Customer Reviews

Fire, Native Peoples, and the Natural Landscape

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Fire, Native Peoples, and the Natural Landscape joins a sparse field of books that deal with native peoples (though the book mostly focuses on Native Americans) and their interactions with fire.

Great introduction to the subject which deals evenly with the subject avoiding speculating beyond their available evidence.

The book is well-written and easy to read. Highly recommended!

Pages are dropping out of this book as I read it, but I'm loving the back and forth of contrasting theories on the influence of native peoples on the landscapes of the western United States. It seems to me that the scholarship in this book is a bit slanted toward the idea that the influences of Native Americans on the western landscape (using fire) were limited and localized. I believe this is pretty close to the truth, but I suspect that others may disagree, as it appears to be a controversial topic that engages a desire on the part of many to advocate the dignity of aboriginal cultures, even to the point of envisioning those cultures as "civilizations". For others, the mere suggestion that hard evidence might be overshadowed by any cause--however noble--is offensive.