This article explores the potential impact of training and employment with wildfire management agencies on the retention of Indigenous fire knowledge. It focuses on the comparative knowledge and experiences of Indigenous Elders, cultural practitioners, and land stewards in connection with ''modern'' political constructs of fire in New South Wales and Queensland, Australia, and California in the United States of America. This article emphasises the close link between cross-cultural acceptance, integration of Indigenous and agency fire cultures, and the ways in which knowledge types are shared or withheld. While agency fire fighting provides an opportunity for Indigenous people to connect and care for country, it simultaneously allows for the breaking of traditional rules surrounding what knowledge is shared with whom in the context of Indigenous cultural burning. By highlighting how privilege intersects with ethnicity, class, gender and age, this article demonstrates how greater cross-cultural acceptance could aid ongoing debates on how to coexist with wildfire today. and age, this paper demonstrates how greater cross-cultural acceptance could aid ongoing debates on how to coexist with wildfire today.

Introduction: Fire has a long history, but little documented role, as a process in riparian ecosystems. For millennia California Indians have applied fire to riparian ecosystems for a variety of purposes, but the effects of such fires on riparian vegetation are poorly known outside of traditional knowledge structures of indigenous communities.

California's water infrastructure relies heavily on the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (Delta) for supply and conveyance to a multitude of users. This reliance conflicts with the ecological importance of the Delta for critical functions and services it provides as the largest estuary on the west coast of North America. At risk are entire ecosystems, which provide habitat for a diversity of resident and migratory species, and includes culturally-significant endemic species such as the Delta Smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus). Furthermore, the Delta is situated within the Miwkoʔ cultural landscape, which is founded on the relationship between the region's Indigenous people and the ecological system. This paper illustrates the ecocultural context and significance of this landscape, which has largely been overlooked in addressing demands for water resources and influence on environmental policy and stewardship within the Delta. It provides some examples of how a more holistic view might achieve ecocultural equality based on Miwkoʔ traditional cultural practice and law, as has been practiced and observed in this landscape for millennia.

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