Indigenous Fire Stewardship and Ecological Resilience: A Conversation with Daisy Ocampo Diaz.

This week’s episode of then & now is part of a series co-sponsored by the L.A. History Collaborative, in which we examine the effects of the devastating Los Angeles Wildfires in early 2025. Dr. Daisy Ocampo Diaz joins LCHP Assistant Director Dr. Rose Campbell to discuss the Fowler Museum’s exhibition Fire Kinship: Southern California Native Ecology and Art, one of the exhibitions associated with the Pacific Standard Time (PST) Art Initiative. The L.A. Wildfires highlighted the urgent need for effective fire management and risk mitigation strategies in the era of climate change. Rarely featured in such discussions, however, are the traditional landscape management methods, such as controlled burns, practiced by many Indigenous communities in North America before European colonization. As head curator of the Fire Kinship exhibition, Daisy underscores the vital role of fire as a regenerative force and explains how a legacy of colonial fire suppression tactics has exacerbated the effects of wildfires in the absence of sustainable landscape management practices. With more frequent and devastating natural disasters intensified by climate change, Daisy asserts that the best way forward is the integration of Indigenous knowledge into large-scale landscape management practices.The Fire Kinship exhibition is on display at the Fowler Museum at UCLA through July 13, 2025. Read more about the exhibition here. Admission to the Fowler Museum is always free!Dr. Daisy Ocampo (Caxcan, or Caz’ Ahmo, Indigenous Nation of Zacatecas, Mexico) earned her PhD in History from the University of California, Riverside in 2019. Her research in Native and Public History informs her work with museum exhibits, historical preservation projects, and community-based archives. She is the author of Where We Belong: Chemehuevi and Caxcan Preservation of Sacred Mountains (The University of Arizona Press, 2023) and is currently working on two major projects: “Pá’čapa: A Mt. Rubidoux Story,” a short documentary film which she co-produced, and “Fire Kinship,” an exhibit she curated at the UCLA Fowler Museum sponsored by Getty.Further ReadingNative American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)PST ART