We Arrive With Fire | Ne-kah Nuue’m Mehl Mech
Since time immemorial, Yurok people have placed fire on the land to maintain a healthy and balanced ecosystem. Over the past 100 years, settlers banned that fire, and the environment and people have suffered. Now, Yurok people are returning fire medicine to the land in order to heal the world.
We Arrive With Fire | Ne-kah Nuue’m Mehl Mech explores how fire came to the people, how settlers extinguished their fire practices, and the movement to restore these practices to heal the people and the land. We Arrive With Fire | Ne-kah Nuue’m Mehl Mech implements Native storytelling structures, cycling through the medicine wheel – fire, air, land, and water. Director Roni shares her story as a Yurok tribe member and is related to other protagonists.
Fire: Roni voices the animated story of how Segep, the trickster coyote, gathered a team of animal people to steal fire for the people.
Fire crews gather on Yurok lands, aka Weitchpec, CA, for a cultural burn. Roni and Margo, the executive director of the Cultural Fire Management Council (CFMC), talk about friends and relations imprisoned due to outdated laws and explain how Indigenous stewardship promoted healthy ecosystems for centuries prior to colonization.
Air: Segep passed fire to the air animals, Eagle, Crow and Woodpecker to relay to the people.
Elizabeth, a medicine woman steeped in fire knowledge, visits Greece to speak at a global climate conference; CFMC receives requests to teach fire practices for other tribal nations and non-tribal crews.
Land: The animals of the air pass fire to animals of the land–Elk, Rabbit, Beaver.
Robert, the burn boss, walks through forests for acorns, huckleberries, and deer – all maintained by fire. The next generation of fire lighters stand under a tall tanoak tree and learn how the smoke fumigated acorns with worms so they fall to the ground.
Water: Frog received the fire from Beaver, secured it in her mouth, and dove deep into the water.
Smoke hovers just above the water creating the ideal temperatures for salmon and eel to spawn. Margo daughter tosses a net into the river and pulls it back out with salmon.
We Arrive With Fire | Ne-kah Nuue’m Mehl Mech ends as it began, with fire. Salmon is cooked over fire. Acorns are prepared in traditional baskets, materials gathered from the land. The meal celebrates the groundbreaking for a permanent cultural fire center.