California’s Native peoples have long lived relationships with fire. Join us as we learn more about the reintroduction of cultural burns.
Richard Bugbee is Payoomkawish (Juaneño/Luiseño) from northern San Diego County. He has ties with the Kumeyaay, Mununjali Yogumbeh, and Te Ahwina, and grew up near the Kumeyaay village site of Kosa’aay, now known as Old Town San Diego.
Not only is he an Instructor of Kumeyaay Ethnobotany and Ethnoecology at Cuyamaca College through Kumeyaay Community College, he is also the Chair of the Board of Directors for the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival (AICLS), and on the boards of Indigenous Regeneration (Mata’Yuum), Climate Science Alliance, and Inter-Tribal Fire Stewardship.
Richard has been learning traditional plant uses of southern California and the Kumeyaay language from Jane Dumas, a Kumeyaay Elder from Jamul Indian Village from 1980 to 2014. Richard was the ethnobotanist for the Traditional Indian Health Program through Riverside-San Bernardino Indian Health, providing information on the interactions between traditional plant and pharmaceutical medicines.
Richard teaches indigenous material cultures and traditional plant uses of southern California at many museums, botanical gardens, and reservations, and is an instructor for summer cultural programs for several Kumeyaay tribes. His goal is to use knowledge to serve as a bridge that connects the wisdom of the Elders with today’s youth.
He is currently using his ethnobotanical and ethnoecological knowledge, aka Traditional Environmental Knowledge (TEK) to reintroduce cultural burns and other traditional practices to land management agencies to teach them how to steward the land.
Hunwut Nganga Pe’naxanish
‘Iipaa Womii Namuul’shu’ii
Poppy Hour is our California native plant internet mashup. Part interviews, part garden tour, part happy hour, we explore the amazing diversity of people and ideas that connect to Southern California plants and landscapes. Join us!
All previous episodes are archived on our YouTube channel.
Thank you to an anonymous donor for making Poppy Hour Season 2 possible.