Spotlight Sundays: Cultural Fire Storytelling and Film Screening
Spotlight Sundays: Cultural Fire Storytelling and Film Screening with Margo Robbins, Elizabeth Azzuz, Roni Jo Draper, and hosted by Tiśina Ta-till-ium Parker
November 16 from 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Please join us for an afternoon of storytelling centering Native fire practices from four visionary Native Californian memory keepers. The program will begin with a film screening of Fire Tender, co-directed by Roni Jo Draper, PhD (Yurok) and Marissa Lila Kongao, which shares context on settler colonial fire suppression, highlights the work of Yurok firelighters to reclaim and pass on traditional eco-cultural knowledge, and meditates on the power of fire to heal land and communities.
The film will be followed by heart-to-heart storytelling, as the spirit of fire inspires. Margo Robbins and Elizabeth Azzuz, two Yurok fire practitioners who lead the Cultural Fire Management Council, will each share about the medicine of fire, as guided by prayer, before being joined by Tiśina Ta-till-ium Parker (Southern Sierra Miwuk/Kutzadika’a Mono Lake Paiute and Kashia Pomo/Coast Miwuk) and Draper for a group conversation. Drawing from their varied experiences as fire-women, grandmothers, filmmakers, basketweavers, and artists, they will explore the possibilities of fire as the center of the home, as well as the intergenerational abundance fire offers across time and space.
This Spotlight Sundays is a part of our exhibition programming for Good Fire: Tending Native Lands on view through May 31, 2026.
Panelist Bios
Elizabeth Azzuz is a Yurok Tribal member from the village of Weitchpus in Northern CA, and a Karuk descendant from Katamiin. She is the Director of Traditional fire, family burns, and Treasurer to the board of Cultural Fire Management Council. She is also Treasurer to the Indigenous Stewardship Network, and is a member of the Indigenous Peoples Burning Network with the Nature Conservancy.
Elizabeth is a cultural practitioner, who burns for basket materials, traditional foods and medicines. She has been burning since the age of four, when her grandfather caught her playing with matches and decided to teach her about her responsibility to Mother Earth. She was taught that fire is a tool, not a toy.
CFMC provides training and jobs on the Yurok reservation, they have training exchanges to train future fire lighters in prescribed and cultural burns, giving them the needed skills to work with fire safely.
Margo Robbins comes from the traditional Yurok village of Morek, and is an enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe. She is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Cultural Fire Management Council and co-lead of the Indigenous People’s Burn Network. She graduated from Humboldt State University and resides on the Yurok reservation in far northern California. She gathers and prepares traditional food and medicine, is a cultural fire practitioner, a basket weaver, and regalia maker. She previously served as the Indian Education Director for the Klamath-Trinity Joint Unified School district. She is a mom, and a grandma.
Roni Jo Draper Ph.D. (Yurok | she.her), is an enrolled member of the Yurok tribe, from the village of Weispus (Weitchpec) at the fork of the Klamath and Trinity Rivers in what is now considered Northern California. Her experience as a queer, Yurok woman, and the realities and acute pain of discriminatory practices and policies enacted in school settings, has influenced her writing and work as an educator, scholar, and artist. As a former high school mathematics/science teacher and university professor, Roni has now turned her attention to storytelling practices outside of traditional academia—including poetry making, traditional basket weaving, and other art forms—as a way to explore the human experience and share stories of healing and thrivance. Roni produced SCENES FROM THE GLITTERING WORLD, stories of three Diné adolescents living on the fringes of the Navajo Nation. She also produced, directed, and wrote FIRE TENDER, a short film highlighting the work of Margo Robbins and Yurok cultural fire practices. Roni is currently in production on the feature-length documentary WE ARRIVE WITH FIRE | NE-KAH NUUE’M MEHL MECH. Roni’s work has been supported by the National Geographic Society, Vision Maker Media, Women Make Movies, Sundance, the Redford Center, Firelight Media, and other organizations interested in highlighting the stories of Indigenous women working to protect the environment and cultural lifeways.
Tiśina Ta-till-ium Parker is a California Indigenous textile designer, regalia maker and community cultural art activist. Tiśina is the granddaughter of Ralph and Julia F. Parker, daughter of Louis and Patricia Parker. Her people are Yosemite Southern Sierra Miwuk/Kutzadika’a Mono Lake Paiute from her Grandfather’s lineage and Kashia Pomo/Coast Miwuk from her Grandmother’s lineage. Tiśina was born and raised in her sacred tribal homeland of Mariposa/Yosemite. Born into a strong Indigenous lineage, Tiśina has practiced ceremony with her Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation (SSMN) & Yosemite Paiute tribal communities since birth. She descends from a powerful matriarchy of notable California basketmakers including her Grandfather’s Grandmother, Lucy Telles and her Grandmother Julia Parker.
Tiśina holds a BA in Community Studies from UC Santa Cruz with an emphasis in Art Education and a BFA in Sustainable Fashion/Textile Design from California College of the Arts in San Francisco where she graduated with honors as “Emerging Talent.” She is an active member of Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation. In 2018 Tiśina represented SSMN, alongside tribal leaders, in Washington D.C. to petition for Federal Recognition, an ongoing 30+ year battle with the U.S. government for tribal sovereignty. In her lifeway, Tiśina designs, creates and collaborates within Native community and works deeply within regenerative design practices to create cultural art and textile work that is in balance with Indigenous ways of being. Tiśina’s life work is dedicated to community building and Indigenous cultural regeneration through the mediums of traditional regalia making, textiles, and community cultural arts activism.
Accessibility
Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) is committed to providing programs that are accessible, welcoming, and inclusive of our community. Wheelchairs, sensory inclusive devices, and additional amenities are available for checkout on a first come, first served basis at the Ticketing Desk. To request other accommodations, like American Sign Language (ASL), Cantonese, Spanish or another language interpreter, please email [email protected] at least three weeks before the event. Learn more about our accessibility options.