Title of Talk: Preservation of Native Plants through Cultural Fire
March 12, 2025 at 7:00 PM
The meeting was held at Shepard Garden & Arts Center, 3330 McKinley Blvd., Sacramento. It was a “hybrid” meeting and the recorded Zoom can be viewed on our YouTube Channel here.
Summary
Homa’kani! This means hello in Nisenan. Our guest speaker, Sadie Hampshire will share with us the significance of preserving native plants through cultural fire through her relationship to her communities and her work as a F.L.I.C.K.E.R (Fire Leadership for. Intertribal Conservation Knowledge-keeping. Eco-cultural. Revitalization). “Fire has been around for all of time,” Sadie writes, “our Indigenous peoples saw fire as what it truly is, medicine. We knew fire didn’t also just provide warmth but as well as food cultivation, shelter, medicine & gathering materials & ensured flowing water, all while making the soil very nutrient rich meaning native species thrive off fire. My ancestors used fire in a cultural prescribed way, preparing a certain plot of land for certain needs such as, bringing back native grass, maintaining gathering materials or increase water flow/habitation, fire has been around since creation but was unjustly outlawed in 1850, recently we’ve gained back our rights to culture fire and continue to heal our mother.” Join us as Sadie shares with us timeless gifts of native preservation tools and practices in California.
Speaker Bio
Sadie Hampshire is a Cultural Fire Practitioner and traditionalist, I’ve been raised in my culture all her life and been practicing cultural fire for almost 2 years, which has lead her to understand the complex native ecosystems and how native species thrive together. Fire has been used as medicine to treat the land for thousands of years and is vital to our future. As a member of Tanku Nisenan and Telmeti Washoe Nations, she carries this medicine alongside her elders and other cultural fire practitioners on Indigenous forested lands throughout northern California


