American Indian land rights "versus" environmentalism

I put the "versus" in scare quotes in the header because it is partially that; American Indians can be good environmentalists indeed.

But, it's in part a real versus.

American Indians are not necessarily, as in logically necessarily, as in innately necessary, as in stereotypical Rousselian noble savages — environmentalists.

And, no, it's not that the Columbian Contact debauched them from Rousseau's state of nature, either.

Forests were burnt by them ... to manage as human influenced parkland and to make hunting easier.

Animals were overkilled when they could be and only the best cuts eaten.

In the Southwest, mountains and mesatops were overforested to try to support unsustainable cultural growth in Anasazi sites such as Chaco. Washes were agriculturally overused, with resultant arroyo cuts. Conspicuous consumption was part of the cycle.

That all makes this essay, about environmentalists of the past fighting harder to block restoration of ancient treaty lands if they thought the tribe or tribes in question wouldn't be good environmental stewards, still worth reading today.

Runte notes that many of today's environmentalists don't want to fight this battle. Perhaps it still needs to be fought. What if today's Colorado Utes wanted lands they thought had been promised to them by treaty and their primary goal was more oil and gas drilling? In this case, due to climate change, it would be a battle that had to be fought no less than against white-led private oil companies.

Part of the change is that, oil-drilling Utes, like slave-owning Cherokees, have tried to participate in white capitalism as it was put forth to them. A side issue is that doing this can have long-lasting effects, as the plight of the Black Cherokees shows.

But, that's not all the picture, as noted above. This needs to be stressed and cannot be overstressed. Beyond the examples above is potlatch culture of the Pacific Northwest, which included not only conspicuous consumption, but pre-Columbian contact slavery and even slave sacrifice.

Beyond that, Runte is right about something else: The fear of capitalist corporations lurking behind Indian land rights claims. Look at the loopholes attached to Alaska Native Corporations today.

And (update, Sept. 19, 2021), speaking of the Pacific Northwest? The Makah Tribe, as documented by Carsten Lien in "Olympic Battleground," tried to get its mitts on all lands of the extinct Ozette Tribe ... for lumbering.

Then there's the likes of the Aztec and Inca. They might not have been as greedy for gold as the Spanish, but they weren't "innocent," either.

Also, not all "ancient" American Indian lands are so ancient. The Sioux, kicked out of Wisconsin, largely, by the Ojibwa, were moving west of the Missouri and to the Black Hills in numbers only at the same time Lewis and Clark were moving up the river. Before this, the Black Hills were basically "neutral ground," not ancient or not so ancient Sioux lands.

Maybe one final way of looking at this is that American Indians didn't exploit the land more because they didn't have the numbers, or the tools beyond Stone Age or occasional Chalcolithic Age technology to do so.

 

Sidebar: I do NOT agree with everything Runte writes at National Parks Traveler and elsewhere about preservation in the modern U.S. in general and the modern NPS in particular. I do NOT want light rail, let alone light rail run by traditional rail companies, in the parks, contra his plea. Instead, I want more buses at sites that already have them, with smaller buses running more frequent routes, and buses at places that don't already have them, and I want these buses to be all-electric. No more propane buses. His critics are right that his idea almost certainly means "more development." They're also right about the worrisomeness of him first writing that piece for a "more development in the parks" site.

 

In a follow-up, Runte ignores that Yosemite was created before any of the transcontinental railroads. And, one of the authors of the piece criticizing him notes that he was "protesting too much, wethinks" if nothing else, by writing a piece at least five times longer than his original and the critics' response.