From: "Russell Pearson" <r.pearson-AT-clara.net>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Ecology and the American Indian
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 18:33:54 -0000


Lakota. 
In his richly nuanced and fully dialectical treatment of questions of
ecology,  David Harvey notes the tendency in  much eco-based thought to
treat society as one 'box' interacting with another 'box' interacting with
the _environment_. 

He further writes:

"Indigenous groups...can, however, also be totally unsentimental in their
ecological practices. It is largely a western contruction, heavily
influenced by the romantic reaction to modern industrialisation, which
leads many to the view that they were and continue to be somehow 'closer to
nature' than we are...Faced with the ecological vulnerability often
associated with such 'proximity to nature' indigenous groups can transform
both their practices and their views of nature with startling rapidity.
Furthermore, even when armed with all kinds of cultural traditions and
symbolic gestures that indicate deep respect for the spirituality in
nature, they can engage in extensive ecosystemic transformations that
undermine their ability to continue with a given mode of production."
[Harvey cites the Chinese practices and beliefs as an example.]
"Archeological evidence likewise suggests that late ice-age hunting groups
hunted many of their prey to extinction while fire must surely rate as one
of the most far reaching agents of ecological transformation ever
acquired...
"Much contemporary 'ecologically conscious' rhetoric pays far too much
attention to what indigenous peoples _say_ they do without looking at what
they _do_. We cannot conclude, for example, that native American practices
are ecologically superior to ours from statements such as those of Luther
Standing Bear that:

'We are of the soil and the soil is of us. We love the birds and the bears
that grew with us in this soil. They drank the same water as we did and
breathed the same air. We are all in one nature. Believing so, there was in
our hearts a great peace and welling kindness for all living, growing
things.'

"The inference of 'better and more harmonious ecological practices' from
statements like this sort would require belief in either some external
spiritual guidance to ensure ecologically 'right' outcomes, or an
extraordinary omniscience in indigenous or pre-capitalist judgments and
practices in a dynamic field of action that is usually plagued by all
manner of unintended consequences.
...
"Luther Standing Bear prefaced the thoughts cited above with the very
political argument that 'this land of the great plains is claimed by the
Lakota as their very own.' Native-Americans may well have strong claims to
land rights, to use the landscape as a mnmonic upon which to hand their
sense of political identity, but the creation of an 'ecologically
conscious' rhetoric about a privileged relation to the land is an all too
familiar and dangerous practice."

Harvey: _Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference_ 1996: 186-189
(Oxford:Blackwell)




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