This reeks of the “noble savage” stereotype. I would be willing to bet 80% of biodiversity being in native lands has more to do with how brutally they’ve been repressed than how “in tune” with the environment they are.
They’re people too, and I see little reason to believe they wouldn’t fall to the same human flaws as the rest of us if given the chance.
Except the fact we have lots of evidence that native population (which also includes pre-industrial European culture) built sustainable systems which includes altering the environment. Throughout North America there tons of evidence of the use of fire was used. The classic prairie environment of the Oak Savana is only possible through burns and supports a large buffalo population. There’s tons of evidence of strategic cultivation of trees and other plants within the Amazon rainforest that allow people to get food and medicine close by that to the untrained eye looks identical to the rest of the forest.
That being said some of those same people them destroy the same forest via slash and burn agriculture in order to earn a living for cash crops and more traditional agriculture. So profits is a main driver
This is exactly what I’m getting at. If these groups of humans were placed in the same scenarios that Europeans or other westerners were placed in, would they not be susceptible to the same greed that motivated them?
I do not deny that many native societies appear to live in more harmony with the environment than your average westerner. There is certainly a lot to learn there, and I believe we would do better if we emulated some of those characteristics. However, I think that we’re all susceptible to the same flaws, as we are all human.
Ultimately what I’m saying is I don’t think that natives have some superpower where they have figured out how to escape the flaws that have plagued humanity for thousands of years.
So, there were indigenous societies that were highly class stratified, or did bad things to the environment. No one is denying that.
But generally speaking, indigenous peoples in say, the Americas, developed methods of agriculture and other forms of production that were more ecologically sustainable for their respective continent, than the European methods that settlers brought, and then revised to be more extractive.
The dust bowl, for example, didn’t just happen. It was a product of Colonialism. A region which was relatively recently colonized, had its forests and grasslands ripped up, in favor of shallow rooted monocultures that couldn’t sustain drought conditions.
There weren’t dustbowls for the millennia prior to colonization, but a sudden shift in the mode of production, to a highly extractive one, artificially produced an ecological disaster
I mean, the main sustainable feature of indigenous food systems is their small population size relative to the environment’s carrying capacity. Trying to feed a large city on hunted game would be far less sustainable than modern agriculture…
This reeks of the “noble savage” stereotype. I would be willing to bet 80% of biodiversity being in native lands has more to do with how brutally they’ve been repressed than how “in tune” with the environment they are.
They’re people too, and I see little reason to believe they wouldn’t fall to the same human flaws as the rest of us if given the chance.
It’s called Indigenous TEK and it’s pretty well established.
https://www.firstnations.org/our-programs/stewarding-native-lands/
https://e360.yale.edu/features/native-knowledge-what-ecologists-are-learning-from-indigenous-people
https://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/docs/support/sila_video/tek.pdf
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/tek/description.htm
https://www.bia.gov/service/fuels-management/traditional-knowledge
https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/TEK-Fact-Sheet.pdf
https://voicesoftherainforest.leeds.ac.uk/is-traditional-ecological-knowledge-tek-the-key-to-fighting-against-climate-change/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_ecological_knowledge
Thank you for providing sources.
Except the fact we have lots of evidence that native population (which also includes pre-industrial European culture) built sustainable systems which includes altering the environment. Throughout North America there tons of evidence of the use of fire was used. The classic prairie environment of the Oak Savana is only possible through burns and supports a large buffalo population. There’s tons of evidence of strategic cultivation of trees and other plants within the Amazon rainforest that allow people to get food and medicine close by that to the untrained eye looks identical to the rest of the forest.
That being said some of those same people them destroy the same forest via slash and burn agriculture in order to earn a living for cash crops and more traditional agriculture. So profits is a main driver
This is exactly what I’m getting at. If these groups of humans were placed in the same scenarios that Europeans or other westerners were placed in, would they not be susceptible to the same greed that motivated them?
I do not deny that many native societies appear to live in more harmony with the environment than your average westerner. There is certainly a lot to learn there, and I believe we would do better if we emulated some of those characteristics. However, I think that we’re all susceptible to the same flaws, as we are all human.
Ultimately what I’m saying is I don’t think that natives have some superpower where they have figured out how to escape the flaws that have plagued humanity for thousands of years.
So, there were indigenous societies that were highly class stratified, or did bad things to the environment. No one is denying that.
But generally speaking, indigenous peoples in say, the Americas, developed methods of agriculture and other forms of production that were more ecologically sustainable for their respective continent, than the European methods that settlers brought, and then revised to be more extractive.
The dust bowl, for example, didn’t just happen. It was a product of Colonialism. A region which was relatively recently colonized, had its forests and grasslands ripped up, in favor of shallow rooted monocultures that couldn’t sustain drought conditions.
There weren’t dustbowls for the millennia prior to colonization, but a sudden shift in the mode of production, to a highly extractive one, artificially produced an ecological disaster
I mean, the main sustainable feature of indigenous food systems is their small population size relative to the environment’s carrying capacity. Trying to feed a large city on hunted game would be far less sustainable than modern agriculture…