Open Collections

Burr, Judith

University of British Columbia

Interdisciplinary fire research shows that the naturalcultural world of the Okanagan Valley of the southern interior of British Columbia has been shaped by fire for millennia: by cultural burning by Syilx Okanagan and Secwépemc communities, by lightning fires, and by patterns of settler-colonial burning and fire suppression. In the wake of large and severe wildfire seasons and predictions of worsening wildfires fueled by climate change, there are calls for both interdisciplinary problem-solving among fire scholars and for more public engagement to transform how we live with fire in British Columbia. Understanding the history of fire in these places can contribute to better fire use, management, and response that accounts for more-than-human ecological health and recognizes multiple forms of important fire expertise. This thesis is a contribution to these interdisciplinary and public conversations about life with fire. It takes the form of the academic podcast “Listening to Fire Knowledges in and around the Okanagan Valley,” and this supporting research document Listening to Fire Naturecultures. The podcast is a work of digital- (and feminist-, environmental-, and public-) humanities research-creation centered on 14 oral history and expert interviews and two field recordings; each interviewee holds specific and often plural forms of expertise and understandings of life with fire in and around the Okanagan. My recorded conversations situate me as the researcher in this project and allow me to share my fire research in a dialogic, relational, listenable format contextualized by my archival and secondary source fire history research. Academic podcasting has been a way for me to enact particular feminist values and methodologies. I see listening as a container for these values, their application to my academic podcast, and an important disposition for shaping collaborative fire knowledges and practices. This work explores the ways that fire history informs present and future ways of living with and understanding fire in and around this Valley.

Text; Sound

2022-07-29

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/82214

Interdisciplinary Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/