TRANSCRIPT

Leah Lemm:

Boozhoo, I'm Leah Lemm, citizen of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe.

Daniel Lemm:

Hau Mitakuyapi, I'm Daniel Lemm, citizen of Lower Sioux Dakota Oyate.

Leah Lemm:

And this is Wisdom Continuum. We are bringing you conversations from awesome Native folks to celebrate Native wisdom for a healthier, thoughtful, more just future. How are you doing, Dan?

Daniel Lemm:

I'm doing fine, Leah. How are you doing?

Leah Lemm:

No complaints on my end. I am definitely made for Minnesota. I'm made for the winter months. We complained so much about how long winter was, but now that summer is here. I wish we could bottle up winter and spread it out more evenly throughout the year.

Daniel Lemm:

Yeah. That would be nice. I was talking to somebody who lives in Illinois the other day and they were saying, "Oh my gosh, it's going to get into the upper nineties, low hundreds coming up here." And I told them, "If it gets into the nineties where I am, that's a really hot day."

Leah Lemm:

That's a heat wave.

Daniel Lemm:

Yeah. And then winter never seemed to end and we just rolled right on into summer. So, stay cool everyone.

Leah Lemm:

Well, it's either freezing or mosquito season.

Daniel Lemm:

Yeah. We certainly have had a lot of rain over the last month or so here. It's quite wet out there.

Leah Lemm:

Yeah. That's nice though. Because I remember last year, we were in a severe drought and that was rough, our garden didn't do so well, but we also didn't have those mosquitoes. So it's a balancing act, really. Water is life, including mosquito life. And that's just how it is. That's fine.

Daniel Lemm:

Yeah.

Leah Lemm:

Mosquitoes are good food for dragon flies and frogs and all that.

Daniel Lemm:

Right. And the dryer it is out there, there are other concerns that we have to take into account, such as the potential for wildfires and making sure that, even the Minnesota DNRs fire danger, what is that level for any particular day? How might that guide us as well as other ways that we know to guide how we manage for the land based on the environment, based on the seasons, based on our traditional knowledge of how to care for the land around us.

Leah Lemm:

Whenever I drive back and forth from the cities, is it, and we just did that recently, you can see Smokey the bear with the little sign next to him that indicates the fire danger level. Like, "Oh, Smokey the bear, such great propaganda."

Daniel Lemm:

They put pants on that bear, what's up with that?

Leah Lemm:

Poor thing. But just a few days ago it was foggy outside and it was like I remember last year seeing the fog or what I thought was fog, but it was actually smoke. So I rolled down my windows in my car and sniffed, just to make sure it didn't smell like campfire. But yeah. So today, we are going to be talking about wildland fires with an expert.

Daniel Lemm:

Today, we will be talking with Rob Gotchie at Leech Lake Wildland Fire and Aviation Management.

Leah Lemm:

Yes. And you know him from lacrosse.

Daniel Lemm:

Lacrosse, from the creator's game. We coached our son's 10U lacrosse team for Grand Rapids Amateur Lacrosse Association, so that's how I got to know Rob.

Leah Lemm:

And 10U means, age 10 and under.

Daniel Lemm:

Right. So they've got their cutoffs, but basically it's third and fourth graders, is who's in the 10U program.

Leah Lemm:

Yeah. So, this will be pretty interesting.

Daniel Lemm:

Right. He travels the country for his work, especially during wildfire season. And I remember in mid-April, he's like, "Hey man, I just want to let you know I'm going to be gone for a few weeks because I got this thing I got to do."

Leah Lemm:

This thing.

Daniel Lemm:

Which means I needed to take over the full on coaching duties, which is cool and glad that there's a time for-

Leah Lemm:

You weren't stressed at all.

Daniel Lemm:

Oh no, no. It was completely relaxing.

Leah Lemm:

No, you like having 15 kids, young gentleman running around.

Daniel Lemm:

15?

Leah Lemm:

Was that it?

Daniel Lemm:

It'd be more like 25. 22 to 25.

Leah Lemm:

But I thought you only did half the team.

Daniel Lemm:

But we would practice everyone together in a gym on one basketball court. So, that's a story for maybe another time.

Leah Lemm:

No, tell it now.

Daniel Lemm:

No. Nobody wants to hear that story right now.

Leah Lemm:

Okay, fine.

Daniel Lemm:

So I thought that, from getting to know even a little more about him through coaching through the rest of the season, we had our final game at the state tournament on Sunday and I was thinking, it'd be great to hear more about his work in fire prevention and how he brings his Native values and practices into the work that he does. I thought that'd be a really cool, really timely topic and thankful that he said, "Yeah man, let's talk."

Leah Lemm:

All right. Well, let's talk to him.

Daniel Lemm:

All right. Hey, Rob.

Leah Lemm:

All right. Boozhoo Rob. Can you introduce yourself for us please?

Rob Gotchie:

Boozhoo, Robert Gotchie, Miigwech Clan, born and raised in Leech Lake in a little town of Ball Club, just on the east side of the reservation. Grew up there my whole life, pretty much. I was raised by my grandma, my grandpa, my aunts and uncles primary. I do know my mom and dad, but my dad recently passed away last winter, or two winners go now. But other than that, I was pretty much raised by my grandparents and an auntie mainly so and uncles and aunts. So community raised like a lot.

Rob Gotchie:

I am now currently the forestry and fire restoration coordinator for Leech Lake that entails a lot of primary, just getting fire landscape back underground. I've been a firefighter now for roughly 15 years. Pretty much straight out of high school, I started firefighting, worked my way up, started getting qualifications, started taking positions and became the prevention coordinator for the reservation, a lot of the outreach with the youth and just Firewise stuff. Smokey the bear message, trying to get away from that a little bit, he's an iconic symbol, so definitely you can't just get rid of him. And I guess with our line, with the tribe and what we're trying to do now is still use them, but still make it a point of restoring fire on the landscape within the tribe or just on lands in general.

Leah Lemm:

So as a forestry and fire restoration coordinator, I feel like there's a lot to that title.

Rob Gotchie:

That it is.

Leah Lemm:

So usually when we think about fire, we think about like suppression and extinguishing and prevention, I guess. When you say fire restoration, or forestry and fire restoration, what does that mean?

Rob Gotchie:

So, pretty much back before colonization as tribal members and in all tribes in across the country, we managed the forest, we managed our lands in traditional ways of burning whether that be for our blueberries, for our raspberries, for traditional medicines even just for simple as clearing out spots. Fire is a big aspect in our life and our culture in anybody's culture, really. So it was a lot of it had to do with... Before that it was the burning and what we did as traditional people on how we managed the land then colonization came in and then they start migrating west and then it became this thing with the forest services fires bad they're losing out on the timber so it was this host whole movement.

Rob Gotchie:

Obviously Smokey the bear is that fire is bad, you can't have fire throughout the years. And with the fires, obviously getting bigger and bigger every year and you're seeing more of them on news talking about new records for fires that are growing acreage wise, more frequent wildfires, more dry lightning strike fires here in Minnesota. When I first started that wasn't a common thing. Due to global warming, it's starting to become more I shouldn't say the norm, but it's starting to be more frequent compared to when I started. So with this whole movement of fire being big, all the way up to DC is they understand that like, well, why wasn't fires so big back in the day?

Rob Gotchie:

And it pretty much boiled down to it's like, well, the Native people, they burnt their land. They burnt it in a fashion in a way that was more frequent. For so many years now, you've had all that brush and build up, this build up in the woods, whether it's from bug kill or just drought or whatever it might be, that's why all that dry feel is out there in the forest now is because of lack of fire. And it's just a Tinder box now it's just laying down or like a box of matches, just waiting to be lit. And that's why the fires are so much bigger now. So they came back to the idea of like, well, what if we went back to a traditional way of having fire? And that's where I come in now as restoration is trying to make the point of fire is good. That's why my Smokey to bear has a stick in his mouth.

Leah Lemm:

Has a what? Oh, a stick in his mouth.

Rob Gotchie:

With flame in it. You know what I mean? That's the whole point is to... These are few and far between, but it is that point of his message for so many years is fire is bad, put fires out. Right now it's they want to go back to the traditional ways and how Native Americans did it when they managed the land is okay. Well, we burnt areas and like I said earlier, like whether it was for berries or medicines or hunting, or just for living. We weren't stationary people, we migrated with the seasons, whether that was on the other side, this side, for our wild rice, whatever hunting areas, fishing areas, different things. So we weren't always in the same area.

Rob Gotchie:

So we knew as Indigenous people that we knew, well, what needed to be taken care of within the land. And that's where I'm at now, but after so many years of not having fire on the ground, it's just we can't just light a match and call it good and maybe that's how they did then. And back in the day, there's a lot of process to it now it's not like it's just, "Oh, well, it's just on Native lands. We can let it rip." We can't. There's private homeowner, there's private land owners, there's the tribe, there's the BIA lands, there's forest service lands, there's state lands, there's fish and wildlife lands. So there's all these different lands within a checker board of everything. So you can't have big broadcast burns possibly like how they did.

Rob Gotchie:

And the history shows it in the trees. You know what I mean? There were fire scars. You can see fire scars in trees that were recently cut that may have been planted years ago, or may have been there years ago. You go off to Star Island, there's proof that there is burn scars from back when it was Native lands and it was everything there that you could see that it was burnt. There are pictures out there as well that shows the forests not being so thick. A lot of elders today they remember being able to hunt deer in the woods and see through the woods to be able to walk through the woods without having all this brush in there now. So it's trying to restore it back to have fire back on the landscape, so we don't have these mega wildfires like the out west or like last year, like in Greenwood. We've had fire, we were in a pretty severe drought last year. So it's just a lot, it's trying to a lot of work within the area of trying to get fire back on the landscape prescribed burning.

Leah Lemm:

Can you talk about how you do that then? How do you introduce it back? And then do you work then with neighboring fire departments or fire-

Rob Gotchie:

Agencies.

Leah Lemm:

Agencies? Okay.

Rob Gotchie:

Yeah. So pretty much and that's talking with other agencies, whether that's a Forest Service, Nature Conservancy, a lot of instead of having these little burns that it may have Leech Lake land on it or MCT land on it that our burn that could be all of five acres where the Forest Service has a 10 acre chunk right next to us. And then the Nature Conservancy has another five acre chunk. You know what I mean? And then in between all that, then we have another 20 acre chunk. You know what I mean? So we're trying to make that instead of having all these little burns that are at different times, let's just all work together and make this one big broadcast burn and we can all work together to do it.

Rob Gotchie:

So, there is a lot of agency. We're trying to get it with other agencies to. We had a burn done here two weeks ago, three weeks ago now, that was a hundred and like 40 acres. So that's quite a bit of acres for just one area. You know what I mean? For our prescribed burn, maybe not as burn a whole, but with that different many land owners within it. And this was all underneath a pine story stand. We have other birds that we do that are in grasslands that are big so it was a big deal, but so just trying to get...

Rob Gotchie:

Obviously working with the people, trying to figure out what's going to be the best practice with us is whether that means going out there doing some mechanical brushing first, just to reduce some of the brush. So it's not so impactful because obviously we're not trying to lose the trees at the end of the day. We're trying to restore it back to being able to have it within a burn cycle. Because obviously once you burn an area, you're going to have new growth, regrowth. A lot of times it could be an area of blueberries, raspberries, different traditional medicines will come back.

Rob Gotchie:

Or maybe just open up some seeds for new Pines for natural growth Pines. So it all varies, but that's the whole concept of trying to get the burning in and trying to restore fire and/or if I shouldn't say and/or, but the realization of the possibilities of having a big wildfire here with the recent blow down severe storms we've been getting, that's just more feel on the ground. So it's a lot more like, okay, we're just a Tinder box waiting to happen. And it's one thing that we don't have mountains, but obviously we still have wind. So a good windy day can push a fire pretty well here in Minnesota. Historically, I don't know if you guys heard about the Hinkley fire long time ago, that's a huge fire that was a multiple wind driven day event.

Rob Gotchie:

So and that's the whole point and that's another aspect of burning is if we burn an area that's maintained and we have an area of burn close to communities, different areas the fire's not going to be as rapid there because we've already maintained and treated the area. So that's the point. Obviously just all around maintaining communities, restoring medicine, restoring life and trying to get it back to a traditional way of what it looked like back then.

Daniel Lemm:

Hey Rob, I was thinking about the Hinkley fire, the Forest History Center in Grand Rapids Cohasset, they have an exhibit and even there's like a stage of video that goes, and it's pretty well done. That explains the story of that fire, how it started, everything leading up to it and then the fire itself and then the aftermath of that. So that's a cool exhibit for people to check out. I grew up in the suburbs in Egan. So when I was thinking about growing up, fires would mean homes were on fire and the local fire department would come and put those out as quickly as they possibly could. I moved to Southern California to San Diego in 2004. And that's when I first became aware of wildland fires. So in California it'd be on the news thousands of acres burning. And I was wondering, should I be concerned with where we are? So it's like that was my first introduction to a wildland fire. And that was one that was not controlled. It wasn't intentionally set. For someone like me, could you break it down to what is a wildland fire?

Rob Gotchie:

Yeah. So a wildland firefighter is just working or it's a fire that's primary that's going to be within the landscape. Obviously grassland, there's grassland wildfires timber wildfires in the forests, mostly in the forest. We don't really deal much with structural fire, house fire. I'm not a structural firefighter by any means. Within the wildland realm, we do do structure protection. We try to do as much as we can, but at the end of the day, we try to if we can veer the fire away from structures in a safe manner, but wildland is strictly it's in the forest, in the grasslands, you get down in that Southwest that's Hazel brush lands.

Rob Gotchie:

So anything that happens in the house, that's going to be a structural department. More out west the structural people they have a better mix of wildland as well. Different areas will have more where they're obviously in here too as well the structural people, they will respond to a brush fire, a wildland fire. A lot of times they just call them brush fires, they'll respond to them, whether that's a ditch fire, you'll see some fires just on the roadway. Whether that's from a trailer or some chains or something but a lot of times the wildland fires, they are natural, they are from dry lightning strikes. A lot of times it's some natural cause but there is a lot of accidental arsons maybe campfires, somebody out camping, there's fires that are in accidental by people pulling trailers with the bad wheel, the wheel gets hot, gets off, goes off into the ditch, starts the ditch and return starts a fire.

Rob Gotchie:

Then there's just people blatantly out there setting them in the forest. There's all kinds of incidents, but a lot of times the seasons come with depending on some dry lightning that's like I talked about a little bit earlier was when I first started here in Minnesota, a dry lightning fire you'd maybe get one, you'd maybe get two, but nowadays they're not so much district because we did get a lot of rain, a lot of green up. You could have more. They're starting to be more frequent and that's the long term plan is that with global warming and there probably be more.

Rob Gotchie:

Your second part of question. So our season within Minnesota generally goes anywhere from March. Obviously we have the snow, we have all the winter and all the snow, but the snow would start off March late March, early April because like I said, it's grasslands as well. It's not just in the woods. So the snow will start melting out in the prairies, out in the open areas quicker than it would in the woods. So we seized the opportunity of trying to get some burns done in the grasslands because then we'll burn it, maintain it, sometimes if they creep into the woods, obviously there's still snow in the woods. So then it'll get into the woods. Obviously, Minnesota winters, the soils, the ground layer freezes.

Rob Gotchie:

So really the water ain't soaking in when the snow melts, it's literally washing away somewhere. So that will stay dryer versus just soaking, which this year was opposite. Because we had so much snow and then led up to so much rain. So there were a lot of grassland areas that didn't get burnt. But anywhere from our season would generally run from, it could run depending on the snow impact in late March all the way into first week of June. We're teetering on that edge of that first week of June before we have some seasonal rains. And this year, it was tough because last year we were in a severe drought. I don't know if you guys remember last year, there was a lot of smokey days. Those were main fires from Canada, you know what I mean?

Daniel Lemm:

Yeah. The air quality index was rough for quite a while.

Rob Gotchie:

Yep. From being from California, you understand that they live in that almost all summer not even just from the city pollution, but from fire pollution as well just the air quality from fires, whether the wind's blowing from Oregon, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico. All our smoke was coming from Canada last year from British Columbia. A lot of that was coming in from there. We had some of our own fires that were putting up a lot of smoke.

Daniel Lemm:

Yeah. And that smoke, it really draws some attention. I know where I work, it's basically the Mississippi river and 169, we had a couple hundred square feet of our Prairie land that was a controlled burn. And you would've thought the town shut down just to go and watch that fire and all that. So fortunately as a controlled burn and whatnot, but it definitely catches people's attention and they definitely rubberneck want to see what's going on with that. So you talked about like in Minnesota, we are in fire season right now in the first or in mid-June. Being that we're in it and still have more to go, what does this fire season look like?

Rob Gotchie:

Well, this year Minnesota, it ended up for the amount of snow and the amount of rain we had or kept getting all these rain, we're not in it anymore. Everything greened up really well. So this season was not as busy. That's what led to actually helping coach lacrosse a lot more. So and that's what's tough is obviously we want to try to get more fire on a landscape within what our purpose, but if everything is wet, obviously we can't burn. You know what I mean? We're just out there. So it's like, wow, we're out of shape. But this year, like I said, with the mono rains and everything else because we went into a winner with being in drought, like last year. Colors in the trees that this time last year were already starting to turn it.

Rob Gotchie:

It was pretty scary last year, around 4th of July. We were seeing fire indexes, drought indexes. Like when I talk about that, I'm talking about the soils being so dry that if there were a fire, the few fires we were on that are the couple of the fires that were on we would make a fire line, put a fire line around it and you would go to walk on it. It was like you were walking on like Marge dust, moon dust, like you would step and it would just go up into the air. Like it was scary. I see that out west, not so much here usually everything's pretty wet. It has some sort of moisture in the ground layer. Usually, you go out there today it's so it's going to be pretty wet right now.

Leah Lemm:

Rob, do you travel then to help support other wildland fire operations?

Rob Gotchie:

Yes. So now that the Minnesota season is wind down. Then we go ahead and we become available, you put yourself on a availability list and then it gets sent to like a national database to see other resources of people that need help.

Leah Lemm:

Is that through the BIA?

Rob Gotchie:

That's actually through MIFC. Well, in a way, yes, they're like BIA. At the end of the day it goes into a big database and we represent the BIA, but we're tribal. So there's little mixes of all that within it. We could go to another reservation and help just them or we could go to a big fire incident and help. It's all in how the resource order gets picked up. I could go out there with an engine. I could go out there just myself as a body for whatever it might be as an IC or a crew member, a crew boss, squad boss, whatever. Those are different avenues and different personnel positions that we have out there. So, and I could be gone, I could get picked up tomorrow you know what I mean? And be gone. Be gone all summer.

Leah Lemm:

Are there any places that look like they might be picking up in activity with fires?

Rob Gotchie:

The Southwest has been pretty busy right now. Southwest, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas. Texas and Oklahoma's been in a severe drought and they're still in the drought and Texas and in Arizona, New Mexico, they were starting to pick up. I went to Texas earlier this winter. I went helped down there for 14 days. So other than that, like the Southwest is really busy right now. They're looking for a lot of resources so I could end up in Arizona, New Mexico. You really don't know. You just make yourself available and whatever priorities are needed is where you end up, kind of how it goes. And then, they even change we could start driving and we could be in... A good example as we were coming up into South Dakota, we were on our way to Utah. We got diverted all the way down to New Mexico. Those type of things happen. You get a call, you get an order you don't really know until you're going until you really get there. Things change on the fly all the time.

Leah Lemm:

Sure. Do you see then other agencies across the states adopting those practices of controlled burns and more of that like Indigenous knowledge?

Rob Gotchie:

Yeah. It's a big push. It's a big push all across the country now. The year our tribe and the Karuk up in Northern California, they're a big push in what they're trying to do getting traditional burning back on their landscapes and which they do. They do, do a lot of traditional burning, so it's a big thing all around. It's everywhere. It's just now being talked about.

Leah Lemm:

I'd imagine that the tribes are a great source of wisdom of information when it comes to the local landscape.

Rob Gotchie:

Yep.

Leah Lemm:

Because I'd imagine wildfires are different depending on the area you're in, the different regions and environments and climate. So tribes could be great, or I'm sure they are great than to source for any agency around with that knowledge of how to manage that.

Rob Gotchie:

Yeah, exactly. And that's a big thing. Whenever I try to get up, I try to tie in with the locals, the locals whether it's Native or non-Natives like, "Hey, you know this more than me. I'm just here to help you guys." You know what I mean? They're going to know how things are going to burn.

Leah Lemm:

Yeah. Because you'll know like the Woodlands of Northern Minnesota and then they would be looking to you as an expert of this area.

Rob Gotchie:

Yep. They see an area of swamp, then they think, "That's not going to burn." Yes, it will. Mm. You know what I mean? They think they see water there already. It's like, it's not going to burn. It'll burn. And it happens. They're like, "Wow, that really burns. That burned." I'm like, "Yeah, it does." And I've been to Alaska multiple times now. I haven't been out of the country, but I've been pretty much to every state out west, every state to the south, except for Florida. I haven't been to too many places out east yet in the Northeast. Farthest I've made to the Northeast is Michigan. And I've been to North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, Virginia.

Rob Gotchie:

But none of that far Northeastern areas yet. I haven't been to Hawaii either. That's another one I'm trying to check off. But everything else out west I've been to.. You do, do a lot of traveling. It is a lot of time away being from family, it's long summers, but even, I shouldn't even say summers anymore. Realistically, fire is starting to be more of a year round thing. You know what I mean? Due to global warming you could end up like I said, I was in Texas this winter. I've been in North Carolina for Thanksgiving because of fires. I've been to Tennessee for Thanksgiving. So it's fires year round now. That's why I always talk to the juniors and seniors in high school now that if you want to have a job where you get paid to travel and see things due to global warming, fire's always going to be there.

Rob Gotchie:

And once you're there on the fire, it's dirty, it's hard work but the things you'll see, the areas you walked on, you can say not that many people have and that's how I've always looked at it and being Native American obviously this is where my ancestors are from. They all roamed here in now what we call USA and we call America now. But to me, I don't have ancestors. I'm full blood Native American. I don't get to say, well, I could go to Scotland and see my ancestors. I don't have that. I live in it still. So with the lands and what I do for fighting fire, it's like doing my part to protect my lands. Whether that's in Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington that's how I've always looked at it.

Daniel Lemm:

Rob, I want to ask you about common myths related to wildland fires about fire prevention. You talked and you've been sharing some of those, I think as throughout these conversations, you got Smokey the bear and even Frankenstein's monster who said fire is bad. You've got swamps won't burn. I didn't know that. Are there any other common myths out there that you want to share with us that you like to share with us now so that we can be like, okay. There is a different way of looking at this.

Rob Gotchie:

Yeah. I guess pretty much the biggest thing is just not all fire is bad fire. Like people think we're just out there putting fire on the ground and destroying the forest. It might look rough the next day, it might look rough three, four months from now, but the intentions are we're not this out there just putting fire on the ground and we're trying to restore things. You come back a year or two years later, there's probably going to be something there that's going to be beneficial, whether that's traditional medicines or berries and fresh wildlife more there now and being able to see it. A lot of people, a lot of elders here, they wanted to see berries.

Rob Gotchie:

I remember being a kid and being able to pick blueberries here. Well, I said, but now it's all overgrown. I was like, well, we can burn it. Well, no, I don't want fire. Like I said, they're so used to being told fire is bad. Well, that's how we're going to get fire back. And we will do it in a controlled aspect. Other common myths, I guess, would be, we are only human. Sometimes we do have, I'm not saying myself, but in a whole that sometimes we do have prescribed fires that have gotten away. You know what I mean? That it does happen. We can only control it as much as we think we can and we mitigate it. There's a lot of paperwork, a lot of a real good process in what could happen, what does happen? What if this does happen? All these different things of different stuff that might happen through it all. And it's a long process. So there's a lot of things leading up to the burn before we just put fire on the ground.

Daniel Lemm:

Yeah. I can imagine with all of the different public agencies and the private interests when you were talking about the checker boarding and all of that, like trying to get all of those interests together and manage the risk around that, and then agree to move forward with the prevention work. I can imagine that there's a ton of work that just leads up to the actual activity of a controlled burn.

Rob Gotchie:

Right. And the time of the year, like I said, firefighting is year round thing now. So even sometimes some burns don't have me because we just don't have the personnel they're all out west, somewhere or down south. So stuff like that happens. The personnel that we have I feel like we're losing people every year. We're having troubles in the wild and fire world of filling positions, getting people less and less people are fighting fires. And it is tough work. I ain't going to lie. It's dirty work, but it's tough. We're seeing the amount of people, we're trying to expand the work market, but the people that want to fight fire are less and less.

Rob Gotchie:

So that's another a tilt of why some of these fires are getting as big as they are is because we don't have enough personnel out there in the country. That's another thing too, is we bring in people from other countries. We've had people from Australia come in, we've had people from Mexico, people from Africa, we've brought other people in. So the workforce there's plenty of jobs out there, just not enough people filling out. And it seems like we're getting less and less every year.

Leah Lemm:

You mentioned sometimes unexpected or imperfect or nature of the work. There are risks, it's not always going to be as perfectly planned, things don't go as planned all the time because I think this brings up another point that I've learned along the way is fire being a spirit and fire having spirit that has its own agency, if you will.

Rob Gotchie:

Then that's just it. This picture behind me is they thought, oh, this fire would probably stay. It grew to a hundred, some acres that night, but they had figured, oh, I'll probably stay small and we'll be able to get at it in the morning. That morning, it was already 500 acres. You know what I mean? It had other plans and that's, that's what I tell people is like, "Yeah, we made call control burns, prescribed burns, but at the end of the day, she's going to have a mind of her own." Like you were saying, we treat it as a spirit in which we do. Anytime I leave for fire we will have a little feast at our house and we'll put fire on, we'll have a campfire, we'll have a fire and I'll feed it and tell them that, "Hey, I'm coming to visit."

Rob Gotchie:

I'm going to come as a friend not as an enemy, but as a friend and I'm constantly putting tobacco out when I am out west, when I am out and smudging with Sage and smudging down and it's a lot. And that's what we got to understand that it is the spirit of its own. And maybe this is the spirit way of it cleaning up the forward for us, but it's showing it in such a manner that it's clearing out everything, which we as a friend, when we have our prescribed fires, some fires we will have a feast right before it, we'll have somebody come out with a pipe and pray for us and talk to the spirit that we are friends, we we're not enemies and that's a big thing.

Rob Gotchie:

And for me, as a practitioner and it's like my therapy, whether it's a huge wildfire or just a camp fire at home. It's like therapy. It just calms me, even though this fire could be huge behind me and it's just raging, it's almost like I'm talking to it. And it's like being with family. You know what I mean? And it's always been my therapy. I think that's the only reason why I've been in it so long. Is that it's my way of therapy. I don't go to a therapist. I just either go out on fire or just have a fire. I could be out on fire for 21 days and still come home and still have a fire at home. Like that's how much fire is in my life. I don't know. Like I said, it's like my therapy, a lot of people, it's stressful and it is, don't get me wrong I said, but something about being, whether it's on a fire or having a fire, it's always calmed me down. So ever since I was a kid.

Leah Lemm:

Yeah. It's almost like if you treat it like a friend or like a relative, there's that relationship that back and forth relationship, like I care for you and you'll care for me because it's helping the land. It's helping bring those blueberries back and the medicines that care for us. So it's like a back and forth relationship. And then you mentioned, so even as a child, you've had this relationship, how did you get into this line of work?

Rob Gotchie:

I was just a young kid. I didn't know any better. I was doing prescribed burning ever since I was probably, I would say eight, nine.

Leah Lemm:

Okay.

Rob Gotchie:

You know what I mean? That's probably when I first started, I don't know exactly. I just remember being a little kid at my house being told here, this rake. My uncles would give me a rake and they would let the rake and say, stay on this side on the trail make sure the fire stays on this side of the trail. And once all your leaves burn up and gone, as you're walking, rake up another pile and put them back on your rake and keep walking till you hit the road that was my job as a kid. You know what I mean?

Rob Gotchie:

Even so, and then sometimes it was just burning our property around our house, whether that was for ticks, try to reduce ticks. Like I said, I was just a kid then, so I didn't know any better. It was just a normal thing we did in the spring time is prescribed burning around our area, around our house. So at the time, I didn't think too much of it as a real career path. So it was just one of the things that just kept gravitating too. Like I said, I think fire was just, I was born with it and it's what I've always known.

Daniel Lemm:

Rob, Leah sent me a message here that says we got to burn our brush. Because I've been collecting brush and just been piling it up on the yard. I keep saying, "I'll get to that. I'll get to that. I'll get to that." I've been saying that for a few years now. I better get to that before it takes care of itself and I'm not able to manage that.

Rob Gotchie:

Yeah.

Leah Lemm:

Rob, I'm curious, you mentioned that it's hard to bring in new workers. How dangerous is the job? You mentioned it's rough, it can be dirty. How actually dangerous is it?

Rob Gotchie:

I believe at one time it was considered the second deadliest job next to... What is it? Crab fishing in Alaska.

Leah Lemm:

Okay.

Rob Gotchie:

I don't want to say it's like we're bragging about it, but it can be a dangerous job but you are trained, you do get trained, there's a lot of training you take, there's a lot of continuous training you have to take. But like I said, in some places they consider it the second deadliest job you can have. A lot of accidents, and when we say deadliest, it might not even be because of the fire. It's for the amount of driving we have to drive to get to the fire. You know what I mean? You always hear about car accidents while that firefighters getting in the car accidents, even when you're there, you might not.

Rob Gotchie:

You hear about Granite Mountain the 19 that perished in fire in Arizona and Prescott. To this day, there's all kinds of rules and orders in place guidelines that are in place, but somehow to the day, we still have people dying in fire in an actual fire. But the other things too, that happened is it could be as simple as somebody having a tree falling. There was incidences where the guy was parked in his car and he happened to park under a dead tree. Because we are on the forest. That dead tree was nowhere near the fire, but that tree decided to fall that day and crushed on his car. He didn't die. But he got injured. There's all these little things that happen that may not be directly with being burnt.

Rob Gotchie:

It just the hazards of the job, other hazards that happen. Rocks may fall out, big rocks I'm not just talking little rocks, I'm talking big rocks that could break a leg. And that's on the fire line, but you obviously not get burnt. And then just heat stroke, dehydration issues, heart attack issues, there's all these little factors. It is hard work. You are putting in 16 hour days for 21 days straight, 14 days straight plus with only two days off. There's some times of the year where I may come home for two days and I'm right back out the door, you know what I mean?

Rob Gotchie:

So it does get pretty busy at times, but then you still got to realize that you do have a family life. I have a brother that's getting married in July and technically, I took myself off of being available because you only get married once and I'm not going to miss. It'd be awful to miss that. And so it's like, well, I can't go back on the fire list until after the wedding. So I'm home until July, early July. He gets married like right after the fourth, I think. And then who knows, I could end up in Oregon, Washington, California, wherever. We'll see what happens.

Daniel Lemm:

Well, Rob, we appreciate all that you do, the sacrifice, the commitment to protect our wildlands, our homes, our communities. I've got one more question. It's a pretty dope hat. Are those available to the public or do you got to be a badass in order to get one of them?

Rob Gotchie:

What's that?

Daniel Lemm:

The hat that you're wearing.

Rob Gotchie:

Oh, the hat. No, it was actually a patch. I found this patch and I ended up buying the hat and sewing it on myself. Like I said, being a firefighter is pretty dirty job and you get rips in the woods. So you learn to become a... What is it? A seamstress. Is that the right? Person that can sew a lot? I don't know. I don't remember what they're called exactly. So it was a patch I came across and with what I'm trying to talk about today and I was like, well, this is perfect. This is what the future needs to go towards.

Daniel Lemm:

I like that. That's a pretty solid idea that when it comes to literally the image and also you talking about the myths, I think that would be really cool to have like a line of hats with that look, with that patch on it, or just that image as a way to promote responsible land management.

Rob Gotchie:

Yeah.

Daniel Lemm:

Leah, did you have any other questions or?

Leah Lemm:

I really appreciate you sharing your experiences and the wisdom behind this Indigenous fire relationship. I think it's a really important one and I'm really glad that it's being perpetuated and it's expanding beyond tribal borders because it's going to be necessary for all of us, for all of our neighborhoods and communities and safety to have this relationship instead of the suppression relationship that has been the last, what? A hundred plus years with the colonizers. But I really appreciate it. And please stay safe. I know you will. I know you are. And I appreciate what you do.

Rob Gotchie:

Thank you.

Daniel Lemm:

Good talking again, Rob.

Leah Lemm:

Later.

Rob Gotchie:

Yeah. Thank you guys.

Daniel Lemm:

Bye.

Rob Gotchie:

Bye.

Leah Lemm:

All right. Rob Gotchie, forestry and fire restoration coordinator at Leech Lake Wildland Fire and Aviation Management. That's a long title.

Daniel Lemm:

Long title does a lot of great work. So it fits.

Leah Lemm:

Yeah. I feel like we're in really good hands when it comes to wildland fire management.

Daniel Lemm:

I agree. We are in good hands. We also know that we need more hands in order to stay good, but certainly appreciative. I learned so much wisdom from Rob as part of this conversation. So many myths that were busted for me as well as they manage lands in a way so that we can be in balance with nature. And your question about fire as a spirit, I thought that was a great question. And just his response about how he is in relationship with fire even before he gets on site, I think is one of those ways how he prepares himself for the work that he's about to do.

Daniel Lemm:

And when he comes back from doing that work, how he comes back into being at home and with family and in community, I thought that was a really great frame for me to understand, just to have a little insight into how Rob does his work. We are talking with so many great people, and we want to say that your input matters too. Do you know someone who's working on systems change or centering Indigenous values, or do you have a topic or interview suggetsion? If so, then email wisdomcontinuum@gmail.com

Leah Lemm:

Find Wisdom Continuum online at wisdomcontinuum.com and on social media on Instagram and Twitter at Wisdom Continuum. Thank you to Wisdom Continuum's consulting producer multitude, I'm Leah.

Daniel Lemm:

I'm Daniel. This is Wisdom Continuum.