Creek Parkway Restoration Project

A videographer films people burning brush along a creek bed. — Filmmaker, Amanda Law, documents the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, Sierra Foothill Conservancy and CalFire as they begin the first phase of the Mariposa Creek Restoration project using conventional prescribed fire led by the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation. Photo by Cara Goger.

The Mariposa Creek Parkway restoration project is a priority project for the County of Mariposa that draws together a number of critical community partners, specifically, the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, Sierra Foothill Conservancy, the Mariposa County Planning Department and the Arts Council.

Central to this restoration project is the removal of invasive plant species (which created a hazardous fuel load for wildfires) and restore the plant diversity of the native riparian environment using Cultural Burning and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), a land management strategy that utilizes traditional practices to respond to the unique relational composition of specific ecological sites.

This restoration is currently underway, and will continue throughout 2022, creating the conditions needed to return traditional first foods, medicines and cultural materials to the landscape and the Southern Sierra Miwuk people as well as mitigating wildfire risk and making space for public active transportation assets.

Taking this one step further, the Arts Council will be supporting this restoration process through documentation and site-specific artistic interventions and cultural programs that:

Recognize and validate the trauma the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation have experienced;
Nurture the re- indigenization of the physical environment, and;
Amplify the contemporary indigenous voices, lifeways and practices central to this process.