The Impact Of Environmental Degradation On Western North American Culture

“American seemed to think nothing of remarking nature for the sake of progress”, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French diplomat commented when he was visiting the United States in 1831. While the American people were overwhelmed by pride and pleasure from their achievement in making industrial and economic progress, the environment was harmed in an alarming speed. Landscape was transformed, and forests were destroyed due to industrialization. By 1990, only a fraction of the United States Virgin forests were still standing. Farmers cleared trees to plant crops, and loggers cut down large areas of woodland for business profits. More than that, the most horrific thing was the government was willing to encourage loggers to exploit the forests resources by selling them large plots of land in the North West. In other words, the government was inviting loggers to destroy the landscape. Besides the loss of forests, the increasing number of ranching boosted the erosion of landscape. Crops were

Storytelling continues to be an integral part of Native American culture, providing us with an understanding of what was important to the Native Americans. Through their stories, Native Americans expressed an understanding of the environment, and the relationship that existed between themselves and their environment. These stories also provide us with a look at Native American legends, history, and a collection of knowledge critical to their survival. Native American stories are deeply rooted in their relationship with Mother Earth. Their many years connected with land, life, water and sky has created many stories explaining these important bonds with Mother Earth. From ancient times the Native Americans have looked to their

During the end of the nineteenth century, the United States had formed policies which reduced land allotted to Native Americans. By enforcing these laws as well as Anglo-American ideals, the United States compromised indigenous people’s culture and ability to thrive in its society.

Additionally, Royal gives clarification for Native Americans’ positive stereotypes. He explains, “ But this is far from modern concepts of ecology. Native Americans in fact overhunted deer and beaver even before the arrival of the white man, and did not seriously try to preserve the resources in the vicinity of their villages. As a result, the typical woodland village, having exhausted local soil and game, had to move on average every eight to 10 years” (Royal 47). Although the Native Americans did not destroy the environment like Europeans on such a large scale, they are not trying to protect the environment either. This opposes the stereotypes that Native Americans are model ecologists. Royal also examines the inhumane sides of Native American tribes. Royal reveals, “The

Many people are under a false impression that early Native Americans are the original environmentalists. This is an impression that many people share. The Abenaki tribes that resided in Maine from 3700 BP were not by our traditional definition, environmentalists. In fact they were far from ecologically sound. This paper is meant not to criticize the Native Americans of the age, but to clarify their roles in the environment. To better understand this subject some background is needed.

The reading, “We Must Farm to Enable us to Live” explores the many hardships the Plains Cree encountered with agriculture on the reserves, in which they were forced to live on. One of the first misconceptions the reading looks at is how “Nineteenth century European observers tended to see the Great Plains as a timeless land, as a place without history, its

Indians and Colonists saw the wilderness from different environmental history perspectives which changed how each treated nature. In the essay “Interpreting Environmental History,” Carolyn Merchant describes three lenses to look through when thinking about environmental history; gender, race, and class. From the gender lens in the Native American lifestyle,

The reading of “Defending the Land: Sovereignty and Forest life in James Bay Cree Society” by Ronald Niezan is a great reading. Mr. Niezan illustrates how Cree people live and what they still currently do to protect their land and religion. This book also allows us to understand that people will try to take what they can’t have because that’s exactly what Canada’s government tries to accomplish with new construction projects and other

Significant changes occurred in the North American landscape as a result of European settlers. Many of these changes were due to the fundamental differences in which the land was viewed, and thereby treated, by the Native Americans versus the incoming European settlers. Although both groups made significant impacts on their surroundings, the novel Changes in the Land argues that the actions of those inhabiting the English colonies caused much more dramatic and long-lasting alterations. The author of Changes in the Land, William Cronon, attempted to dispel the myth of the first English settlers stumbling upon “virgin land.”

Once voyages to North America became profitable, European nations looked to capitalize in any way possible. The nations really had to sell the idea of starting a new life from scratch thousands of miles away to their constituents. This was not easy as the voyage in it of itself could be deadly, not to mention the only thing guaranteed in return was an allocation of land and a chance at earning large sums of money. The difficult nature of recruitment often led to deliberately bias accounts of North American lands (Cronon 1983). The bias accounts often amounted to over hyping the abundance of resources in the mysterious “New World.” Not only did this lead to ultimately more colonizers making the voyage, but it also influenced their mindset and interactions with the natural world upon their arrival. The influence of bias accounts led to environmentally disconnected practices.

The major claim of the author: the central claim of LaDuke in this article is that the monumental destruction and devaluation of Indian land and its ecosystem over time invariably affects the cultural, social, economic, and political fabric of a community. LaDuke set out to chronicle the historical struggle and fight that has been a part of the life of an Indian, and still is today. In her article, one of her claims is that “the ongoing relationship between indigenous culture and the land is central to most native environmental struggles” (LaDuke 1999, 88).

Some environmentalists would like their readers to accept their thoughts that when the Europeans arrived in North America they found a wilderness that was not damaged or harmed by the inhabitants. The author literally questions what were they thinking? In stark comparison to what we do to our land today, it may seem that the Indians did not impact the landscape at all however, it was definitely the opposite. The author further states the Indians were intimately aware of and connected to all that was around them. The environmentalists are certainly entitled to their theory, but based on all that we know of Native Americans and their culture, being intimately aware of and connected to all that was around them pretty much sums it up. Not only did the Indians leave their mark on the landscape, they depended on it for their very existence.

Indigenous knowledge has existed and thrived long before Western knowledge became the dominant way of thinking and understanding the world. Because Western knowledge is so contrasting to Indigenous knowledge, many scientists of the western tradition have little interest in Indigenous knowledge, nor the benefits of such knowledge. A large discrepancy between western and Indigenous knowledge is the relation to nature. The Western tradition divide nature and human, while the Indigenous tradition levels humanity to nature. Because of colonialism, the world became a place to be conquered and those who were conquered were to be assimilated into the colonial ways of life. For hundreds of years, colonialism had the upper-hand in what nations believed, thought, and discovered. Science and research has been driven by the Western world. But today, as some Western science models seem to falter, the world may need to trade their long-standing 'centre-periphery' (Muguti, 104) for the knowledge of a people's whose science is far more connected to the world than the Western world can even perceive.

In The Golden Spruce, John Vaillant explores different concepts of sustainability as he examines the historical facts of Haida Gwaii, Grant Hadwin, and the logging industry of British Columbia. Defining sustainability among each of these factors highlights the difference in values held by first nations and industry towards nature and resource. Grant Hadwin acts as a component to both the Haida Gwaii and the logging industry's definition of sustainability. Hadwin defines both parties definitions of sustainability by testing their priorities, and his own.

It is believed, that whilst “different maps can give accounts of the same territory, so too can different forms of knowledge about the material world. Its actual representation depends on the observers view” (Mazzocchi 2006). In any society, the production of knowledge by hegemonic groups, effortlessly results in the dominance, control and oppression of other knowledge systems. It has long been argued for an objective and universal knowledge system that is inclusive of all ways of knowing. Since settlement, Aboriginal communities have longed for the acknowledgement and survival of the knowledge they used to exist in their natural environment long before and after the arrival of the first European settlers. In this essay I will discuss both