Native Americans And Western Culture - 2900 Words

Native Americans have an intimate relationship with the Earth that is very unusual to western culture. For centuries before the arrival of Europeans, Native Americans lived off the land in North America, without claiming ownership or creating massive environmental destruction. They have both a deep love and fear for the power of nature, and try to live as one with the environment. Because of this common value among tribes, Native Americans are often stereotyped as being the first environmentalists, which is not entirely true. Native Americans do value and treasure the environment, but not always in the way western environmentalists imagen. Modern environmentalists grew up in a different culture, one that embraces development and progress†¦show more content†¦Positives between Environmentalists and Native Americans There is good reason why environmentalists so often associate themselves with Native Americans. Indigenous culture has a deep reverence for the environment that is not prevalent in western culture. Using nature for hunting, gathering, and planting required religious procedures and ceremonies in order for Native Americans to receive permission to use resources (Cornell, 1985). Because of this cautious respect, environmentalists and Native Americans often agree with each other on environmental issues, including fracking, mining, and land exploitation. Modern native american activists more frequently are from western tribes, including Crow, Lakota, and Cheyenne, because they were in contact with European capitalist culture later than eastern tribes, so they have held on to their old traditions (Cornell, 1985). Environmentalists and Native Americans also overlap in their concern for â€Å"the people† and future generations. When these two groups are separate, they have weaker political power, but when they join forces they can have a much stronger impact. One survey compared the beliefs of Native American hunters and majority-culture (west ern) hunters, to see if Native Americans truly respect the environment more. The first part of the survey asked multiple Native American hunters and western hunters to rank multiple plant and animal species in importance. Of the 17 Native