Omer Stewart's Forgotten Fires

On this week's show we'll discuss Omer Stewart's "Forgotten Fires: Native Americans & the Transient Wilderness." According to Author M. R. O'Connor ("Ignition: Lighting Fires in a Burning World"), "Omer particularly regretted that his own peers—Anthropologists—ignored evidence that Indigenous people were powerful agents who had transformed the physical world.” I feel this book sorely needs to be read in a time when many of us have truly forgotten or misunderstand the importance of fire in the landscape.

Omer Stewart lived from 1908 to 1991. He was a Cultural Anthropologist & Author at the University of Colorado at Boulder where he retired in 1973. Omer Stewart was well-known for defending Native American land claims and advocating for tribal legal use of peyote.