Part of the PBS.org series, AWE: AWESOME WOMEN ENVIRONMENTALISTS. Like many Native American tribes, the Mountain Maidu deal with fire by thinning out excess fuel with cultural burns. Trina Cunningham, a member of the tribe, continues the wisdom of her elders about fire. She believes that fire is getting a bad name from our neglect and abuse, that there is too much fuel and that devastating fires in the West are caused by not burning enough. In summer of 2021, wildfires burned over a million acres of land in Plumas County, including many ancestral landscapes, timberlands and several towns. In I'M A BURNER, Trina teaches a group of wild land fire fighters how to care for the landscape with a cultural burn.
—Nancy Kelly