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Paul Wilson
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Paul Wilson
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Paul Wilson
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Paul Wilson
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Paul Wilson
Paul Wilson, twenty-three, often takes his nieces and nephews out to the middle of the Klamath Marsh National Wildlife Refuge in Chiloquin, Oregon. There, the Indigenous Klamath photographer points to the mountain peaks on the horizon. “Repeat after me,” he instructs, “Peak to peak.” Together, they trace the ring of mountains encircling them and recite those words.
“Beyond just the destruction of homes or communities, there is this whole other set of spaces and practices being disrupted by the fire. It could be access to medicinal plants, foods, fishing spaces.”
“Peak to peak,” Wilson says, references the Klamath Tribes’ territories as defined by their 1864 treaty with the United States. Wilson, in addition to being a documentary photographer, is a land steward and artist. His practice revolves around the concept of visual sovereignty. That is, the idea that Indigenous people, cultures, and landscapes are best depicted by people from those communities.
When he’s not traveling around North and South America with Rios to Rivers, a nonprofit that empowers young Indigenous people to become river stewards, he is documenting the sacred sites and natural landscape of the Klamath Tribes’ ancestral home and using the photos to advocate for greater protections for the natural environment.
Wilson’s work revolves around the land: its beauty, its power, and the abuse it often endures. Most recently, his photos depict the forests of Chiloquin, and the intense wildfire that erupted there on September 7. Through these images, Wilson tells a story of how forests stewarded with care by the Klamath Tribes for thousands of years have now erupted into an inferno-level blaze after a century of federal management practices combined with the effects of climate change.
The Klamath Tribes are comprised of the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin Band of Snake Indians, all of whom were involved in the signing of the 1864 treaty. They ceded 23 million acres of land in exchange for a reservation of 862,000 forested acres. Over the next 100 years, the Klamath Tribes thrived by selling timber from their forests, and by the 1950s, they were the second wealthiest Native American nation in the United States.
In 1954, in line with the “Indian termination policy” of the times, the United States terminated the Klamath Tribes’ federal status. Much of their land was sold, though some was retained by the United States government and converted into a national forest managed by the United States Forest Service. The Klamath Tribes received federal recognition once again in 1986, but their lands were not restored. Regardless, the tribes continue to be involved in stewardship initiatives related to water and land use.
The forest retained by the United States government in the 1950s evolved into the Fremont-Winema National Forest. It was there that plumes of smoke signaling the start of the Two Four Two Fire (named for its proximity to the 242-mile marker on U.S. Highway 97) rose from the trees in early September.
By Monday, September 28, the fire had covered 14,473 acres of forested land, aided in its rapid spread by high winds and dry conditions. No lives were lost, but 1,532 homes were threatened, 966 residences evacuated, and eight homes were lost to the blaze.
Almost all of the acreage the fire covered was forested. And 70 percent of it, Chiloquin and Chemult District Ranger Judd Lehman tells The Progressive, is now destroyed. It will take sixty years to recover. Lehman says the cause of the fire is still unknown, although under investigation.
Dr. Daniel Leavell, an associate professor at Oregon State University and fire specialist, works with the institution’s Forestry and Natural Resources Extension Fire Program. He says that the surge of intense wildfires in recent years is due to a combination of climate change and management practices. Lack of sufficient prescribed burning—controlled burns conducted under safe conditions—has allowed fuel to accumulate in the forests, he says.
And while prescribed burning is in use in Oregon, it’s not used enough. “We need to increase what we’re doing,” Leavell says, “but we’re reluctant to do so because of the liability if it goes wrong.”
The technique of prescribed burning originated from Indigenous people across the world, including the Pacific Northwest, and has numerous environmental and cultural benefits. The practice declined after the arrival of European settlers, due to lack of understanding and perceived risk associated with taking a torch to the woods. Instead, fire suppression—immediately putting out a wildfire once it’s started—gained popularity. The result? Fires being quickly stamped out led to forests full of fuel that burns hotter and causes more damage.
When asked if federal forestry management played a role in the Two Four Two Fire, Wilson’s answer is a forceful “Yes.” He says, “We’re at the intersection of climate change and fire mismanagement.” He sees “the removal of Indigenous land management,” such as prescribed and cultural burning practices as “one of the leading proponents of climate disaster here.”
Other management practices Wilson sees as problematic are logging, and the detritus it leaves behind. Just last year, he photographed and took drone images of a completed prescription (the planned treatment of a section of forest) on federal land—or Klamath land, depending on who you talk to. “Those clear cuts were in the heart of our elk herd’s calving meadows,” animals which Wilson notes are “critical in our traditional diets.”
In his position as district ranger, Lehman is responsible for forests within the Fremont-Winema Park. He doesn’t necessarily disagree with Wilson, but he also doesn’t wholly agree that the U.S. Forest Service is to blame for the fire or for mismanagement of the forest. He sees the logging of smaller trees as an integral part of clearing forests and getting ready to conduct prescribed burns. Lehman says the area of forest where the Two Four Two Fire wreaked havoc was next on their list of projects for prescribed burns, but acknowledges that the state likely wouldn’t have allowed them to burn the amount they needed to make an impact owing to air quality regulations.
Basically, there’s a certain amount of smoke you’re allowed to put into the air with prescribed burns, regulated by the State of Oregon. “There’s a recognition that we need to get the smoke management policy to let us burn what we need to burn,” Lehman says, “but at the same time, we have certain agencies whose responsibility it is to keep the air clean.” Where he does agree with Wilson, he says, is that he thinks “there’s probably recognition that climate change is an issue, forests are not healthy, and something needs to be done to avoid outcomes from large fires.”
According to Wilson, the Klamath Tribes administration is so concerned by the forestry service’s management practices that they formed a committee, which included the photographer, to evaluate the situation. The Tribal government then sent a letter “to the forest manager for this district,” Wilson shares, “stating that these [management practices] are not up to our standards, these do not meet trust obligations we have with the federal government.” Wilson refers to the fact that the Klamath still retain hunting and fishing rights on their ancestral lands, and the federal government is not supposed to engage in any management practices that impede their ability to do so.
Lehman says he is open to working with the Klamath on forest management, and that a collaboration is currently in process. “We’re working with [the tribes’] Natural Resources Department right now to set up a fire crew to engage in prescribed burning and other forest restoration activities. It’s something the tribes are trying to develop, and we’re trying to be supportive as we can in our role. It can only be positive.”
In the Instagram captions for his images, Wilson is vocal in his stance that the fires have been in part caused by federal mismanagement of natural resources. After all, his work is about protecting the environment. But attempting to establish fault doesn’t seem to be the only reason he photographs what he does (landscapes and natural features) the way he does (as intrinsically linked to the Indigenous people who first inhabited and cared for them).
Wilson’s photos are part of his identity as a Klamath person and steward of the land. “I use my visual storytelling to document Indigenous communities like my own and celebrate our way of life, and also to document our relationships to water, land and food systems,” he explains. “What interests me is strengthening the domain of our own narrative within my community.”
For this reason, some of his photos, like those of ceremony and certain sacred sites, are reserved solely for use by the Klamath Tribes. The ones he does share with the world, like those of the fires, are intended to educate viewers on issues of stewardship from a uniquely Indigenous perspective. “I can’t run away from the projects going on in my homelands. I’m tied to this place, these rivers, these forests, because they’ve sustained my family for thousands of years.”
Dr. Nicole Blalock is an activist-scholar and assistant professor in the American Indian Studies Program at California State University, Northridge, and in 2015 authored a paper on the intersection of photography and visual sovereignty. When asked if a more general audience should tune into Indigenous artists working within the framework of visual sovereignty, Blalock says, “Unequivocally, that’s a yes.”
If not, they might miss a big part of the impact of the wildfires. “Beyond just the destruction of homes or communities,” Blalock elaborates “there is this whole other set of spaces and practices being disrupted by the fire. It could be access to medicinal plants, foods, fishing spaces.” She says that the general public often doesn’t have the same view of wild spaces as Indigenous peoples that call them home. “There is a different connection there,” she says, “that can be represented through a voice that has an Indigenous ancestral connection to those lands.”
The images Wilson took of the Two Four Two Fire are unique in that they are not simply records of a singular event, but of his ancestral home, and of centuries of federal and tribal relations. They are like sentences in a story that is continuously unfolding. The images of dried slash piles waiting to burn, are the sentences that precede the night sky seared orange by fire.
And while we will never see many of the photographs Wilson creates, the ones we are permitted to view are necessary. The price we pay for not listening to the story, as he tells it, is evidenced in the smoke rising from the forests of Klamath this summer.