Native Lands - James Phaphone

    This week's readings and class discussion on environmental history within the Native population has been very informative and interesting. Personally I do not have extensive knowledge about Native American history, and to be able to view and start to understand it from an environmental perspective really taught me a lot. Trafzer's book explained the cultural origins of Native people's care for nature, while Millar's article showed how fast deterioration began in Malheur without the Natives to protect and take care of the local land. Native people's deep connection with nature stems from their cultural belief that everything in nature is alive and connected, with specific landmarks being sources of sacred spiritual power. Whereas western society seems to view nature as something separate from itself, the Native people see nature and the land as part of their culture and history as humans. Understanding this made it clearer as to why western society is also generally less caring of the environment whereas Native groups are the complete opposite. Based on my knowledge and a few specific cases in the readings, Native opinion about the environment has been disregarded for centuries despite the wealth of knowledge they had. To see professor Trafzer try to integrate more of the culture and knowledge of local Natives into western scientific approaches when it comes to environmental issues is really nice. From his article and his talk during discussion, I realized that to protect the environment also means protecting and preserving the rich cultural history of many Native groups.

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