Customer Reviews

The Ecological Indian: Myth and History

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

In this book, Krech sets out to contradict popular perceptions of Native Americans as perfect beings living in harmony with their environments. This doesn't sound like a very nice thing to do at first, but the author clearly states that he feels such images are not only inaccurate generalizations based on biased, outdated European stereotypes, but are dehumanizing in their suggestion that native people are "natural" animals rather than "cultural" humans. He goes on to present a number of case studies showing situations in which Native Americans were indeed cultural humans not living in perfect ecological balance with their surroundings. His treatment of the archaeological evidence is pretty thorough and unbiased. His historical case studies, while relying a bit heavily on potentially biased historic records by White settlers, remain fairly convincing examples of situations in which Native Americans were not perfect conservationists. Unfortunately, after this array of case studies it can be easy to forget that Krech's stated reasons for examining them were to present Native Americans as active human beings rather than passive stereotypes. Instead, readers can end up with a negative feeling about Native American land use practices in general or about Krech in particular, as the reviews below point out. In spite of these flaws, however, the book does raise interesting questions about how perceptions of Native Americans are constructed (both by native people themselves and by others) and about how we should approach environmental issues (including our definition of a "natural" environment) we grapple with today. His writing is clear and issues are presented in a fairly understandable way for a general audience, not just dusty academic types. Although you may not agree with all of the book's conclusions, the issues it raises make it very worthwhle reading material for anyone interested in environmental impact and Native Americans in the past and today.

Earlier customer reviews have tended to comment on bias. Most of the book is actually very fair, particularly the first few chapters; the treatment of Paul Martin's "Pleistocene overkill" hypothesis is exemplary. But the last couple of chapters are indeed rather biased, and read perhaps more "anti-Indian" than Dr. Krech intended. For example, Dr. Krech makes it sound as if the buffalo jump was a common, regular thing--the Indians drove a few million buffalo over a cliff every time they wanted a light lunch. Actually, archaeology and common sense both suggest that a big jump episode was rare. Try herding buffalo on foot and you'll understand. And Krech takes an extreme position in re the Indians' tendency to kill beaver; most authorities agree that beaver were more or less conserved until the white trappers got into the act. Certainly, there were lots of beaver, and not just in eastern Canada (the area he considers). Over a million beaver were trapped out of the southwestern US in the 1830s and 1840s, in spite of very dense Indian settlement then and earlier. The first 5 or 6 chapters would provoke little reasonable disagreement, but the last 2 or 3 would provoke (or are provoking) increasingly acrimonious debate among the learned. Suffice it to say that if you got the message that the Native Americans were not always models of selflessness, but were ordinary (if sensible) human beings, you're right, and this is probably what Dr. Krech intended. If you got the message that the Native Americans were bloodthirsty savages who killed wantonly, you're wrong. I hope and trust Dr. Krech did not mean that, but he does quote-at length and with apparent favor--a lot of racist 19th-century writers who did mean that.

At first I thought that this book was yet another revisionist history of Native/Nature relations. However, I recently had an opportunity to interview Professor Krech and realized that much of his argument has been misunderstood and caricatured by people on both the right and the left of the political spectrum. Krech is not trying to state that Natives do not have a particular respect for nature but rather that their actions were often not congruent with the Western notion of "conservation" a la Gifford Pinchot or Aldo Leopold and certainly not the kind of "preservation" ethic articulated by Muir. Krech is deeply aware of the Native respect for nature and has lived and worked with native communities in Northern Canada.

My only problem with the book is that he does not address the resurgence of native environmentalism in much detail. The work of Winona La Duke, Tom Goldtooth, Ward Churchill and others is briefly mentioned at the end but not much is provided in terms of how this movement has arisen. In my interview, I questioned him about this and he responded with great respect for native environmentalists, saying that he knew that their feelings were genuine and grounded in native history to some extent. However, their feelings for the environment have been realized in a modern context that is somewhat different from the less self-conscious relationship which ancestral Indians had with nature. Critics of Krech should certainly give him the benefit of the doubt and read his earlier works, particularly his criticism of Calvin Martin's first book (Keepers of the Game). Interestingly enough Martin has since changed his views and has taken a much more mystical approach to describing Native / environmental relations in his recent treatise: The Way of the Human Being". So please, reviewers and readers, try to step back for a moment and read this as an academic work which was well-intentioned, but perhaps needed another chapter at the end, further explicating the current rise of native environmentalism.

I believe this book was unfarily rated since it was rated by one angry environmentalist 3 or 4 times. This book had an agenda and the purpose was to get rid of the "Noble Saint" stereotype. It seems that some believe that this book is a conservative book while they don't realize that this book is supported by environmental historians such as William Cronon. My American Indian World views teacher (Choktaw) supports the breaking down of the Noble Savage stereotype, proffessors (Native American Studies proffessors)from my University support it and lecture about the Noble Savage stereotype. Another review mentioned how the book mentioned tribes that were less in tune with nature. That is not true because the hoop of life comes from the Lakota belief that everything has connection. As Cronon said "Why in the debates about pristine natural areas are "primitive" peoples idealized, even sentimentalized, until the moment they do something unprimitive, moder, and unnatural, and thereby fall from environmental grace?" The review critiqued the book saying it focued too much on modern day Indians. I'm not sure if he even read the book because the Chapters on Fire, Buffalo, Eden, and others focused mostly on past Indians. The Lakota when the still lived in the Plains, the Anasazi or Mississipian mound builders of the 10th century, Hohokam, Cree, Cherokee, Blackfeet, Crow, and many others. Like other reviews, this book is targeted at those who believe Indians were some sort of mystical beings that were ecological saints. These stereotypes are harmfull because as soon as an Indian does otherewise, their actions are condemned (ie Makah). Even so called positive stereotypes have negative impacts such as Asians are all smart, better at math, or all know martial arts. You can take the opposite stance and say all Whites are superior, have the better religion and more successfull. Instead of romaticizing the many American Indians, we should respect as a cultural people. The person from the Sierras should try and visit Indian Canyon or the Sun Rise Ceremony at Alcatraz. Native struggles today are usually concerned with sacred lands that was their ancenstral land and not so much on saving the Grey Whale or preservation. Because preservation excludes humans from living within the environment. A good book would be Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks by Mark David Spence or William Cronon's Uncommon Ground.

If you think that Indians used every part of the buffalo, or that they never wasted deer or beaver meat, this book will come as a shock to you. If you are more familiar with a wide range of human cultures and practices, this review of Native American/First Nation practices will not surprise you. Some tribes managed wildlife in a conservationist way, while others were wasteful. The extent of their conservationist or ecological practices varied from tribe to tribe, from one species to another, and over time.

It's easy to misread this book, and some of the other reviewers have clearly done this. Krech is trying to debunk a myth, not just because it's false but because it stereotypes many people who belong to many peoples. Some people misread this as attacking Indians, but obviously reasserting their diversity and individuality is seeking to do the reverse.

The real issues are complicated. Many Native Americans set fires because this tended to favor species of plants, trees, and game that they wanted. Yosemite Valley is a good example. This fire is "destructive" and anti-ecological in some ways, but nature also evolved around this Native practice. If we want to restore national parks to some "pristine" condition, do we set fires in Yosemite Valley? If yes, then we view Natives as part of the "environment," which dehumanizes them in a way. If no, then we ignore the way that nature evolved around humans.

This book discusses such issues in a serious way, with reference to the diversity of Native practices. Specific topics include irrigation in the arid southwest, the Pleistocene extinctions, fire, and chapters on several important species (deer, bison, and beaver). Krech discusses both pre-contact and post-contact Native practices. For example, First Nations obviously hunted beaver before the Hudson's Bay Company arrived in Canada, but they hunted a *lot* more afterwards. The book provides enough information about such cases, and with sufficient attention to both sides of every issue, that you can make up your own mind.

Isn't making up your own mind why we read such books in the first place?

There is no doubt that Shepard Krech offers a much-needed volume on the subject of American Indian ecological impact, and by the end of the powerful introduction he has convinced the reader that this may well be the definitive volume on the subject. The intro is a strong and compelling case for the re-evaluation of a popular stereotype, and should itself be included in the syllabi of courses on anthropology and ecology alike. The thesis presented in The Ecological Indian is a simple one (though by no means without controversy): the traditional image of the Indian living in non-invasive harmony with the land is not only false, but in fact does a disservice to those of aboriginal heritage by perpetuating the falsehood of the primitive noble savage.

Krech's writing shines when he wears the hat of an environmental philosopher and an anthropologist, and so it is with great disappointment that I made the transition to the actual substance of the book's thesis. In some areas (particularly those more recent historically documented cases), Krech strongly underlines his case. In others, however, he falls unbelievably short where the data is almost more compelling. Most striking was the first chapter on the Pleistocene extinctions, which oddly begins the book with arguments against the human overkill hypothesis even in the face of very compelling evidence. He focuses too strongly on the mid-80's publications of Dr. Paul S. Martin, when much more recent work has come out regarding human hunting that was completely overlooked. This poor treatment weakend the impact of the powerful introduction, and was a lost opportunity for strong evidence about early human land impact.

Similarly, the chapter on fire made almost no mention of the paleoecological record of fossil charcoal or other pre-settlement fire histories. The chapter on the Hohokam was compelling, but would have been made stronger by the inclusion of other examples from the Southwest or even the Midwest. Krech's weakness with regards to the ancient record were obvious to someone in the field, but may not be so to those without a background in anthropology or North American paleoecology, and so readers could get an incomplete picture based on certain omissions. This could be easily corrected with future editions.

Krech's background is obviously stronger in the historical period, and the section on the colonial impressions of the North American "Eden" was perhaps the strongest in the book. Here the author makes the important point that, coming from the intensely modified landscape of Europe, even a moderately-modified North America would seem like a wilderness, particularly when those doing the reporting have commercial interests. The section on buffalo is likewise very strong, including striking descriptions of buffalo jumps and other clearly excessive tactics. Here Krech makes the case about an Indian ecology most strongly, reminding the reader that the Indian ecological theory included mythological elements that are simply not compatible with Western ecological theory, such as a never-ending source of buffalo from sacred lakes or caves. With an eternally replenished supply, why would there be a need for sustainable harvesting? Similar chapters on deer and beaver emphasize the influence of European markets on overhunting for trade goods. While these are quite compelling, the book drags here at times with repetitive lists of animals killed in different regions.

Critics have lambasted Krech for making an unfair comparison between colonial and industrial human impact and those of less technologically complex cultures, one that the author himself predicts and addresses in the book. His response is to point out that just because modern humans are more manipulative doesn't mean that the Indians didn't manipulate at all. An inherent aspect of his argument is the notion of what constitutes "ecological" behavior, and Krech makes an excellent (and much-welcome) distinction between the actual science of ecology and the popular notion of ecology as environmental stewardship.

Scholarly faults aside, readers accustomed to popular science may find the writing to be dry and at times bordering on tedious. However, the book is excellently referenced, particularly with regards to primary sources, and in spite of its tone the content is very accessible to non-scholars. Ultimately, The Ecological Indian is an important contribution to the field, if occasionally disappointing in its incomplete scholarship.

~ Jacquelyn Gill

Although written in an academic style still a very interesting read. Dispells the myth of the uber-conservationist Indian and replaces it with a more factual, individual, and realistic representation of Native Americans.

Many of the reviewers of the book seem to apologize for the information presented and the conclusions that others might reach because of it. The facts are accurate, but truth is not in general favor these days

You might want to skip the first chapters on prehistory; they are outside the author's own expertise, fuzzy and incomplete in both arguments and conclusions. The great extinctions, in particular (where the author all but excludes human participation, a mea culpa for what is to follow?), is myopically rendered and should not be accepted at face value.

I forgave all this when I reached the main part; about North American Natives' interactions with nature, documented by Europeans from the 16th century and on. Many observations are illustrated with well chosen excerpts from the sources. There are detailed accounts of the impact of European diseases, of native forest fire practice, of hunting of bison, deer, beaver and caribou. The image that emerges is one of exploitation (often wasteful) by demand, not by sustainability. It's harrowing and brilliant. It could well be that this picture is incomplete, but the evidence is collaborated by literally hundreds of sources. And certain facts leave no room for argument: If you for instance believe (this really got to me) that your prey multiply by reincarnation in ever greater numbers as you kill them, you are not - by any definition - ecologically conscious.

The deeper lessons of this book are not so much about Native Americans as about humans, and the mechanics of human environmental exploitation. It is particularily recommended to anybody who has an interest in evironmental protection. The author clearly lacks the thorough biological understanding to bring the point across, but the value of the historical research seems to me beyond dispute.

The author maintains that it is racist and dehumanizing to treat native Americans as though they were preternaturally beyond the everyday needs and desires of mankind everywhere.

In that spirit, the book does a marvelous job in dissecting the mythology and realities of Indian cultures and their relationships to wildlife and the environment.

This book is the perfect antidote to the mindless drivel heard so often in most American schools today.

(Another good book that touches on this is "Plagues Of The Mind: The New Epidemic Of False Knowedge" by Bruce S. Thorton.)

Kudos to Krech for bringing up a new twist on the historical "crying Indian" figure everyone is so familiarly brainwashed into identifying with. I was initially shocked and disgruntled by Kreches arguments because I have grown up with a 100% ecological Indian/Dances With Wolves impression of Native Americans. However, the book is stocked with evidence claiming the alternative, that Native Americans did have negative impacts on the environment possibly comparatively to that of the European settlers. Krech did a fabulous job avoiding the use of glittering generalities when presenting arguments. However, at times he almost seems to argumentative (with himself) which is why I give the book only four stars--he tended to write to the critics. At some points he tends to have random arguments, but overall, it is a fascinating piece, which brings up new ideas on the subject in a sensitive way.