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Ashland woman talks fire in Tasmania Anthropology paper earns invite to conference Three paragraphs took Susan Menanno halfway around the world to talk about ancient wisdom. The Ashland woman wrote a research paper on American Indians� use of fire as a land-management tool to earn an anthropology degree from Southern Oregon University. A three-paragraph abstract of her project elicited an invitation to speak at an Australian conference about indigenous people�s use of fire around the world. Menanno returned recently from Hobart, Tasmania, where she addressed 200 people who attended "Native Solutions: Indigenous Knowledge and Today�s Fire Management." She explained how the Takelma and Shasta people of Southern Oregon and Northern California selectively burned the forest to increase their supply of food and raw materials such as fibers for basket weaving. Menanno, 44, said the conference was organized to help modern people understand how indigenous people�s experience with fire can be applied to land management today. "The old knowledge sustained (indigenous) people for thousands of years," she said. "It�s something we need to be using today." Menanno told the conference how the Shasta and Takelma people set fire to the woods in spring and fall, when damp soils prevented fires from burning too hot. Their burning practices favored food species such as camas roots and oak trees, and cleared out small trees and brush. Early European settlers remarked on the open, park-like forests they found when they arrived in Southern Oregon in the 1850s. "Fire was a creeping, smoldering entity that put nutrients back into the soil," she said. Menanno interviewed Shasta and Takelma elders for her senior research project, which she titled "Cool Burning: Traditional Fire Management by the Takelma and Shasta Native American Women." She learned that women did the burning because they gathered wild foods (mostly acorns and camas roots) and beargrass stems for making baskets. "Since the women were the gatherers, they had the knowledge of where the best edibles were," she said. Fire has been largely excluded from the forest in the 150 years since Europeans settled Southern Oregon and Northern California. Without regular small fires, more trees compete for moisture and nutrients, underbrush accumulates, and fires that do break out often burn hotter and cause more destruction. "The Takelma tell us they�re appalled at how the forests look now," she said. Menanno works as a wilderness ranger in the Red Buttes Wilderness of the Rogue River National Forest. Her interest in wild land and her Indian heritage (she has Blackfoot and Paiute ancestry) led her to study the ways Indians in Southern Oregon used fire to manage the land. "Being a wilderness ranger I wanted to put faces and names to the tribes that were back there," she said. Menanno�s trip to Australia marked the second time she had been asked to present her research. She traveled to Missoula, Mont., in May 1999 to speak at a Forest Service wilderness conference. After her presentation in Tasmania, she was asked to help coordinate the next "Native Solutions" conference, tentatively set for 2002 at the Grand Canyon. She said people who live in the modern world need to understand that proper use of fire can make forests healthier and more productive. Destructive fires such as the one that ravaged Los Alamos, N.M., in May only perpetuate the notion that fire must be feared. "We desperately know we need fire (in forest management)," she said, "and we�re struggling with how best to put that critical element back on the land." Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA