About
Please join us for an afternoon of storytelling centering Native fire practices from four visionary Native Californian memory keepers. The program will begin with a film screening of Fire Tender, co-directed by Roni Jo Draper, PhD (Yurok) and Marissa Lila Kongao, which shares context on settler colonial fire suppression, highlights the work of Yurok firelighters to reclaim and pass on traditional eco-cultural knowledge, and meditates on the power of fire to heal land and communities.
The film will be followed by heart-to-heart storytelling, as the spirit of fire inspires. Margo Robbins and Elizabeth Azzuz, two Yurok fire practitioners who lead the Cultural Fire Management Council, will each share about the medicine of fire, as guided by prayer, before being joined by Tiśina Ta-till-ium Parker (Southern Sierra Miwuk/Kutzadika’a Mono Lake Paiute and Kashia Pomo/Coast Miwuk) and Draper for a group conversation. Drawing from their varied experiences as fire-women, grandmothers, filmmakers, basketweavers, and artists, they will explore the possibilities of fire as the center of the home, as well as the intergenerational abundance fire offers across time and space.
This Spotlight Sundays is a part of our exhibition programming for Good Fire: Tending Native Lands on view through May 31, 2026.
