Instagram story viewer> @return.ca26> Posts

Return California

@return.ca26

166

followers

243

following

Indigenous-guided Community committed to taking care of the land and all living things who depend on it. #TransformTrauma with #TechTEK

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Download All

California Native American Day, a day more people should know and celebrate.

We honor California Native peoples, our histories, our continued presence, our knowledge, our sovereignty, and our relationships with the land.

California Native peoples are living cultures, living languages, living knowledge, and living sovereign nations.

We are gathering.
We are tending Good Fire.
We are caring for our foods and medicines.
We are teaching our children.
We are protecting the lands and waters that have cared for our people since time beyond memory.

We honor the strength of our ancestors who carried our cultures, languages, ceremonies, stories, and responsibilities forward. We honor those continuing that work today. And we honor the generations still to come.

At Return California, we believe healing begins by returning to relationship.

Relationship with the land.
Relationship with fire.
Relationship with one another.
Relationship with the responsibilities our ancestors carried before us.

Do you know whose ancestral homelands you live on?

Learn their names. Learn their histories. Learn how their people are caring for the land today.

We were part of this land’s history long before it carried the name California.

We have always been here.

#CaliforniaNativeAmericanDay #NativeCalifornia #ReturnCalifornia by @return.ca26

22

2

6 days ago

Three airplanes and a helicopter to respond to a tiny grass fire burning at a time considered “in prescription” - 80F and 32% humidity. Would have been a perfect time to demonstrate the use of good fire to respond to an unexpected one. But instead, the choice is made to beat the war drums, scare people unnecessarily with military-like antics and dump toxicity all over the place. So tired only this performative nonsense. by @return.ca26

11

4

10 days ago

We’re often taught to look at fire and see only what is being burned. But relationship asks us to look longer, to watch how the fire moves, what it changes, and what remains after the flames have passed.

This is one story of good fire and what it leaves behind.

#GoodFire #Biochar #techtek #IndigenousKnowledge

Before we decide what fire is doing, we have to slow down and watch it.

A low-intensity fire moves differently across the land. It follows the grasses, responds to wind and moisture, and shifts as the material beneath it changes. The people tending it move with it. They watch, listen, and respond instead of trying to force it.

We arrive. We watch. We listen.

We’ve been told that low-intensity fire can’t create charcoal. The land tells a different story.

Not everything was consumed. Some of the plant material was transformed by the fire without burning away completely. The charcoal logs in this photograph were left by the low-intensity fire itself.

We look closer. We learn from what remains.

Ancestral knowledge doesn’t stay in the past. We carry it with us, adapting how we work while holding onto what we’ve learned.

Preparing land to receive good fire leaves brush, invasive plants, and woody material that still need somewhere to go. The kiln gives us a quicker way to tend that material without placing all of that heat directly on the ground.

Instead of chipping the material or allowing a burn pile to consume it until little but ash remains, we tend the fire closely and control the amount of air it receives. This stops the transformation before the charcoal burns away.

The tool is modern. The practice is familiar. Watch closely, tend with care, and waste nothing.

Everything in this story came from the land. The grasses, brush, and wood each held what they gathered while they were alive.

Where good fire can move across the ground, it cleanses and opens space without taking everything. Where fire can’t be placed directly on the land, material can be removed and carried through the kiln instead of being chipped or burned completely to ash. There, fire transforms it into charcoal.

We prepare that charcoal as biochar and carry it home to the soil, p by @return.ca26

26

1

10 days ago

These little Humboldt lily seeds don’t hurry.

Some may rise next spring. Others may sleep beneath the soil for two or three years, waiting for the right warmth, cold, moisture, and light. Even then, their first leaves will be tiny and easy to miss. The flowers will take several more years.

I’m spreading them across fire-tended land and trusting the seasons to do their part. Good Fire opens the ground. Winter rain settles the seeds in. Our responsibility is to tend the place, return, and pay attention.

These seeds aren’t instant gratification.

They’re an agreement with the future. 🧡

#HumboldtLily #GoodFire #NativePlants #returncalifornia taken in Nevada County by @return.ca26

18

0

20 days ago

Some histories recognize each other.

The Irish and California Native peoples don’t share the same story. We don’t need to pretend that we do. But both know what colonization can do when it takes land, suppresses language, dismisses cultural knowledge, and tries to sever people from who they are.

Recognizing that shared pattern isn’t claiming someone else’s identity. It’s finding common ground and choosing solidarity.

We often tell people that everyone’s ancestors came from somewhere. Learn where yours came from. Learn the original names, stories, plants, waters, and responsibilities of that place.

But ancestry alone isn’t identity. There’s a difference between claiming a people and acknowledging that you descend from them. Relationship requires more than blood. It requires learning, participation, accountability, and care.

That matters here in California.

Native people carry the knowledge and responsibility of these lands, but healing them can’t fall on Native people alone. We need landowners, neighbors, descendants, agencies, and communities willing to listen, learn, and enter into relationship.

Return California is Native-led, but it was never meant to be Native-only. We don’t need to share the same identity to stand together. We need to remember where we come from, respect where we are, and accept responsibility for what happens next.

The land needs all of us.

Share this with someone who’s ready to return to relationship.

#ReturnCalifornia #ReturnToRelationship #GoodFire #IrishDiaspora by @return.ca26

14

1

22 days ago

September 5, 2026, the first International Day of the World’s Indigenous Women and Girls, Return California honors the women whose strength made it possible for knowledge to survive.

For me, that starts with my great-grandmother, Rosie Epperson.

Rosie was a strong Mountain Maidu woman, born in 1885. She raised ten children in Plumas County, California, during a time when Native families were being separated from their children, languages, ceremonies, and ways of life. Some of her own children were sent to Indian boarding schools.

Her strength moved through her daughters, through my grandmother, through my mother, and into me. That strength is part of what I carry into Return California today.

Our ancestral knowledge didn’t come to us in a straight, unbroken line. Some of it had to be hidden. Some was forced out of practice. Some was carried quietly through family, and some we’ve had to relearn, remember, and bring back.

Rosie is one of the ancestors we pull from when we do this work.

When we prepare land, teach relationship, bring ceremony back into practice, and help people understand that humans belong in relationship with the land, we aren’t creating something new. We’re carrying forward knowledge that survived because people like Rosie held onto what they could.

Nik Yahati’ankano — You make me better.

Rosie, your strength is still moving through us. You are one of the reasons we’re still here, and one of the reasons this work continues.

Today, we honor you, and Indigenous women everywhere whose strength carried family, knowledge, culture, and relationship forward so future generations could stand where we stand now.

#InternationalDayOfIndigenousWomen #MountainMaidu #IndigenousKnowledge #ReturnCalifornia by @return.ca26

23

2

24 days ago

Pepperwood. California bay laurel.

During this burn, the flames moved underneath this pepperwood, wrapped around the trunks, and caught the lower branches. Pepperwood leaves are rich in volatile oils, so they can ignite quickly when fire reaches them.

But the fire didn’t take the whole tree.

It moved on.

This tree wasn’t crowding anybody out, and looking at the crown and all those stems coming from the base, it’s clearly known disturbance before and very possibly fire.

This one could stay.

That’s part of tending with fire. We aren’t just clearing vegetation because we can. We’re watching what needs space, what needs checking, and what can remain.

Pepperwood can grow densely, shade out other plants, and compete for resources. It also plays a role in Sudden Oak Death by carrying the pathogen that can affect nearby susceptible oaks.

That doesn’t make pepperwood bad. It means balance matters.

As the fire moved along, I realized our new friend, who is also Maidu, might not know that pepperwood is one of our medicine plants. I explained that Native people often get lumped together, as though we all use the same medicines.

How could we when the plants around us are different?

I shared some of the ways pepperwood has been used for food and medicine, and how strong the leaves are compared to the bay you buy in the store. The one thing I forgot to tell him was that the roasted nuts can be made into a rich, coffee-like drink.

Apparently I owe him a cup by the fire next time. 🤣

That’s what relationship gives us, an understanding of how a plant fits into the land around it. We’re not deciding every outcome before the fire is lit. We prepare the land, pay attention, and let fire show us what it will do.

Sometimes fire opens space. Sometimes it prunes.

And sometimes fire says, not this one.

#CaliforniaBayLaurel #GoodFire #CulturalFire #TraditionalEcologicalKnowledge by @return.ca26

21

5

25 days ago

Almost every terrestrial creature caught between these two fronts of fire is cooked. Every spot and line produces its own smoke, as well. One single front of backing fire produces exponentially less smoke, less heat and sees deeper penetration/more consumption than head fire (seen on the left), especially when fuels are readily available.

Rather than call out the countless problems in current fire regulations and permitting, unacceptable compromises are continually made by most practitioners. “Just get your CARx and follow all the rules” and “you’d get a lot further if you stopped constantly calling out CALFIRE and burn ‘bosses’ for their constant mistakes” and similar comments continue to be levied from fearful and ignorant people who would rather accept the unacceptable and get paid than stand up for what is right.

Hope you all follow the case we are fighting and join us in taking a stand for what is right. And if the DA dismisses it (like they did the nonsensical felony charge… who calls in an illegal burn before and after it’s executed?!), we’ll still see you in court for the lawsuit. False imprisonment and 1st amendment violations are no joke, y’all. Many may not like the approach, but it isn’t illegal and certainly isn’t unlawful. (And yes, there is a difference.) All we want is justice. Accountability. Latitude. Education. That’s not too much to ask, is it? by @return.ca26

4

0

a month ago

Look closely.

This is an old buckbrush. It’s filled with dry, tangled branches and holds only a scattering of tiny leaves. Buckbrush is known to be flammable, so when the fire reached it, you might expect the whole bush to ignite.

But it didn’t.

The fire moved beneath and around it, consuming the dry grasses and fine fuels along the ground.

In the second video, watch the low branch that nearly touches the ground. The fire catches it and begins climbing. For a moment, it looks like the flame will continue into the rest of the bush.

It doesn’t.

The flame travels only partway up the branch before going out. Even after part of the buckbrush catches fire, the entire shrub isn’t consumed.

This is why we pay attention to fire’s behavior. A flame moving quickly across the land is different from heat that remains in one place and continues to build. Fire doesn’t simply consume everything dry within its reach.

When we’re in relationship with the land, we notice these moments. We arrive, watch, listen and learn. We ask what the land wants before we act. Afterward, we give back, return and continue learning from what the land shows us.

For generations, Native people have understood buckbrush as more than wildfire fuel. Its young, straight growth has been tended for baskets, tools and arrows. It also provides food and shelter for deer, birds and other relatives.

Now we’re curious about what comes next.

We’ll return to this same buckbrush over the coming months. We’ll watch to see whether the existing plant sends out new growth and whether new seedlings emerge from the soil around it.

We don’t need to guess. The land will show us.

Nik Yahati’ankano
(You make me better)

#GoodFire #CulturalFire #Buckbrush #IndigenousStewardship #TraditionalEcologicalKnowledge FireEcology ReturnCalifornia by @return.ca26

25

1

a month ago

How do we burn 10,000,000 acres in a year in a good way? Encourage 5 million people to burn two!

By burning small, manageable sections as fuels become available we are able to safely manage landscapes for fire resilience. The mosaic of small burns creates an environment that burns with much lower intensity when wildfire inevitably visits. Proactive > Reactive! by @return.ca26

21

3

a month ago

Normally don’t like engaging with this level of fear, ignorance and foolishness (be a duck!) but wanted to take a moment and clarify a few things.

1) we have been doing this work in Nevada County for over 10 years now and have never burned anything that we didn’t intend to.
2) the “escape” this person is referring to never happened. It was a flare-up, WELL WITHIN the control lines and wouldn’t have been a problem if other neighbors hadn’t trespassed to put it out. Fire climbs sick trees. To the untrained eye, it can be scary, but it happens. 5000 gallons of gravity-fed water supply makes sure it doesn’t get too spicy. Additionally, much like this week’s burn, humidity was through the roof and we saw precipitation immediately after we finished. Relative Humidity (RH) is one of the dozens of variables we closely monitor to determine fire behavior.
3) firefighter visits were because of a disconnect between boots on the ground and command. As we do more of these burns, that problem will be alleviated. Certainly costs lots less than circling planes, dozers, retardant drops and associated destruction of the landscape.
4) the planes that circled this years flare-up (also well within the control lines of a previously burned section) were returning to base and did a couple of laps to verify we were on it (we were) before heading back to base after seeing our team pulling hoses.
5) most of our other neighbors who have come out and seen the work are in support. The people making the biggest stink “saw enough” from their house and “don’t need to see what’s happening down there”.

It’s unfortunate that such a small number of angry people can dominate conversations so much, but please know that most people are logical and reasonable and care enough to see the work for themselves before passing judgment. Some people fear change so much that they’d rather see demonstrably failed policies continue and pray for salvation when grossly overgrown ecosystems explode into wildfire than the would like to see our forests heal and return to resilience.

Come walk the land with us. See for yourselves. Feel the forest breathing easier and more deeply. Wel by @return.ca26

6

3

a month ago

28

2

a month ago