After more than one hundred years of fire suppression, Yurok people are returning Indigenous fire medicine to the land in order to heal the world.
SYNOPSIS
Storyteller, director, and writer, Roni Jo Draper will guide viewers through the complex story of fire that has been in the making since 1849 when the early settlers entered Yurok territory from the eastern parts of the United States.
Roni, a Yurok tribal member, will weave together three stories: the story of how fire came to the people as a tool and as medicine, how settlers sought to separate the people and land by extinguishing fire, and how the people worked to return fire to the land.
The story is framed by the retelling of how Coyote gathered the peoples of the forest–Eagle, Osprey, Deer, Beaver, and even Frog–to steal fire. The people used fire as a tool to warm themselves, prepare meals, and to purify the land. With fire as medicine for the land, the land thrived.
Roni will also provide an Indigenous telling of how settlers sought to steal fire from the Indigenous peoples of the Klamath River. Over one hundred years later, cultural fire practitioners in this region navigated through miles of bureaucracy in order to ease the state and federal restrictions surrounding fire and are among the first Indigenous peoples of North America to legally burn. State and Federal agencies are looking to Indigenous peoples, in particular Klamath Tribes, to unlock fire’s potential to protect forests from large forest fires that have threatened the land in California and throughout the world.
Director Statement
Aiy-ye-kwee, nek’new Roni Jo Draper. I am an enrolled member of the Yurok tribe from the village of Weispus, known today as Weitchpec, at the fork of the Klamath and Trinity Rivers in California. I grew up visiting Weitchpec each summer to swim in the river, gather berries, and run free with my cousins. I consider Weitchpec my home, not just because it is the ancestral lands of my family, but because I continue to return there with my own family. Weitchpec is the location where I can feel my ancestors teaching me and guiding me to step into my own best future.
I recently completed a short film, Fire Tender, that explored ideas about cultural fire and centered the work of Margo Robbins and her efforts to return fire to the land. I now would love to provide viewers with more of an insight into how colonization brought us to the current conditions we face around fire, and how the work that Margo and others are doing has the potential to reunite Yurok people with cultural practices that continue to live into the future. I am mindful of other storytellers, primarily non-Indigenous, who have put together thoughtful stories of Indigenous fire practices, but their Western lens has influenced the way they perceive fire and the possibilities for fire practices into the future. Good Fire offers me the opportunity to tell the story of Yurok fire in a Yurok way.
Wok’hlew
ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)
Director Roni Jo Draper
Roni Jo Draper, PhD is a member of the Yurok tribe, from the village of Weitchpec on the Klamath River. Her experience as a queer Yurok woman has influenced her work as a teacher, scholar, and artist. Roni explores storytelling practices as a way to understand humanity. Her films include SCENES FROM THE GLITTERING WORLD and FIRE TENDER.
Director Marissa Lila
Marissa Lila is a multicultural documentarian and psychedelic healer who was raised in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Thailand. Their work as a director and producer for film and television centers marginalized perspectives who use storytelling to heal. Their award-winning projects include FIRE TENDER, TRANSMORMON, SCAVENGER, and BOOMTOWN.
Jenn Lee Smith (producer) is an amplifier of underrepresented stories. Since 2001, she has engaged in social impact work in the academic, nonprofit, and film worlds. She is a queer filmmaker from Taiwan who has produced and supported films such as HOME COURT (2024), MIJA (2022), BRING HER HOME (2022), and PRAY AWAY (2021).
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