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Fire season is here, y’all. 

With more than 80,000 acres burned in the Cuyama Valley and on the Carrizo Plain National Monument since before July 2, and a number of other starts since summer began, now is the time to be careful. 

That means: Be done with the fireworks, people. 

I can still hear the remnants from the Fourth of July cracking overhead as evening blankets the Santa Maria Valley. Even with a smoky haze in the air, people just want to have their fun, I guess.

In California, fireworks killed several people—including an 8-year-old girl—over the patriotic weekend thanks to the idiotic people who inhabit this country. Mishaps burned down homes in the Los Angeles area, a duplex in the Bay Area, a warehouse, and more. 

In Templeton, a fire that started on July 4 is still burning inside the Central Coast town’s iconic, historic Templeton Feed and Grain building. That town will never be the same, and most people believe that it was caused by fireworks. 

Leftovers from the Fourth may have started a brush fire in Laguna Beach on July 7, prompting evacuations. Luckily firefighters got the fire out. 

So, what have we learned? Illegal fireworks are illegal for a reason. California is a tinderbox, and it’s not safe to play with fire. Didn’t we already know this? 

What else did we already know? It’s difficult to get the federal government to officially recognize Native American tribes that it doesn’t already recognize. 

It’s crazy difficult. Since 1978, 52 tribes have actually petitioned for acknowledgement. Only 18 made it through the process to be approved. 

The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians is federally acknowledged and was granted reservation land in 1901. They’ve been around thousands of years longer than that. But that recognition and access to land that the tribe has sovereignty over enabled the Chumash to have more ownership and say over its own future. 

In the last two decades, the tribe was able to add land to its tiny reservation, build homes for its members, and create a cultural center and museum—with the help of casino dollars, of course, and more power to them! 

This sort of self-governance is what the Salinan Tribe of Monterey and San Luis Obispo Counties is aiming for. Not the casino, necessarily. You need land to even think about that, and, really, it’s way more complicated than all of that. 

It’s the Salinan Tribe’s second attempt at the petitioning process. The first go-round, the petition didn’t even make it into the process! It apparently didn’t meet any of the requirements. Really? I bet the number of tribes that have attempted to petition in the last five decades is a lot higher than 52! 

You need to prove the history and genealogy of every single active member of your tribe: There are more than 240. You need to prove that you’ve been a continuous and active tribal community since before the missions came and disrupted life through to the present day. And there’s more.

Basically, the tribe needs to prove that it existed, it exists, and it matters. Sounds easy, right?

The Canary thinks sovereignty’s a long shot. Send hope to canary@santamariasun.com.

This article appears in Jul 10-20, 2025.