[uoaei]

Wasn't the environmentalists of the 60s but the environmentalists of the early 1900s (John Muir and ilk) who thought they knew better than the native peoples how to preserve the dignity and beauty of natural spaces. We're just now coming back around to acknowledging indigenous land practices that have been the standard on this continent for millenia.

[perrygeo]

Both environmentalists and early American naturalists have one common weak spot in their world view; they view humans as fundamentally distinct from nature. Nature is somehow both profane and awe inspiring compared to the "rational" human world. In that view, we need to preserve the wilderness (somewhere "out there") for aesthetic/spiritual/resource management reasons.

From the indigenous viewpoint, there is little distinction; humans are part of the physical/natural world, same as a mountain lion or a worm, albeit a very powerful part capable of wielding great power and thus responsibility. There is no concept of wilderness.

It's worth over-emphasizing that the indigenous viewpoint in North America was sustainable (and was actually sustained) for thousands of years. The modern industrial culture of bipolar consumption/reverence of wilderness is showing severe signs of overshoot after a couple hundred years. That's not to say that indigenous land practices are more ethical or wise... merely that they've been proven more effective by the test of time.