The ecological Indian

[Louis Proyect <vze47t8m@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by H-AmIndian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (May, 2002)

Hugh Brody. _The Other Side of Eden: Hunters, Farmers, and the
Shaping of the World_. New York: North Point Press, 2001. 376 pp.
Notes, bibliography, index. $25.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-86547-610-1;
$14.00 (paper), ISBN 0-86547-638-1.

Shepard Krech, III. _The Ecological Indian: Myth and History_. New
York: Norton, 1999. vi + 318 pp. Notes, index. $27.95 (cloth), ISBN
0393-04755-5; $14.95 (paper), ISBN 0-393-32100-2.

Reviewed for H-AmInidan by Chris Paci <denenationcp@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Athabasca University, Yellowknife, Canada

Witnesses of Aboriginal Cultures

The demystificaton of all cultural constructs, "ours" as well as
"theirs", is a new fact that scholars, critics, and artists have put
before us. We cannot speak of history today without, for instance,
making room in our statements about it for Hayden White's thesis in
_Metahistory_, that all historical writing is writing and delivers
figural language, and representational tropes, be they in the codes
of metonymy, metaphor, allegory, or irony.[1]

The narrative investigation of tropes by witnesses of Aboriginal
cultures, scholars, continues to fill great halls and libraries the
world over. Coded by language and fit within paradigms, many of these
narratives have spawned their own schools of thought, criticism, and
ways of explaining the world. _The Other Side of Eden: Hunters,
Farmers, and the Shaping of the World_, by Hugh Brody and _The
Ecological Indian: Myth and History_, by Shepard Krech III, are well
worth the read for students, scholars, critics, and artists alike.
Collectively these two authors employ different anthropological
perspectives to view North American Aboriginal cultures as their
subject, using local examples to make universal associations.

Shepard Krech III has a B.Litt. from Oxford and an anthropology
degree from Harvard, based on fieldwork he did with the Gwitch'in in
the northern territories of Canada in the late 1960s. His writing is
authoritative and he is well respected by the academic community.
Hugh Brody, an anthropologist and linguist by training, has made
documentary films and written seven other books, the best known being
_Maps and Dreams_. While Brody has acted as expert witness to
important Aboriginal rights and title cases in Canada, notably in
Delgamuukw, this book is a general challenge to the anthropological
classification of "hunter-gatherer cultures".

Before I tackle the job of laying out the basic arguments of each
book I want to note that they are beautifully bound handsome books.
Together they hint of a new school in anthropological writing on
Indigene, a movement with an undercurrent that erodes the exotic
other and has the potential to resist asserting master narratives.
Furthermore, this school is driven by a reclamation of "ourselves",
lead by a handful of Aboriginal scholars who seek to end domination
of their cultures by authoritative texts. This review follows a
train-of-thought on the business of cultures and places, things of
and not of "our" own, a political act with a taste for appropriation
and reclamation. In academic disciplines there have always been, what
might be described in vulgar terms, an Industry of scholarship about
Aboriginal peoples, their cultures, worldviews, languages,
spirituality, etc. For now, let us put aside the argument that
Aboriginal cultures are studied to death by outsiders, many who have
profited at becoming cultural experts while communities have suffered
poverty. In Canada and the United States Aboriginal cultures are
diverse, making one wonder how newcomers, colonial decision-makers,
settlers, their offspring and the like, could be so ignorant as to
clump them together as Indians.

_The Ecological Indian_ is set in seven chapters, several based on
Aboriginal use of specific species--bison, deer, beaver--as examples
of instances where Krech, in his thesis, claims Aboriginal peoples
overexploited and damaged the environment. Krech's analysis could
have been improved with common property theory. Specifically, his
analysis could have been informed by Game theory (the prisoner's
dilemma) to show how resource scarcity developed as competition
eroded traditional management/governance systems. To his credit Krech
does argue that ultimately species were exhausted where instances of
control rules or their enforcement were lacking. In Brody we get a
sense of these rules embedded in Aboriginal cultures and their lands.
It is obvious in both books that Aboriginal lifeways were eroded by
contact. In fact, the same sources used by Krech to discredit the
ecological Indian trope, can be used to support claims that as
Aboriginal commons were exposed to successive waves of competition
from interlopers, including other Aboriginal peoples, local systems
broke down to result in ecological losses. Taken to full argument,
the evidence presented by Krech shows that ecological Indians
existed. What little archaeological evidence there is to suggest
extirpated species cannot be used conclusively to show a cause and
effect relationship of species loss due to over-harvest. That
Amerindians knew how to maintain their balance in ecosystems is
demonstrated in oral history and proven inadvertently by Krech
because his narrative shows that ecosystems broke down after the
introduction of destructive practices by outsiders. The commons were
transformed into open-access conditions through the erosion of
traditional management systems, and the eventual displacement of
local Aboriginal tenure, title and associated property rights
regimes. The elements of transformation were accomplished piecemeal
through an uneven displacement of goods, processes, diseases, ideas,
languages, technologies, and the like.

Brody's discussion of Canadian Aboriginal cultures, in particular
Inuit, Dunne-za, and Gitxsan, challenge the general anthropological
assumption of "hunter-gathers" the world over. The book is set in six
chapters: Inuktitut (language), creation, time, words, gods, and
mind. He shows that despite historical arguments of Aboriginal
hunter-gatherers as nomadic, it was basically agriculturalists, their
cultures (mapping, economies, churches, archives), who were nomadic
and able to recreate their destructive ways of life across the globe.
Brody's text is highly figurative and richly tied to his other works;
but, readers deprived access to these should worry not, as they will
be unhindered in appreciating his thesis. _The Other side of Eden_ is
based a great deal on Brody's direct experience living and learning
from Aboriginal Elders, written from field notes, legal transcripts,
and memory years later. It is a book written for the academy, which
honours the memory of those lives Brody shared.

Shepard Krech III has written extensively in the disciplines of
anthropology and history. His latest book, _The Ecological Indian:
Myth and History_, delves into historical records to deconstruct the
ecological Indian trope, an image, according to Krech, that is
projected on and by Amerindians in political-ecological arguments.
Krech's research is instrumental in how historical documents are
researched for what is understood about Aboriginal cultures/issues.
While we can debate his argument that there is no natural ecologist
and noble savage, or that they cannot be reconstructed from master
archives/narratives, as a selected reading of archaeological and
historical documents, his methodology is instructive. The
multidisciplinary perspective employed by combining archival,
historical, archaeological, anthropological and cultural studies
research forms a powerful lens of inquiry.

When I first heard about these book titles I was very excited, having
read a score of authors on Aboriginal representations and
misrepresentations[2] and anthropological studies of different
northern Aboriginal cultures. Having read articles by Krech, I
anticipated how he would demystify his topic. The basic premise of
the book is the exploration and deconstruction of the ecological
Indian as a trope. Tropes, of interest to anthropologists and the
cultural studies set, are generalized constructs that form
representations and general cultural markers. It is unclear how
widespread tropes are. That is, are they shared across groups or are
they specific to groups looking at others? _The Ecological Indian_
does not investigate how the trope functions except to say that
environmentalists and modern "Indians" have used it to legitimize
political claims. On the surface, Krech seems to discuss where the
trope comes from and who is served by it; however, I find he is more
interested in critiquing the trope's use to legitimize Aboriginal
claims to land and governance. This is not a rejection of Aboriginal
groups having their own systems of governance, which is the case for
some scholars [3], but Krech seems to oppose the very idea of
pan-Indians as natural ecologists. I see two possible causes for this
assertion. First, I think Aboriginal title and rights issues raise
fears for many white liberals who believe that balkanization will
result from identity politics. Second, in the larger sense the
assertion best reflects the schitzophrenia and confusion of Americans
specifically, who claim or reject Aboriginal identity while at the
same time embracing their real/imagined origins.[4]

Brody, in _The Other Side of Eden_, employs a very different approach
to Krech in deconstructing the "hunter-gatherer" trope. His use of
field notes, collected and revisited after the fact is similar in
some ways to Krech's use of historical documents; both are divorced
from live experience and rely on memory of context. While Krech
relies on the objective and impersonal authority of archival
documents and historical texts, Brody's legitimacy comes from the
ethnographical link of having conducted the original research and so
there is this personal authority to the documented field notes. In
addition, Brody advocates for recognition and respect of
"hunter-gatherer" societies, suggesting that their use of land was
much less destructive when compared with agriculturalist
transformations. While Krech is interested in limiting the political
associations made by the ancestors of Aboriginal cultures in the
United States in maintaining the ecological integrity of various
systems, Brody shares no such motive. In this regard Brody is not
interested in natural ecologists. Rather, he deconstructs the myth
that indigenous systems that existed before contact were maladaptive
to their various environments, adapted successfully to various forms
of economic development (the fur trade) and are currently threatened
by postindustrial natural resource development (such as oil and gas
development). Krech unsuccessfully argues that Aboriginal peoples
were, in general, destructive of various species and ecosystems and
Brody is unsuccessful in explaining the social learning of either
nomadic or sedentary economic systems. In some degree these authors
both demonstrate the limits of writing and researching from outside
one's own culture.

If both authors claim to tell the story of how Aboriginal peoples
have lived and continue to live, they run the risk, equally, of
misrepresentation and possibly advancing further confusion. Some of
these limits are a result of pan-Indianism, an approach that fails to
acknowledge and stress the pluralistic and the specific of Aboriginal
communities. What I think these books achieve is demonstrating the
difficulties of understanding people from the outside. Furthermore,
the authors show that pan-Indian arguments are impotent analytical
devices, inadequate MEMS. Finally, in reading these books I learned a
great deal more about the structural inequalities of academia and its
treatment of the Aboriginal object. _The Ecological Indian_ provides
a clear picture of the gap between Indigenous knowledge based on
experience and Aboriginal history, and academic knowledge based on
research about a topic abstracted from Aboriginal history. _The Other
Side of Eden_ demonstrates an equally clear picture of the gap
between lived experience and the abstract. Brody tells stories of
Elders in the first person, as if we are sitting with them in the
original conversation/research and we are left wondering how the book
chapter came together differently than this initial conversation. We
do not see the invisible hand of the editor and narrative moving us
to read a certain telling of the story.

The most important criticism I have of these books is reserved for
_The Ecological Indian_. In mustering his research I find Krech has
made no attempt to reconcile oral history with documentary evidence,
perhaps the reverse of what I read in Brody's book. The people who
created the documents used to uncover the ecological Indian myth are
for the most part outsiders; "ethnographic fact" is established from
the accounts of fur traders, missionaries, government agents,
travelers, academics, and the like. Krech fails to interrogate his
sources and accepts the singular and isolated account as descriptive
of all Aboriginal people in North America, a spatial and temporal
generalization that we must reject. Brody could have made his book
stronger had he brought in more of the context, voices of the people
themselves, historical documents and other related texts. As it reads
now, _The Other Side of Eden_ is very much a travel-narrative or
work-narrative of the life of an anthropologist and various
interfaces with Aboriginal Elders.

Challenges to the modern idea of Aboriginal peoples as natural
ecologists, by showing that Aboriginal peoples were historically
wasters, goes against everything I have learned from Elders who
always told me that nothing is wasted. Furthermore, Brody shows
convincingly that the modern environmental problems we face result
not from the actions of sedentary "hunter-gatherers", but in the
globalization of agriculturalism, which at its very heart is nomadic
and all too often destructive of environmental processes. Such arcane
arguments about conservation and preservation are not new arenas of
debate.[5] It is clear to ecologists that conservation is borne out
of social learning resulting usually from devastation. What I mean is
that anthropological and historical studies need to catch up to
thinking in natural resource management and ecology. We are learning
that arguments about pre-contact Aboriginal peoples as wasters and
the catalysts of species extirpations, are far too simplistic to be
of much use to understanding the basic relationships people have had
with different environments.

Contrary to Brody, Krech argues that Aboriginal peoples were not the
first peoples (they displaced others, i.e. archaeological evidence).
In this regard, Krech's main argument is if the ecological Indian
lived in harmony in nature it is only because population numbers did
not allow them to over-exploit ecosystems and resources; there was
lots of space and they could move around. Various scholars, including
Ward Churchill, have argued that pre-contact demographics, including
total population for each Aboriginal group, were larger than many
Anthropologists have argued.[6] In the case of Brody, and in
particular the Arctic environments he speaks of, arguments about
population numbers and origins are moot. Furthermore, there is an
implicit assumption that each group displaces or absorbs the last
without any continuity or learning from the past. Nonetheless, this
social learning among aboriginal groups, allowed them, historically,
to adapt and develop the resolve needed to live a prosperous way.
Such a reality is evidenced in historical accounts of many Aboriginal
cultures first witnessed across North America from the 1500s to the
mid 1800s.

Krech has brought together historical readings but his analysis is a
construction of generalizations about people, time and space. He
bases his analysis on a thin wedge of evidence. Local examples are
implied across vast geographies (and cultures). The bias of the
documentary evidence is not questioned, which I find very disturbing.
There are instances where he relies on very limited observations. One
or two explorers seeing hundreds of rotting carcasses can mean more
than caribou wasted for tongues and noses. Most ecologists would ask
what condition the lichen was in, what were conditions of ice and
snow, were there other ecosystem conditions that year that lead
Chipewayan and others to "cull" caribou herds? Was there something
happening that the outsiders did not understand? Were the people who
lead the intruders equally intruding on the land of others? That
newcomers, explorers, missionaries, and others wrote about some
things and failed to write about others is not surprising.
Furthermore, reading and assigning cultural terms like
_conservation_, as if they are not cultural constructs, we are
required to seek equivalencies in Aboriginal cultures. Brody is
effective in his attempt to step out of his own cultural box of
perception. Neither man can claim to be free from culture, both are
writing books for academic audiences and hope to influence the way we
see the world.

The questions I am left with after reading these books focus on
evidence and ways that academics seek to determine fact. For Brody
the lived ethnographic experience forms the basis of his book,
whereas for Krech evidence is interpretation of historical documents
and related archaeological study. The real answer to critical
incidents of species extirpations as a result of over-hunting or
over-fishing, could easily be found in Aboriginal accounts, in oral
history and sacred stories. In the end I appreciate the mustering of
facts in both books. It is interesting to note the historical and
anthropological in these books. For me there is far too narrow an
understanding of the past in history and far to narrow an
understanding from cultures in anthropology. I would like to see more
interdisciplinary study utilized to bridge questions regarding, for
example: oral and written, past and present, micro and macro, spatial
and temporal, of "our" culture and of "other" cultures.

To conclude, the audience for these books should be well armed with
specific oral histories and knowledge of the specific cultural
geographies and ecology before accepting the validity and granting
authority to these books. Where Krech and Brody have come from and
how they developed their arguments can prove good starting points in
understanding the various tropes about Aboriginal peoples. I doubt
that anthropology, history, or ecology are exclusive evolutionary
constructs. It is clear when read together, that these books suggest
the limits to adaptation among rapid change. Rather than a clear
development of cause and effect demonstrating Aboriginal cultures
moving from natural ecologists to wasters to conservationists, the
interference brought on by changes in language, tenure, thinking,
measurement of distance and time, introduction of Christianity, and
agriculture, has undermined North American ecology since contact. The
case may well be that we are all born natural ecologists and learn to
waste as we become producers and consumers; however, more research
needs to be carried out to prove this.

Notes

[1]. Edward Said, _Culture and Imperialism_ (New York: Vintage Books,
1994).

[2]. Edward Said, _Orientalism_ (New York: Pantheon, 1978); Marianna
Torgovnick, _Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives_
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); and, Daniel Francis,
_The Imaginary Indian (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1992).

[3]. Tom Flanagan, _First Nations? Second Thoughts_ (Montreal:
McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000).

[4]. Jill Lepore, Jill, _The Name of War: King Philip's War and the
Origins of American Identity_ (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999).

[5]. Calvin Martin, _Keepers of the Game_ (Berkley: University of
California Press, 1978); and Shepard Krech III, ed., _Indians,
Animals and the Fur Trade_ (Athens, University of Georgia Press,
1981).

[6]. Ward Churchill, _Since Predator Came: Notes from the Struggle
for American Indian Liberation_ (Littleton: Aigis Publications,
1995).

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--
Louis Proyect, vze47t8m@xxxxxxxxxxx on 06/15/2002

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