Margo Robbins – Cultural Fire Management Council

Margo Robbins is the co-founder and president of the Cultural Fire Management Council (CFMC). She is one of the key planners and organizers of the Cultural Burn Training Exchange(TREX) that takes place on the Yurok Reservation twice a year. She is also a co-lead and advisor for the Indigenous People’s Burn Network.

Margo comes from the traditional Yurok village of Morek, and is an enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe. She gathers and prepares traditional food and medicine, is a basket weaver and regalia maker.

She is the Indian Education Director for the Klamath-Trinity Joint Unified School district, a mom, and a grandma.

Richard F. O’Rourke III is an indigenous fire practitioner and the Fire Coordinator for the Cultural Fire Management Council (CFMC). He is a Yurok Tribal member, and has lived on the banks of the Klamath River for the majority of his life. He has been using fire as a defensive tool against wildfire for over 30 years. As Fire Coordinator for the CFMC he has started using fire on a landscape level for the revival of cultural resources, fuel reduction, and returning the landscape into a healthy, biologically diverse ecosystem.

Elizabeth Azzuz is of Yurok and Karuk Descent. She grew up in the traditional Yurok village of Weitchpec, where she currently resides. She is a cultural practitioner, gathering and propagating traditional food and medicine plants. She is the Cultural Fire Management Council Board of Directors Secretary, a key planner for TREX, responsible for logistics and permitting. She is an active community member, a mom, and a grandma.

Hoopa, CA
United States

Website: http://www.culturalfire.org

Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/pg/CulturalFire/

Workshop(s)

Workshop 1: Controlled Burns; Traditional Burning in a Contemporary Context

This panel presentation discussed fire as a land management tool that helps create biodiversity and healthy ecosystems from a Native perspective. The Cultural Fire Management Council has brought fire back to the ancestral territory of the Yurok people to ensure the continuance of traditional life ways. Fire is an integral part of the ecosystem, and learning how to use it in a good way will help heal the land and the people.