Around the world, many tribes use intentional fire today to tend food, fiber, and medicines and to keep landscapes healthy. It's a practice tribes have carried for thousands of years.
Stephanie Gutierrez, a San Carlos Apache tribal member, has built her career around that interconnectedness between indigenous peoples and land. She recently joined Vibrant Planet Data Commons (VPDC) as Tribal Stewardship Director, where she builds authentic, lasting tribal partnerships to support Indigenous forest and fire stewardship. In her personal pursuits, she also leads a grassroots initiative called Canopy & Ember, which hosts virtual gatherings to connect, share experiences, build community & strengthen relationships for Indigenous women and women working in tribal forestry and wildland fire.
On and off the clock, Stephanie is working to embed tribal leadership into forestry and fire planning. For Native American Heritage Month, we sat down with Stephanie to talk more about these practices, partnership, and what tribes may need from the tools that shape land management.
What drew you to this work?
I work at the intersection of forest stewardship and traditional foods, fibers, and medicines. In past roles, I partnered with data scientists so that forest, burn, and climate adaptation planning would center tribal needs and priorities.
This role was an opportunity to step into the next chapter of my career with a sharper focus on Indigenous fire stewardship, and to help Vibrant Planet's tools better support tribal lands.
Why does fire matter so much right now?
Fire is an important part of many Native cultures. For more than a century, fire suppression policies, including restrictions on cultural burning, kept fire off much of the land. Without regular, low-intensity fire, many forests have become too dense, and wildfires are growing larger and more severe. Now there's a real opportunity to reintroduce beneficial fire, knowledge tribes have carried all along. We're seeing a resurgence of returning fire to the landscape, and a growing interest from land managers to learn from Indigenous fire practitioners. For generations, fire has been part of how our communities care for the land. Now there's a resurgence of interest in returning fire to the landscape, and people are looking to tribes to lead it.
What does it take to be a good partner to tribes?
Show up and offer support. Organizations can get caught up in the idea of perfecting their partnership and become scared of misstepping. Good partners respect and prioritize tribal knowledge, tribal priorities, data sovereignty, tribal law and policy, and existing agreements. And importantly, they commit to building long lasting tribal partnerships.
What do tribes need from planning tools that they don't always get?
Many things, but in my experience, I often have heard tools need to better support planning across many jurisdictions. Tribally owned and stewarded land can span state, federal, tribal trust, tribal fee, and private land, and even that may not encompass the full breadth of a tribe's ancestral territory. Tools need to effectively bring together all these partners.
Tools also need a way to prioritize traditional foods, fibers, and medicines alongside other stewardship objectives.
Most importantly is the protection of data sovereignty and privacy. That means keeping sacred sites, names, and other important attributes private while still giving them weight in plans.
How would you like to see your work grow like a year from now?
I’d like the new program and services we develop to evolve into timely, responsive, and meaningful impact for our tribal partners. Vibrant Planet and Vibrant Planet Data Commons stay responsive to evolving tribal priorities and needs, and I am motivated to help these organizations build robust, authentic partnerships for resilience and change. And of course, I hope we're outside on the land, continuing to listen and learn with our tribal partners.
What gives you hope right now?
Native representation just reached a new level. New Mexico voters elected Deb Haaland (Pueblo of Laguna) as the first Native American woman governor in U.S. history. In Minnesota, Peggy Flanagan (White Earth Nation) will become the first Native American woman to serve in the U.S. Senate. We’re seeing a shift at all scales: tribal priorities centered across land management practices, and now represented at the national level. Seeing Native women step into some of the highest offices in the country tells me tribal voices are respected and trusted, and our leadership can be woven into decisions nationwide. It’s long overdue.
Looking ahead
We're lucky to have Stephanie on the team, helping us make our planning tools work for tribes: convening the right partners to support planning across jurisdictions, accounting for traditional foods, fibers, and medicines, and upholding indigenous data sovereignty. In our next post, we'll share how Vibrant Planet and VPDC have worked with tribal partners so far, and what's ahead.
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