With a name derived from the Lakota tribe’s historical Tokala Society—a group of warriors who showed bravery and leadership from a young age—Tokala is a photography series spotlighting the next generation of BIPOC climate activists.
In 2022, New Mexico experienced its largest wildfire to date—and it was no accident.
Burning across 300,000 acres of land in northern New Mexico, the destructive blaze ignited when two separate wildfires merged into one. In the first week of April, the U.S. Forest Service lost control of a prescribed burn in the Santa Fe National Forest near Hermit’s Peak, where they had hoped to thin the overgrown forest. A few days later, a fire also rekindled in the Calf Canyon region, after the same Forest Service failed to properly extinguish a pile burn. After a major wind brought them together, the inferno continued for the following four months, reaching Taos, Mora, and Colfax counties in the Sangre de Cristo Mountain range.
Over 900 structures were damaged in the wildfire—particularly affecting those living in the smaller communities around the area, like Mora and Rociada. (The fire also burned the upper reaches of the Gallinas River watershed, one of the main drinking water sources for more than 17,000 people in New Mexico, and even as far as Las Vegas.) Climate activist Esperanza “Sole” Garcia—who is based in Denver and whose roots are in Northern New Mexico—still remembers the wildfire like it was just yesterday. “Afterwards, it was so hot: you could feel the heat off the ground,” says Garcia. “Everything was black, gray, and white. My grandparents lost a lot of forest on ancestral land. There are a couple of people that I know in Mora that lost their homes. If you go there now, all that’s left is chimneys.”
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