“Fires Rage” focuses on America’s underwhelming and inadequate response to climate change, which ultimately stems from its systemic erasure of Indigenous peoples. As I write, over 5 million acres of land in the West Coast have burned in the most devastating fire season in modern history. The latest lightning-sparked fires have taken at least 20 lives across California, Oregon, and Washington. Indigenous peoples have used controlled cultural burns to shape and steward the landscape for millennia, and now, after a century of policing from state government and the U.S Forest Service, California and other West Coast states are recognizing this method of land conservation as it’s legitimate and necessary next step.
 

Despite the pushback from the current administration, America is going through massive and rapid change. With a breadth perhaps never seen before in our nation’s history, our eyes are being opened to the systemic injustices against BIPOC and LGBTQ+ folx. Today more than ever before, our ideologies are shifting to finally protect and represent all Americans.
 

This Earth we found and tried to own, This water used and turned to stone.
The sky is poisoned now in sin, the ground cracks and crumbles in.
Fires rage, forever war -- pick a side, forever torn.
Evil truths of history won, battle for the right to love.
Fires rage, a nation falls -- buried under sinful walls.
Draw a line in the sand, divide us through and take a stand.
Fires rage, a nation mourns -- from the ashes, we are reborn.
 

This Earth we found and tried to own, This water used and turned to stone.
The sky is poisoned now in sin, the ground cracks and crumbles in.
Fires rage, forever war -- pick a side, forever torn.
Evil truths of history won, battle for the right to love.
Fires rage, a nation falls -- buried under sinful walls.
Draw a line in the sand, divide us through and take a stand.

Fires rage, a nation mourns -- from the ashes, we are reborn.