews. These short films satisfied B.C. Wildfire.
“So, we got the green light, and we certainly never anticipated that when we started filming it would be what became summer of 2023, which was that unprecedented summer with so much more acres and hectares burned than any other previous year in B.C. history,” said Eastwood.
While putting together the outline for the show, Eastwood and his crew were interested in showcasing the Salish crew members.
“I was very curious because I knew that, obviously, the people that have stewarded this land for millennia know a lot more about fire and the use of fire on the land than almost anybody else,” he said.
“I knew that there used to be a number of all-Indigenous wildfire crews, but there’s only one remaining that’s all 100 per cent Indigenous left, and that’s the Salish crew.”
Eastwood connected with the Salish crew’s unit supervisor Matt Nelson, who was just beginning to fill the position from predecessor Ryan Pascal.
“It was just an interesting and powerful story in itself and both of them, they’re very different, but both Ryan and Matt are just such lovely people, such wonderful human beings and it was such a joy to spend time with both of them and to film them and to tell each of their stories.”
Wildfire was also given the opportunity to capture the importance of the all-Salish unit crew in their communities, showing what a source of inspiration they are to the people.
“They’re obviously doing a really important job and that was just a source of pride for the community,” said Eastwood. “When they know the Salish unit crew, those are the members of their community that are saving people’s lives and saving the land. Once upon a time the only people that were protecting the land from fire were the Indigenous peoples and so I think there’s a strong sense of tradition.”
At one time there were many Indigenous crews, but that number has dwindled due to recruitment happening online, which many community members don’t always have access too. Additionally, the boot camp training space is located in a different geographical area.
Nelson hopes that by showcasing the Salish crew in Wildfire it will prompt other Indigenous people to come forward and train.
“I grew up hunting and fishing and everything. It feels like we’re slowly losing that in communities. Some communities are doing way better than others, but I think just understanding that nature is part of healing and health and wildfire, definitely, will put you out onto the land, which is so important for people… to reconnect to the land,” Nelson said.
Beginning straight out of high school, Nelson applied and went through the wildland firefighter interview process.
He describes the mental training as self-paced as it is completed online. Once that is complete, individuals attend a seven-day bootcamp for the physical training portion.
“You’re there with 90 other students who are like-minded,” explained Nelson. “Then, if you do good in the bootcamp, you get hand-selected for crews.”
Crews vary as some have more Indigenous members than others. Nelson said, when surrounded by others from his community, he appreciates the cultural aspects brought through with Salish traditions.
“I think the biggest piece for me is, if we want to have a debrief or something… we will bring out a drum and sing and it’s just really nice because we will be doing months away from home, away from culture and then one of our guys will bring song to the debriefs,” said Nelson.
Nelson said he has always felt safe with the other crew members as well, because everyone has taken the same level of training and “we all look out for each other.”
Another episode of the Wildfire series focuses on the Rattlers crew, which is comprised mostly of firefighters from Lytton First Nation, which was one of the communities devasted by the wildfires of 2021.
“Although they’re not entirely an all-Indigenous crew, they’re mostly Indigenous,” said Eastwood. “We hear from some of the members of the Rattlers about being members and they talk about what it was like to be on a fire. They were on a different fire that day when their own town, their own village was burned down and so that provides some really powerful stories of just what was at stake.”
Eastwood hopes viewers gain the appreciation he did during filming of how the responders are not just working at a job, but instead how being a member of the B.C. Wildfire Service is a way of life, a choice and a calling to serve.
Wildfire airs Tuesdays from April 29 to May 27 on Knowledge Network, streaming free across Canada at www.knowledge.ca/wildfire and on the Knowledge Network app.
Local Journalism Initiative Reporters are supported by a financial contribution made by the Government of Canada.
Long before colonialism, syilx people regularly started low-intensity controlled fires. Those bringing it back see how it’s saving homes and lives
Growing up in the bush in the mountains around snpink’tn (Penticton) in syilx Okanagan territories, Charles Kruger’s family taught him how to start fires when he was no older than five.
“Being able to start a fire really young was crucial,” said Kruger, who is of syilx Okanagan and Sinixt ancestry.
“Because we live off the land — deer, moose, elk, grouse, stuff like that — being able to start a fire in the rain, in the snow, is super important. That’s a skill in itself.”
Kruger comes from a long line of hereditary fire chiefs, stretching back “many hundreds of years,” he said.
“My grandma would be the one to tell everybody when to burn. She was the fire-keeper, I guess you could say.”
For a millennia, long before settler colonialism, syilx Okanagan people would regularly conduct low-intensity controlled burns, carefully planned to maintain and replenish the health of the land and the tmixʷ (all living things).
Viewing fire as a medicine, this method of burning forests and grasslands — what are today known as prescribed, controlled, cultural or traditional burns — also limited the threat of devastating wildfires blazing out of control.
Kruger’s nation once had many villages across the region, and his ancestors would keep their communities safe with such practices.
“My grandma’s grandma’s grandma said that we had to burn around our villages,” Kruger recalled. “What that would do is it would protect the village” in the hottest months of summer.
“It makes a lot more vegetation and stuff,” he added. “That’s what we used to do for a long time to get the fresh green shoots that come up … a lot of animals live off of that.”
But with colonialism came the gradual suppression of fire from the landscape locally — settlers in syilx Okanagan territories favoured reactionary wildfire-suppression strategies.
Maintaining healthy forest ecosystems — which can require fire to thrive in the long-term — suddenly became secondary to logging and extracting resources.
The settler approach to fighting fires came at a cost — leading to an extreme buildup of dry fuels and vegetation cover in fire-prone areas that have resulted in unhealthy forests more likely to burn uncontrollably.
All those factors, combined with drier conditions brought on by climate change, have resulted in the devastating wildfires experienced in recent years — and seen a series of communities in “B.C.” and “Alberta” largely burned to the ground.
“When you look around the forests now, it didn’t look like that hundreds of years ago,” explained Jordan Coble, a Westbank First Nation councillor and president of Ntityix Resources, in an interview with IndigiNews in 2022.
“We’ve had lots of fires here in the Central Okanagan,” he said. “But none of those fires would’ve been so massive had we been able to carry out our traditional fire-burning practices.”
Coming from a family of hunters, Kruger said he’s noticed the impact a hotter, drier climate is having not just on the intensity of wildfires, but the decline in animal populations as well.
In some areas he frequents that once had water flowing through them, today much of the water has dried up because of lower snowpack. Without water, vegetation has dwindled — and so has the buck population.
“What that means,” he noted, “is that we’re getting a little drier and drier every year.”
‘We can’t prevent a fire from starting’
With climate change exacerbating dry conditions and causing more intense wildfires throughout “B.C.,” Kruger said it’s urgent to support the work of organizations like Ntityix Resources.
Owned by Westbank First Nation (WFN), Ntityix Resources has performed wildlife mitigation — including cultural burns — on more than 300 hectares of syilx homelands over the last 10 years.
Responsible for treating areas within the First Nation’s community forest, Ntityix’s wildfire mitigation projects have proven to be effective.
One key activity to maintain forest health is removing surface and ladder fuels — smaller trees and pruned lower-hanging branches — to keep fires close to the ground.
Earlier mitigation work in the Glenrosa area — including pruning tree branches and creating more space between adult trees — kept the flames of the 2021 Mt. Law wildfire from reaching the top of tree canopies, and then spreading into community neighbourhoods.
The mitigation work of keeping fire from climbing up the trees ultimately limited the wildfire’s growth, and helped firefighters maintain its intensity by keeping the flames on the ground.
Thanks to these efforts, only one home was lost in the area.
Similar groundwork helped save even more homes in the 2023 McDougall Creek wildfire, which burned through 8,000 hectares of WFN’s community forest.
And like the Mt. Law wildfire, Ntityix’s previous fire mitigation work in Rose Valley Regional Park enabled firefighters to effectively contain its spread, dropping flames in the forest canopy down to the ground.
Peter Kascak, a mentoring forester at Ntityix, explained that holding flames on the ground lets firefighters “work on the ground in front” of them — at once protecting people’s homes and keeping them safer while doing their jobs.
“We call it mitigation because we can’t prevent a fire from starting,” Kascak said. “A fire is going to start — it’s just going to happen. But what we can do is create a situation where it could be of less intensity.”
‘The greater the distance, the better’
Kruger joined Ntityix as a technician about four months ago, and he’s been contributing his knowledge of fire to the rest of the crew ever since.
On March 20, Kruger and a handful of other Ntityix technicians were burning slash piles in the WFN community forest, again in the Glenrosa area.
The piles consisted of accumulated forest debris, as well as surface and ladder fuels collected during Ntityix’s mitigation work in the spring of 2024.
This part of the WFN community forest within the Glenrosa area had been identified as a critical priority area, because it’s close to private property lines within a wildlife-urban interface.
Kascak said the technicians prefer to have a minimum 100-metre buffer space between properties and forest — and ideally double that.
“We’re creating some depth in there,” he said of the strategy. “The more you have mitigated, the better; the greater the distance, the better. The more chance, if fire is up in the canopy, of it dropping to the ground.”
By the time they finished their mitigation work in the area last year, it was too late to burn the piles of wood they made, he explained.
There’s a risk to the work. Burning the wood piles at the wrong time could spark a grass fire, especially if it’s timed too close to wildfire season.
“So you’re getting into a situation where you could start a forest fire if you start burning piles,” he said.
“So we have to leave them. The nice thing about that is that they dry out over the summer and they’re a little easier to burn.”
The March day’s moist conditions proved to be a favorable time to burn the piles, he said. Kruger agreed, adding that the timing was perfect.
”The snakes, the frogs — everything — are all underground,” he said. “It’s the perfect time to burn, this time of year.”
Kruger said he was helping to teach the others in the crew how to pile wood properly — in a stacked formation — preparing to burn it.
“The way I was taught … I always stacked them,” he said. “When I do it parallel like that, the embers will fall and they won’t hit the ground or go out. They’ll stay — you want them to stay.”
Once the dozen or so remaining slash piles had burned, the years-long effort to increase the fire guard between the Glenrosa community and the nearby forest was done.
“If a fire was to be out on the boundaries coming in this way towards the little village,” Kruger said, “well, the firefighters have a better chance of fighting it in these areas.”
He takes a lot of pride in the work he does at Ntityix. They’re ultimately working to protect people’s homes, he said — and lives.
But if fire is to be reintroduced to the ecosystem — and used as good medicine like it once was — he said that fire should be treated with more respect by everyone living in the Okanagan Valley.
“It could save your life in the cold months. It could also hurt you if you don’t know what you’re doing,” he remarked.
“Respect that fire. It can hurt you, it can scar you — just respect the fire, which we do, and utilize it.”
Author
AARON HEMENS, LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER
Aaron Hemens is an award-winning photographer, journalist and visitor in unceded syilx Okanagan territory. He is Filipino on his mom’s side, and has both French and British roots on his dad’s. As a settler, he is committed to learning and unlearning in his role as Storyteller for the Okanagan region, and to accurately and respectfully tell stories of Indigenous Peoples throughout the area. Aaron’s work is supported in part with funding from the Local Journalism Initiative in partnership with The Discourse and APTN.
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