Papers by Kirsten Vinyeta
In accordance with Federal civil rights law and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) civil right... more In accordance with Federal civil rights law and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) civil rights regulations and policies, the USDA, its Agencies, offices, and employees, and institutions participating in or administering USDA programs are prohibited from discriminating based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity (including gender expression), sexual orientation, disability, age, marital status, family/parental status, income derived from a public assistance program, political beliefs, or reprisal or retaliation for prior civil rights activity, in any program or activity conducted or funded by USDA (not all bases apply to all programs). Remedies and complaint filing deadlines vary by program or incident. Persons with disabilities who require alternative means of communication for program information (e.g., Braille, large print, audiotape, American Sign Language, etc.) should contact the responsible Agency or USDA's TARGET Center at (202) 720-2600 (voice and TTY) or contact USDA through the Federal Relay Service at (800) 877-8339. Additionally, program information may be made available in languages other than English. To file a program discrimination complaint, complete the USDA Program Discrimination
Environmental Sociology, 2021
Over the last century, the United States Forest Service (USFS) has reversed its stance on the eco... more Over the last century, the United States Forest Service (USFS) has reversed its stance on the ecological role of fire – from a militant enforcer of forest fire suppression to supporting prescribed fire as a management tool. Meanwhile, the Karuk Tribe has always prioritized cultural burning as a vital spiritual and ecological practice, one that has been actively suppressed by the USFS. This article examines the discursive evolution of USFS fire science through the critical lens of settler colonial theory. A content analysis of agency discourse reveals how the USFS deployed anti-Indigenous rhetoric to justify its own unsubstantiated forest management agenda. USFS leadership racialized light burning by deridingly referring to it as ‘Piute Forestry.’ The agency has also discredited, downplayed, and erased Indigenous peoples and knowledges in ways that invoke tropes of the ‘Indian savage,’ the ‘Vanishing Indian,’ and the concept of ‘Terra Nullius.’ It wasn’t until the 1960s – in the context of the Civil Rights and American Indian Movements – that the USFS began contemplating the value of prescribed fire. This research illustrates the complicated relationship between the settler state and Western science, as well as the malleability of scientific discourse in the face of changing social contexts.
Sociology Compass, 2020
Settler colonialism expands race and racism beyond ideological perspectives and reveals the links... more Settler colonialism expands race and racism beyond ideological perspectives and reveals the links between historical and contemporary racialized social relations and practices–the racial structure–of American society. In this article, we define settler colonialism, highlight sociological scholarship that uses settler colonial theoretical frameworks, and explore ways in which this work enriches, intersects with, complicates, and contradicts key assumptions within the sociology of race.
Literature Review: Despite its relevance, little research has analyzed the ways in which gender s... more Literature Review: Despite its relevance, little research has analyzed the ways in which gender shapes climate change experiences. Even less research has focused on the impacts of climate change on Indigenous masculinity. With this backdrop, we foreground Indigenous men and masculinities with respect to climate change vulnerability and resilience. We open this chapter by briefly describing pre-contact Indigenous conceptions of gender in the U.S., followed by a discussion of how settlement has affected gender roles, relations, and gendered traditional knowledge in Indigenous communities. We then describe some of the ways in which Indigeneity and masculinity are intersecting (or may intersect) with climate change in four key arenas: health, migration and displacement, economic and professional development, and culture. We follow this with a discussion of Indigenous men's roles in political resistance and climate change resilience. We conclude by summarizing the key implications for Indigenous climate change initiatives and for the ongoing reconstruction and reassertion of Indigenous gender identities.
Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-XXX. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. Xx p.
The scientific and policy literature on climate change increasingly recognizes the vulnerabilitie... more The scientific and policy literature on climate change increasingly recognizes the vulnerabilities of indigenous communities and their capacities for resilience. The role of gender in defining how indigenous peoples experience climate change in the United States is a research area that deserves more attention. Advancing climate change threatens the continuance of many indigenous cultural systems that are based on reciprocal relationships with local plants, animals, and ecosystems. These reciprocal relationships, and the responsibilities associated with them, are gendered in many indigenous communities. American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians experience colonization based on intersecting layers of oppression in which race and gender are major determinants. The coupling of climate change with settler colonialism is the source of unique vulnerabilities. At the same time, gendered knowledge and gender-based activism and initiatives may foster climate change resilience. In this literature synthesis, we cross-reference international literature on gender and climate change, literature on indigenous peoples and climate change, and literature describing gender roles in Native America, in order to build an understanding of how gendered indigeneity may influence climate change vulnerability and resilience in indigenous communities in the United States.
2014 marks the 20th year since the institution of the
Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP), a long-term,... more 2014 marks the 20th year since the institution of the
Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP), a long-term, comprehensive
ecosystem management plan encompassing over 24 million
acres of public land in Washington, Oregon, and California.
Over 70 federally recognized American Indian tribes have
tribal lands and/or territory within the NWFP boundary.
Each tribe has a unique treaty history and relationship with
the federal government, as well as unique environmental
and economic needs that influence how they are affected by
the implementation of the NWFP. As part of the NWFP’s
Standards and Guidelines, the USFS and BLM are tasked
with carrying out monitoring efforts to evaluate the efficacy
of the NWFP’s management practices. One element of
effectiveness monitoring identified in the Record of Decision
(ROD) for the Plan is “American Indians and Their Culture.”
This 20-year monitoring report presents the findings from
the third monitoring effort assessing federal-tribal relations
under the NWFP.
The full report includes findings from the interviews
conducted with tribes within the NWFP region to assess
the federal-tribal relationship under the NWFP, as well as
several case studies that provide voices from tribes about
their experience and perspectives on how their rights
and interests are being affected by federal policy. These
case studies are intended to assist tribes and agencies in
understanding local conditions and the outcomes from
a given process, such as NWFP implementation. The
interviews and case studies revealed a number of areas
in which improvements could be made in order to make
federal-tribal relations more effective and meaningful.
Of particular importance is the need to align tribal and
federal visions on what constitutes consultation, the
need to ensure that agency staff are culturally competent
and informed on treaty rights, other tribal rights, the
federal trust responsibility, and the history of federal-tribal
relations, and the need to ensure that tribes’ needs,
knowledges, and practices shape not only tribal, but also
federal forest management. Based on these findings, we
developed a set of recommendations, divided into three
categories: consultation, tribal rights and access, and
compatibility of federal and tribal forest management.
Journal Articles by Kirsten Vinyeta
Environmental Politics, 2024
Since the 1940s, the United States Forest Service's (USFS) national fire suppression efforts have... more Since the 1940s, the United States Forest Service's (USFS) national fire suppression efforts have been bolstered by a public-facing ad campaign led by the Ad Council, most notably through the iconic rise of Smokey Bear. The consequences of decades of strict fire suppression, promulgated and solidified by this highly successful campaign, have been ecologically disastrous, and especially detrimental for fire-dependent Indigenous communities and ecosystems. Scholars have examined the Smokey campaign's racialized, nationalist discourse, yet none have grappled with the campaign's settler colonial logic, itself replete with gendered exclusion and speciesism. In this article, we combine intersectional theoretical frameworks with settler colonial and Indigenous studies to carry out a systematic content analysis of 201 unique campaign documents. We demonstrate how the campaign's production of the careful citizenone rooted in mid-to-upper class, settler masculinity-hinges on interlocking narratives of Indigenous erasure, low-class criminality, and the helpless victimhood of women and more-than-human species.
Environment and Society: Advances in Research, 2023
Dominant causal explanations of the wildfire threat in California include anthropogenic climate c... more Dominant causal explanations of the wildfire threat in California include anthropogenic climate change, fire suppression, industrial logging, and the expansion of residential settlements, which are all products of settler colonial property regimes and structures of resource extraction. Settler colonialism is grounded in Indigenous erasure and dispossession through militarism and incarceration, which are prominent tools in California's fire industrial complex. To challenge settler colonial frameworks within fire management, Indigenous peoples are organizing to expand Indigenous cultural controlled burning, fire stewardship, and sovereignty. These initiatives emphasize reciprocal human-fire relations and uphold Indigenous knowledge systems and livelihoods. Concurrently, Indigenous fire sovereignty is threatened by knowledge appropriation and superficial collaborations. In this article, we review contemporary research on Indigenous burning in order to highlight the strategies that Indigenous communities and scholars employ to subvert colonial power relations within wildfire management and actualize regenerative Indigenous futures. (Open access; download using link above).
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Papers by Kirsten Vinyeta
Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP), a long-term, comprehensive
ecosystem management plan encompassing over 24 million
acres of public land in Washington, Oregon, and California.
Over 70 federally recognized American Indian tribes have
tribal lands and/or territory within the NWFP boundary.
Each tribe has a unique treaty history and relationship with
the federal government, as well as unique environmental
and economic needs that influence how they are affected by
the implementation of the NWFP. As part of the NWFP’s
Standards and Guidelines, the USFS and BLM are tasked
with carrying out monitoring efforts to evaluate the efficacy
of the NWFP’s management practices. One element of
effectiveness monitoring identified in the Record of Decision
(ROD) for the Plan is “American Indians and Their Culture.”
This 20-year monitoring report presents the findings from
the third monitoring effort assessing federal-tribal relations
under the NWFP.
The full report includes findings from the interviews
conducted with tribes within the NWFP region to assess
the federal-tribal relationship under the NWFP, as well as
several case studies that provide voices from tribes about
their experience and perspectives on how their rights
and interests are being affected by federal policy. These
case studies are intended to assist tribes and agencies in
understanding local conditions and the outcomes from
a given process, such as NWFP implementation. The
interviews and case studies revealed a number of areas
in which improvements could be made in order to make
federal-tribal relations more effective and meaningful.
Of particular importance is the need to align tribal and
federal visions on what constitutes consultation, the
need to ensure that agency staff are culturally competent
and informed on treaty rights, other tribal rights, the
federal trust responsibility, and the history of federal-tribal
relations, and the need to ensure that tribes’ needs,
knowledges, and practices shape not only tribal, but also
federal forest management. Based on these findings, we
developed a set of recommendations, divided into three
categories: consultation, tribal rights and access, and
compatibility of federal and tribal forest management.
Journal Articles by Kirsten Vinyeta
Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP), a long-term, comprehensive
ecosystem management plan encompassing over 24 million
acres of public land in Washington, Oregon, and California.
Over 70 federally recognized American Indian tribes have
tribal lands and/or territory within the NWFP boundary.
Each tribe has a unique treaty history and relationship with
the federal government, as well as unique environmental
and economic needs that influence how they are affected by
the implementation of the NWFP. As part of the NWFP’s
Standards and Guidelines, the USFS and BLM are tasked
with carrying out monitoring efforts to evaluate the efficacy
of the NWFP’s management practices. One element of
effectiveness monitoring identified in the Record of Decision
(ROD) for the Plan is “American Indians and Their Culture.”
This 20-year monitoring report presents the findings from
the third monitoring effort assessing federal-tribal relations
under the NWFP.
The full report includes findings from the interviews
conducted with tribes within the NWFP region to assess
the federal-tribal relationship under the NWFP, as well as
several case studies that provide voices from tribes about
their experience and perspectives on how their rights
and interests are being affected by federal policy. These
case studies are intended to assist tribes and agencies in
understanding local conditions and the outcomes from
a given process, such as NWFP implementation. The
interviews and case studies revealed a number of areas
in which improvements could be made in order to make
federal-tribal relations more effective and meaningful.
Of particular importance is the need to align tribal and
federal visions on what constitutes consultation, the
need to ensure that agency staff are culturally competent
and informed on treaty rights, other tribal rights, the
federal trust responsibility, and the history of federal-tribal
relations, and the need to ensure that tribes’ needs,
knowledges, and practices shape not only tribal, but also
federal forest management. Based on these findings, we
developed a set of recommendations, divided into three
categories: consultation, tribal rights and access, and
compatibility of federal and tribal forest management.