The Good Fire

An Indigenous Metaphor to Heal a Broken America

Indigenous communities have long understood the healing power of fire. “Good fire”, is a practice not of domination, but of communion. I first encountered this wisdom through the work of Melinda Adams at the University of Kansas, who teaches that fire, in Indigenous ecologies, is not a tool of conquest but of care. It clears the rot, renews the soil, and nourishes future growth.

In a nation like ours, where the land has been stripped, the spirit scorched, and the soul commodified, there is a lesson here, if we have the humility to receive it. Though we have usurped so much from the Indigenous world, we have little right to seek our redemption from them.

White supremacy in its uniquely American Christian Nationalist form, like over farming, has provided an illusion of prosperity to a few, but has drained the soil of our cultural landscape of its lifeblood. The children of Eve lost their knowledge of their oneness with nature and should have listened more closely to the children of the Sky Woman. Instead, they arrogantly enacted patricide upon us all.

The fields of our communities now sit dry and barren.

The fruits of our shared labor are bitter with poison.

The locusts of capitalist greed and craven hate have descended upon us like a plague. They feast on our soul.

The sky is dark, erupting with a tempest of fear and rage.

But joining together—many in one, one in many—we give birth to hope, a beacon for the morning after the storm.

Within a culture of shared humanity lie the seeds of a bountiful harvest.

They rest beneath the soil of corruption and injustice, awaiting their time to sprout.

In the spirit of Indigenous wisdom (a gift of grace, not of right) we must perform the ritual of good fire.

We must burn away the dead and parasitic rot that pollutes our spirit.

We must scorch the systems of oppression, hubris, and exploitation that blind us to our true selves.

We must renew the soil of our communities.

And we must stand resolute, bearing witness to the blackened earth as a reminder to future generations never to lose their way again.

Then will our sprouts grow strong.

Replenished.

Ready to nurture and be nurtured.

Then will our communal sickness be healed.

Then will we remember our true place in nature.

Then will we recognize ourselves in each other.

It is time to bring the good fire.

To deepen your understanding of this sacred practice, I invite you to watch Dr. Melinda Adams share the cultural practice of good fire:

Footnote:

The phrase “children of Eve and children of the Sky Woman” draws from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, which explores Indigenous creation stories, particularly the figure of Sky Woman in Haudenosaunee tradition, as a metaphor for ecological connection and spiritual worldview.