Amerinds & conservation

I'd like to take a middle stance between Kay & Sabrina.

Basically, there is tremendous variation over time and space with
indigenous populations.  On average, or in general, Amerinds were more
attentive to ecological concerns, but often as not because they had to be
on the one hand, and on the other how much can 40 Paiuted roaming over
100-1000 sq miles do to "mess up the enviornment" even if they all ate a
moldy cactus and came up with a religion/values that there duty was to
"mess up the earth."  One person on a bull dozer could do more damage in a
an hour than said band could do in a lifetime.

When the material adaptation is precarious, in a volatile environment,
with rapid [one, 2, 3 years or less] feedbacks, groups and their attending
cultures will be closely attuned to 'nature,' or the environment--those
which are not, do not survive long.  The more robust the adaptation and
the longer the feedback times, the less attentive they can be and continue
to survive.  

One reading of our contemporary green crisis is that the loops are so
long, the adaptations have been so robust that we [industrial states] have
gotten away with devasting actions.  Economic feedbacks are faster, and
under capitalism take precendence.  When Keynes said in the long run we
are all dead, he seemed to mean all individuals, but we could be moving
toward a situation where we are all--COLLECTIVELY--dead as a species.

In looking to other peoples/cultures/societies/groups for attentiveness to
environmental issues it is important to avoid romanticizing OR demonizing
them.  So the middle ground:  Kay is right in the sense that many,
probably most, Amerind groups attended more carefully to environmental
health; Sabrina is also right that not all of them did, and there is a
great deal of global evidence of non-industrial, and even foraging groups
altering their environments, sometimes in ways that caused long-term
degradation.

my $.02
tom

Thomas D. [tom] Hall
thall@depauw.edu
Department of Sociology
DePauw University
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Greencastle, IN 46135
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