American Indians and Environmentalism: The Problematics of the Land Ethic Stereotype

Year 1998, Issue: 8, 3 - 12, 01.10.1998

Lee Schweninger

Abstract

These alternative perspectives attributed to Native Americans result in large part from representations imposed on American Indian cultures by non-Natives. And these perspectives are at work both in the somewhat facile but popular and long-enduring collections of Native American excerpts, works such as Touch the Earth: A Self Portrait of Indian Existence 1971 compiled by T. C. McLuhan, or the more recent collections such as Joseph Bruchac’s Native Wisdom 1995 , or Anne Schaef’s Native Wisdom for White Minds 1995 . Native American Wisdom 1993 , another work, is a tiny, toy-like book which includes photographs by Edward Curtis. Although many of the Curtis photographs were taken in the early twentieth century Curtis completed his multi-volume study The North American Indian in 1930 , they are meant to represent the subjects as they supposedly existed in some imagined pristine, pretwentieth-century state. The photographs are meant to preserve what Curtis saw as dying cultures

References

• Allen, Paula Gunn. “Iyani: It Goes This Way.” The Remembered Earth. Ed. Geary Hobson. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979. 191-193.
• Backus, Joseph. “The White Man Will Never Be Alone.” Studies in American IndianLiterature. Ed. Paula Gunn Allen. New York: Modern Language Association, 1983.
• Bruchac, Joseph. Native Wisdom. San Francisco: Harper, 1995.
• Callicott, J. Baird. In Defense of the Land Ethic. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989.
• Dances with Wolves. With Kevin Costner. Guild/Tig. 1990.
• Deloria, Vine, Jr. God is Red. First Edition. New York: Grosset, 1973.
• -----. God is Red: A Native View of Religion. Revised Edition. Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 1994.
• Dorris, Michael. “Indians in Aspic.” New York Times. 24 Feb. 1991. Op. Ed. IV, 17:1. Egan, Timothy. “An Indian Without Reservations.” New York Times Magazine. 18 Jan. 1998 16-19.
• Gill, Sam. “Mother Earth: An American Myth.” The Invented Indian. Ed. James A. Clifton. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1990. 129-143.
• Harjo, Joy. “My House is the Red Earth.” Poetic Justice. Red Horse Records, 1996.
• Hogan, Linda. “Creations.” Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World. New York: Touchstone, 1995. 77-98.
• Hill, ElizaBeth. “Seven Generations.” Legends. First Nations Music, n.d. The Last of the Dogmen. With Tom Berenger and Barbara Hersey. Savoy. 1995.
• Lewis, David Rich. “Native American and the Environment: A Survey of Twentieth-Century Issues.” American Indian Quarterly. 19 (Summer 1995): 423-450.
• Martin, Calvin. Keepers of the Game. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.
• Martin, Lawrence. “What Is Going to Happen to the Indian?” Wapistan. First Nations Music, 1994.
• McGaa, Ed. Mother Earth Spirituality. San Francisco: Harper, 1990.
• McLuhan, T. C., comp. Touch the Earth: A Self-Portrait of Indian Existence. New York: Promontory, 1971.
• Momaday, N. Scott. “An American Land Ethic.” Ecotactics: The Sierra Club Handbook for Environmental Activists. Ed. John G. Mitchel. New York: Trident, 1970. 97-105.
• -----. “Native American Attitudes toward the Environment.” Seeing with the Native Eye. Ed. Walter Capps. New York: Harper, 1976. 79-85.
• Native American Wisdom. Philadelphia: Running Press, 1994.
• Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. 1932. New York: Pocket Books, 1972.
• Owens, Louis. Other Destinies. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.
• Porter, Murray. “Colours” 1492: Who Found Who. First Nations Music. n.d.
• Regan, Tom. All That Dwell There. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
• Schaef, Anne Wilson. Native Wisdom for White Minds. New York: Ballantine, 1995.
• Vizenor, Gerald. “The Tragic Wisdom of Salamanders.” Sacred Trusts. Ed. Michael Katakis. 1993. Rpt. Shadow Distance. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1994. 194-209.
• Yoffe, Emily. “The Silence of the Frogs.” New York Times Magazine. 13 Dec. 1992: 36-39+.