[drone]

It hasn't "taken us this long to figure out..." the issues around prescribed burning are fairly modern and related to overreacting/incorrectly responding to some major wildfires that killed lots of people in the late 19th and early 20th century. (See the formation of the USFS and the policies promoted by them, Smoky the Bear, etc.)

Fire was a regular tool in everyone in North America's toolkit, indigenous or otherwise, and not something white people were too stupid to figure out.