Though the trope of the "Ecological Indian" is indelible in popular culture, history tells a much more complicated story. Featuring cutting edge perspectives...
It’s a self-professed VERY generalized look into different Indigenous cultures and their relationship with nature. Noting that different civilization’s relationship with nature is different due to geography, culture, history, and currently, time period(note is made about how whaling has changed between then and now, as well as two neighboring tribes having different relationships with whales).
There are interviews with Native American cultural ambassadors, professors, historians, and Environmental Scientists. For example, a tribe who is nomadic will very much have beliefs and practices about keeping an area full of resources such as a lake having viable fishing for next season over the practice of maximum resource extraction for a centralized community to keep said community thriving.
It is noted that cultures change with the times, due to changes in local interactions with other indigenous cultures, or due to the encroaching Colonial population interfering with their habitats and communities.
It is also noted that European colonial views of Native American practices of hunting and gathering were colored by European experiences with such things.
Essentially, people are people, and all of our interactions with nature are due to our needs for survival, whether short term or long term, and things are a LOT more complicated than, “Native Americans are the Na’vi from Avatar and totally in touch with nature, man.”
Can someone spoonfeed me a summary? I’m intrigued but extremely tired from bus driving I don’t have the capacity or patience to watch all two hours.
Not mine. Is from a different thread.