Hi All:
I believe the last version of this review was difficult to read due to a
conversion problem. This one is fixed and readable.
Apologies for cluttering your mailboxes w/ the garbled one.
Stefanie Rixecker
ECOFEM Coordinator
------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 13:38:37 -0500
From: "H-Environment Editor (Dennis Williams)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: O'Brien on LaDuke, _All Our Relations_ and Minnis and Elisens,
_Biodiversity and Native America_
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Send reply to: H-NET List for Environmental History
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
(Ed. note: Due to spacing, the profusion of =20 codes, and left out
footnotes generated by my converting this review from a word processed
document to e-mail, I am resending it to the list and hoping that it comes
through clean and correct this time. Sorry for the inconveneince.)
H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by [EMAIL PROTECTED] (August 2001)
Winona LaDuke. All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life.
Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 1999. vii + 241 pp. Maps, notes, and
index. $40.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-89608-600-3; $16.00 (paper), ISBN 0-89608-599-6 .
Paul E. Minnis and Wayne J. Elisens, eds., Biodiversity and Native America.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000. x + 310 pp. Figures, maps,
notes, references cited, list of contributors, and index. $34.95 (cloth),
ISBN: 0-8061-3232-9.
Reviewed for H-Environment by Greg O'Brien ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), Department of
History, University of Southern Mississippi
Real Ecological Indians: Connecting Culture and Ecology in Native America
Ecological practices and beliefs among American Indians, of long-standing
interest in popular consciousness, are receiving well-deserved attention
from scholars in history, anthropology, and the biological sciences, as well
as Indian activists. The intense gaze of academia on Indian ecology has
produced controversy, usually over whether or not the "noble savage"
stereotype is employed too readily in an attempt to portray all Indians as
the first American environmentalists or is used as a straw man to deny that
Indians interacted with the natural environment in a manner significantly
different than the European intruders. Both views are, of course, vast
oversimplifications. As anthropologist Shepard Krech demonstrated recently,
Indians sometimes killed more animals than they needed for food, sometimes
outstripped certain resources such as trees, and certainly altered local
landscapes and environments.(1) The two books under consideration here
suggest strongly, however, that not only did the diverse Indian peoples
understand and utilize the American natural environment in a manner more apt
to preserve biological integrity than did Europeans, those Indians who
preserve traditional culture today (language, religion, lifeways, and so on)
seem to be much better equipped to preserve biodiversity and healthy
ecosystems than mainstream American society.
Culture makes a difference, and Indian peoples throughout North America have
linked cultural survival with preservation and restoration of original
ecosystems. In many cases, Native knowledge of the intricate relationships
between flora and fauna in a given ecosystem surpasses scientific
information; witness the 1993 hantavirus outbreak in the Southwest solved by
Navajo medical knowledge that mice feeding on pinyon nuts are carriers of
the disease. Clearly, there are environmental lessons to be learned from
Indian people.
Winona LaDuke is an enrolled member of the Mississippi Band of Anishinaabeg
in Minnesota, an environmental activist, a writer, a member of the White
Earth Land Recovery Project and of the national Indian environmental rights
organization Honor the Earth, as well as a two-time Green Party vice
presidential candidate. She provides a snapshot of ongoing efforts by
Indians throughout the United States and Canada to preserve and restore
traditional culture along with natural ecosystems. LaDuke insists that
"[t]here is a direct relationship between the loss of cultural diversity and
the loss of biodiversity. Wherever Indigenous peoples still remain, there is
also a corresponding enclave of biodiversity" (LaDuke, 1). In nine case
studies LaDuke investigates Indian communities across North America by
giving a brief history of European-Indian relations there, the expropriation
of the Native land base by Europeans, and the effects of industrial forms of
resource exploitation on land and people in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. What makes her case studies different from other recent works on
American Indian environmental issues is her incorporation of Indian
religious beliefs and land ethics, her firsthand knowledge of the issues and
peoples she discusses (she interviewed and visited folks in each of the
communities), and her detailed presentation of Native efforts to correct
environmental problems while simultaneously protecting traditional culture.(2)
Each community discussed by LaDuke has a unique history of coping with
environmental and cultural degradation, but they all have common enemies
among corporate despoilers and governmental negligence. On the eastern
US-Canadian border lies the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation, downstream from 25
percent of all North American industry around the Great Lakes. PCBs and
other contaminants have killed fish and other wildlife and polluted the
groundwater. Mohawk mothers discovered PCBs in their breast milk in the late
1970s and have identified a neighboring General Motors plant as the likely
source of contamination. In response, Mohawks created the Akwesasne Mother's
Milk Project in 1985 and went to battle against GM and other polluters. They
continue to seek restoration of healthy lakes, fish, and people.
In the Florida Everglades live the nearly-extinct Florida Panthers and
traditional Seminole Indians. The causes of their decease are largely the
same: loss of habitat (especially wetlands) to industrial and residential
development and pollution of the environment by industry. Thanks to some
private foundation help, traditional Seminoles are reacquiring property in
the Everglades area and working to save the panther. Innu (Montagnais)
peoples in northeast Canada fight against destruction of the forests by
hydroelectric projects and military bases. The U.S. Air Force conducts
low-level flights over the region disrupting animal routines and harming
Native people. The Innu are fighting in the courts and through direct action
by appealing to the U.S. and Canadian governments, occupying runways, and
insisting on living as they always have in their homeland, including
traveling where they want and hunting and fishing as they always have. The
Northern Cheyenne in southern Montana are working to correct the monumental
destruction left by decades of coal strip mining, most of which was approved
by the Bureau of Indian Affairs on behalf of the tribe with little to no
input from tribal members. Because the semi-arid region of southeastern
Montana takes decades, if ever, to recover from strip mining, Cheyenne
activists such as Gail Small formed Native Action to prevent any further
mining through legal challenges. LaDuke criticizes west coast
environmentalists for adopting a NIMBY (Not-In-My-Back-Yard) approach to
this issue and failing to assist the Cheyennes, since much of the power
generated on and near the Cheyenne reservation flows west to major coastal
cities, whereas the pollution and ecosystem devastation remains out of sight
in rural Montana.
LaDuke's fifth chapter discusses nuclear power, uranium mining, and nuclear
waste, an environmental issue she has written about before and which is of
particular importance within the setting of our current president's energy
proposals.(3) Native activists have long pointed out that approximately
one-half of American uranium reserves are on Indian land but about 80
percent of all uranium mining has occurred on Indian land, with 1,000
uranium mines on the Navajo reservation alone. The same underhanded way that
the federal government acquired less than satisfactory mining contracts on
Indian land is now occurring with regard to nuclear waste disposal. LaDuke
highlights the Western Shoshones, on whose land the Nevada Test Site and the
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site reside, and their efforts to fight
against further radioactive contamination.
Forest preservation and restoration, land recovery, and hunting, fishing,
and gathering rights are the focus of traditionally-minded Anishinaabeg on
LaDuke's own White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. After a century of
rampant clear-cutting of the forests by outside interests, such as
Weyerhauser, LaDuke and others formed the White Earth Land Recovery Project
in 1989 to reacquire land. "The struggle to preserve the trees of White
Earth," LaDuke contends, "is not solely about forest preservation and
biodiversity. It is also about cultural transformation, for the Anishinaabeg
forest culture cannot exist without the forest" (LaDuke, 127). Similarly, on
the Plains, Indian nations are trying to build up their own buffalo herds in
order to restore the prairie ecosystem and reestablish cultural ties with
their buffalo brothers and sisters. By so doing, Plains Indians such as the
Lakotas find themselves at odds with white cattle ranchers and with
government officials who authorize the slaughter of buffalo who wander
beyond the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park. Yet, their efforts are
succeeding and there are hopes of restoring vast areas of the Plains to
their pre-ranching biodiversity.
LaDuke's last two case studies take us to Hawaii and the Hopi reservation in
northern Arizona. Native Hawaiians occupy lands that the U.S. Government has
converted to military bases and national parks, though they have succeeded
in getting the Kaho'olawe Island--used as a bombing range by the
navy--restored to Native ownership. Issues of land repatriation (from
governmental and private claims), toxic waste cleanup, and traditional
fishing and farming methods are front-and-center among traditional
Hawaiians. LaDuke closes with Hopi efforts to selectively use modern
technology, especially solar power, to address present needs while
preserving ecological and cultural integrity. Electricity-generating plants
and power lines are viewed by traditional Hopis as too intrusive, and
alternative energy supplies are viewed as an answer to the need for some
electricity.
_All Our Relations_ is written clearly, compellingly, and with reasoned
judgement. Excellent maps at the start of each chapter add to this work's
usefulness as an undergraduate and general audience text on American Indian
environmental issues. Winona LaDuke has become one of the leading voices
within the environmental movement and among Indian activists, and she has
important things to tell all of us.
In the opening to their book, Paul Minnis and Wayne Elisens echo LaDuke's
plea to listen to what Native North American people have to say about
environmental stewardship: "Native peoples have been neither passive
consumers of nature's economy nor primitive rapists of pristine natural
environments . . . aboriginal peoples have helped shape environments for
untold millennia, and their accumulated ecological expertise and experiences
with diverse organisms and varied biotas will be critical for building a
sustainable and just future" (3). Essays by anthropologists, biologists, and
environmental scientists examine nine geographic and topical areas for
ancient and contemporary Native ecological practices. Their collective
effort is part history, part science, and part a call to action for
environmentalists and others concerned with the fate of our ecosystems.
Paralleling LaDuke, Minnis and Elisens argue that "[m]aintaining
biodiversity--whether organismic, ecological, or agricultural--necessitates
a concomitant concern for the loss of cultural and linguistic diversity"
among Native peoples (Minnis and Elisens, 17). The three essays in section
one, "Issues and Overviews," follow this reasoning. Gary Paul Nabhan
describes his efforts to catalog and preserve Native knowledge of plant and
animal species in the Sonoran Desert bioregion by working with O'odham and
Seri elders. Robert Bye and Edelmira Linares outline the interconnections
between biological and cultural diversity in Mexico. The importance of
ethnopharmaceutical data obtained from indigenous people is the subject of
Walter H. Lewis's essay. He cites promising discoveries of possible
treatments for HIV among plant species utilized by Native people, as well as
other plant medicines, and he argues for the establishment of legal patent
procedures to ensure that Native groups get the credit and compensation that
they deserve for this knowledge.
The second section provides three ethnographic case studies of indigenous
use and knowledge of plant and animal biodiversity. Catherine S. Fowler
analyzes data on Great Basin Indian utilization of plant and animal species.
In Nevada alone, Indians used hundreds of plants and animals for food and
medicine, and Fowler describes ongoing efforts among Shoshones and others to
retain this knowledge. The horticultural practices of the Salish peoples of
interior British Columbia are investigated by Sandra L. Peacock and Nancy J.
Turner. Salish management of hundreds of plant species for food, medicine,
and other materials--by annual burning of underbrush for example--produced
unnaturally high yields and preserved biodiversity, unlike contemporary
industrial uses of herbicides and pesticides. Enrique Salmon explains the
spiritual connections that the Raramuri people of Chihuahua, Mexico hold
with the non-human natural world. Maintenance of a balance between people
and nature, especially crops, are part and parcel of their culture, rituals,
and daily lives.
The last three essays examine pre-contact Native methods of conserving and
enhancing biodiversity. Indian alteration of the prehistoric landscape of
the semi-arid Rio del Oso Valley of northern New Mexico is the subject of an
essay by Richard I. Ford. He delineates numerous examples of water control
structures that allowed for greater plant production and enhanced
biodiversity. Gayle J. Fritz, using archeological and ethnohistorical
materials, looks at the entire eastern woodlands prior to European arrival
and concludes that Native cultivation of maize and other crops and
alteration of local ecosystems through burning and other methods enhanced
plant and animal species throughout the region. In the last essay, and the
only one that has been previously published, Julia E. Hammett considers the
Native southeastern United States. She mines the narratives of early
European explorers in order to construct a template of methods used by
southeastern Indians to manage their environments.
The unescapable conclusion of Hammett's paper and the other essays in this
volume is that the environment and landscape of North America is better
described as "managed" than "wild" at the time of European arrival, and
Indian management produced, generally speaking, greater natural diversity
and sustainability than non-Indian alterations since initial contact.
Biodiversity and Native America should be required reading for specialists
in American Indians, American environmental history, and North American
biology. Together, the two works discussed here force us to rethink the
history of the natural environment in America, as well as the crucial role
within American biodiversity played by, and still continuing to be performed
by, Native people.
1)Shepard Krech, III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New York: W.
W. Norton & Company, 1999).
2) Other works on American Indian environmental issues include (but are not
limited to) Peter Mathhiessen, Indian Country (New York: Penguin Books,
1979); Al Gedicks, The New Resource Wars: Native and Environmental Struggles
Against Multinational Corporations(Boston: South End Press, 1993); Donald A.
Grinde and Bruce E. Johansen, Ecocide of Native America: Environmental
Destruction of Indian Lands and Peoples (Santa Fe: Clear Light Publishers,
1995); and Donald L. Fixico, The Invasion of Indian Country in the Twentieth
Century: American Capitalism and Tribal Natural Resources (Niwot, Col.:
University Press of Colorado, 1998).
3)See Ward Churchill and Winona LaDuke, "Native North America: The Political
Economy of Radioactive Colonialism," in Ward Churchill, From a Native Son:
Selected Essays in Indigenism, 1985-1995 (Boston: South End Press, 1996),
147-190.
Copyright 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the
redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational
purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location,
date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social
Sciences Online. For other uses contact the Reviews editorial
staff:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------- End of forwarded message -------
************************************
Dr. Stefanie S. Rixecker, Senior Lecturer
Environmental Management & Design Division
Lincoln University, Canterbury
PO Box 84
Aotearoa New Zealand
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fax: 64-03-325-3841
************************************
