By Jordan Omstead Spring comes to Leona Antoine’s field in patches. The snow retreats from the Nicola River valley, leaving islands of wet grass scattered across her family’s land. It’s an invitation to carry on a practice she first learned from her grandfather. Antoine, who is Syilx and Nlaka’pamux, remembers her grandfather’s joy when he would drop a match and watch a low, patchy fire creep across the field. The fire would clear away dead brush, allowing sunlight to reach the ground. Nutrients would get recycled back to the soil. Within weeks, fresh green grass would shoot up alongside huckleberries and other traditional medicines, she said. Antoine, a former forest firefighter and forestry consultant living in Merritt, B.C., calls it “good fire.” Her grandfather came of age when Indigenous communities…
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