Alberta Indigenous communities relying on prescribed burns for wildfire protection with hopes to get back to traditional practice

Flames creep towards the property. Volunteer community members put it out when it gets close. The effort is part of an intentional back burn set by the crew to get ahead of a nearby wildfire. It’s almost been a year since this played out on the East Prairie Matey settlement. About 40 homes are lost, but work to save more was successful. They stepped up to help. They came in and what could I do? And we saved probably like 27 houses. I would say that didn’t burn. This season, Alberta Wildfire has done some prescribed burns in the area as a proactive step. Is through a partnership with the settlement, but in the community there’s questions about whether those efforts go far enough and there’s an interest in training local crews to take the burn on themselves. It doesn’t fit what we really need. There has to be more done, and I communicated this to the ministry as far as I need to. You need to change it up a little bit because it it worked for us in the past where we would burn our fields and that was always consistently done throughout the years. This is a prescribed burn from the past week near Lac La Biche. Surinav dry tall grass near Beavercreek Creations Cultural Grounds. It’s a practice the Community South Fire Chief says is becoming popular of First Nations to use again for cultural and practical significance. Rejuvenate the land, helps get the medicines back, burns off the invasive species of of plants and brings back the natural habitat. As for Supernome, he’s optimistic Alberta wildfire will be able to help them out quickly. And what happened last year happens again. Travis McEwen, CBC News, Edmonton.