Indigenous people are essential to life on Earth. While they make up less than 5 percent of the global population, they protect 80 percent of our world’s biodiversity. Despite their outsized environmental impact, Indigenous contributions are largely overlooked in the call for climate justice and conservation.
Reading Changes in the Land by William Cronon, which I will be quoting throughout this article, opened my eyes to the way Indigenous wisdom informs contemporary environmental practices. Indigenous people were Turtle Island’s (the land now called North America’s) first environmentalists, and their legacy has been carried over into many so-called “modern” and “innovative” environmental practices. In order to take the first step in combating environmental whitewashing, Indigenous wisdom in modern environmental practices such as regenerative agriculture and conscious consumption must be acknowledged and affirmed.
Regenerative Agriculture: Digging up Indigenous Practices
A departure from the traditional monoculture farms marking the commercial agriculture industry, regenerative agriculture is hailed as a big win for Big Food. Large companies like General Mills, Kellogg, and Nestlé have committed to advancing regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture facilitates a carbon sink, allowing the land to draw in carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the ground through practices like conservation tillage and plant diversity.
Conservation tillage stems from the knowledge that plowing erodes soil, facilitating substantial carbon dioxide emissions. Thus, by tilling lightly or not at all, farmers allow healthy, resilient soil to develop while minimizing CO2 release. Plant diversity, on the other hand, takes advantage of the different nutrients that different plants release into the soil, creating a diverse, nutritious environment for plants to grow in.
While unversed in the technical scientific terminology behind regenerative agriculture, Indigenous people were the original practitioners of this sustainable strategy. New England’s agricultural Indigenous societies grew corn by making “heaps like molehills” that enacted minimal disturbance on the earth, allowing the soil to remain intact while limiting erosion. The European colonists, accustomed to “orderly” monocultural fields, were not particularly impressed by the colorful chaos of Indigenous fields, but this agricultural disarray empowered Indigenous communities to cultivate successful harvests. Additionally, planting crops like kidney beans, squashes, pumpkin, and tobacco alongside corn resulted in “loading the Ground with as much as it will beare,’ creating very high yields per acre, discouraging weed growth, and preserving soil moisture,” according to one European observer.
Thus, modern-day regenerative agriculture draws from age-old Indigenous wisdom on low-tillage practices and the maintenance of diverse fields. In the absence of advanced science, Indigenous people relied on their intimate knowledge of nature to enact agricultural strategies that hold promising potential for staving off food-related climate change in a postcolonial society.
Conscious Consumption: An Indigenous Mindset
Another modern environmental practice that reiterates Indigenous philosophy is the conscious consumption movement, which commits to “engaging in the economy with more awareness of how your consumption impacts society at large.” Some choose to take things a step further by adopting a zero-waste or minimalist lifestyle. Ultimately, the unifying ideology behind these different lifestyles is that they opt out of reckless consumer cycles that generate exorbitant waste by chasing dollar signs at unsustainable speeds. While operating in the aftermath of a capitalist system, all three movements—conscious consumption, zero-waste, and minimalism—incorporate Indigenous principles of intentional ownership and consumption.
In New England’s pre-colonial Indigenous communities, “goods were owned because they were useful” and “there was little sense either of accumulation or exclusive use.” This pattern of behavior eluded English philosopher John Locke, who failed to realize that Indigenous people “did not recognize themselves as poor,” because “the endless accumulation of capital which he saw as a natural consequence of the human love for wealth made little sense to them.”
Just as the zero-waste, minimalist, and conscious consumption movements seek to maximize the utility of what they own and minimize excessive consumption, Indigenous communities found value in making the most out of what little they determined necessary.
Zero Waste vs. Settler Consumption
Inevitably, many traditional practices died out as trade became ingrained in the Indigenous way of life: “The commercialization of the Indians’ earlier material culture thus brought with it a disintegration of their earlier ecological practices.” However, traditional principles can be glimpsed even in the midst of change. For example, in the mid-17th century, as the Sioux began pursuing a nomadic lifestyle dedicated to bison hunting, they “learned to use virtually every part of the animal, from horns to tail hairs.” According to Lakota tribe member Luther Standing Bear, “The Indian was frugal in the midst of plenty. When the buffalo roamed the plains in multitudes, he slaughtered only what he could eat and these he used to the hair and bones.”
On the other hand, white settlers like “Buffalo” Bill Cody engaged in buffalo killing contests, with Cody killing over 4,000 buffalo in just two years. Employed as a method to force Indigenous people into relocation, excessive buffalo killing eventually led to the endangerment of a once-abundant species.
By virtue of timing and choice, the Sioux people resemble modern-day members of the zero-waste, minimalism, and conscious consumption communities, opting for frugality in an era of overconsumption. While the Buffalo Bills of yesteryear and the fast fashion lovers of today threaten the exhaustion of limited resources, conscious consumers and Indigenous communities find alternative ways to navigate an unsustainable economy.
Activating Indigenous Acknowledgment
There are countless other modern environmental initiatives that borrow from Indigenous wisdom. Ultimately, many modern environmental practices constitute a departure from the capitalist systems imported by the early colonists and a movement towards the ecologically resilient philosophy and practices of pre colonial Indigenous communities. As these practices become increasingly mainstream, it is important to give credit where credit is due: to the Indigenous environmentalists whose legacy protects Turtle Island to this very day.
Here is a reading list to further your education:
- Changes in the Land by William Cronon
- “The Alaskan Hunters Teaching Scientists About Whales” by Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic
- “Indigenous peoples defend Earth’s biodiversity—but they’re in danger” by Gleb Raygorodetsky, National Geographic
Drop your thoughts and favorite articles/resources in the comments below!
- Carbon Farming: The Future of American Agriculture and Carbon Trading - May 26, 2021
- LEED: Greenwashing or Good for the Planet? - March 8, 2021
- Who Invented Zero Waste? Acknowledging Indigenous Wisdom in Modern Environmental Practices - February 9, 2021
Beautiful Article!!!