"CONCOW, Calif. — Until recently, when members of the Konkow Valley Band of Maidu pulled up a map of their ancestral land in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, only about two dozen of their historic sites appeared.

Disease, violence and forced labor had separated California tribe members from their history. Without routine Indigenous fire to clear out the foothills, the landscape — much of it now managed by the U.S. Forest Service — grew dense with conifers, obscuring the signs of their enduring presence.

As a result, archaeologists’ picture of the tribe’s past was spare. No more than 500 people. Going back about 3,000 years — a fraction of the time other tribes are known to have lived in the state.

Then the forests burned."

Noah Haggerty reports for the Los Angeles Times July 16, 2026. [2]