I have been a lurker on this list [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] for quite some
time now, but this review of [Shepherd Krech's] "The Ecological Indian"
deserves a quick and firm response (despite the fact that I'm trying to
finish a paper on the land claims movement in BC and its relationship to
industrial restructuring in the forest products sector). First, de-bunking
the so-called 'myth' of the ecological Indian has become a virtual industry
unto itself, with a host of books appearing in the last few years. Many of
the authors are outright racists, or allied with right-wing anti-ecological
movements like Wise Use, or plain ignorant. Needless to say, I question
their motives, especially when they tend to ignore or downplay the
oppression and genocide (cultural and actual) of native peoples at the hand
of European colonizers (more on this point below).
Second, the ecological Indian is largely a straw man constructed to
minimize the legitimacy of current native political claims to land and
resources. I have known plenty of environmental activists who romanticize
native practices without any substantive knowledge, just as I have known
them to be vegetarians, promote solar energy, etc. without any knowledge of
the political-economic structures behind these issues. Just because they
are ignorant doesn't mean that these values are wrong. Third, and more on
the specific claims of the reviewer, it is true that native societies in
the deep past (thousand years ago plus) did degrade their environments or
deplete resources, one must look at whether or not their descendents
learned anything from these disasters.
If you look at the Pueblo cultures and those of other nations who inhabit
the southwest, you will see that their myths and rituals incorporate the
theme of humanity's hubris, and the dangers resulting from it, as central
components. The Hopi, for example, have this as a major theme - and they
have sustained their corn-centered way of life for 900 years. Fourth, many
people have claimed that native peoples were unable to significantly
degrade their environments because of limited technologies (the flip-side
of the racist worldview).
However, when the Lakota gained control of the horse (a significant
technological improvement over hunting on foot and buffalo-jumps), they
became more, not less, frugal with the sacred buffalo. Similarly, just
because the Makah will use rifles to hunt whales doesn't mean that they
will imprudently increase their take beyond prescribed levels. Fifth,
critics of native ecological values often point to the fur trade to "prove"
their point that Indians were just as short-sighted and greedy as the
Europeans.
This is totally ahistorical and apolitical, and ignores the tremendous
(physical and cultural) pressure that native peoples were under as a result
of the monopolistic practices of the European "trading companies/states"
like Hudson's Bay. If Indians were just as ignorant, destructive and greedy
as Europeans, then why were there so many beaver, etc. in North America
when the French and English arrived? As Parker Barss Donham has
demonstrated with regard to the conflict over the so-called "lobster wars"
between the Mi'kmaqs and commercial fishermen in Nova Scotia (in the
February 2000 edition of Canadian Dimension), these issues (whether
contemporary or historical) are subject to an incredible amount of
ideological distortion. It is our job as Marxists to counter such crap as
vigorously as possible. I hope I have taken a small step in this direction.
Chris Carrick
Cornell University
PhD Candidate
Department of City and Regional Planning
Louis Proyect
(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
