NP but interesting re Native Americans in Pynchon's fiction

[Doug Millison]

http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=25157998331850

review of:

Winona LaDuke. _All Our Relations: Native Struggles
for Land and
Life_.  Cambridge, Mass: South End Press, 1999. vii +
241 pp. Maps,
notes, and index. $40.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-89608-600-3;
$16.00
(paper), ISBN 0-89608-599-6.

Paul E Minnis and Wayne J Elisens, eds. _Biodiversity
and Native
America_. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000.
x + 310 pp.
Figures, maps, notes, references cited, list of
contributors, and
index. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN: 0-8061-3232-9.

excerpt:
"The intense gaze of academia on Indian ecology has
produced controversy, usually over whether or not the
"noble savage" stereotype is employed too readily in
an attempt to portray all Indians as the first
American environmentalists or is used as a straw man
to deny that Indians interacted with the natural
environment in a manner significantly different than
the European intruders. Both views are, of course,
vast oversimplifications. As anthropologist Shepard
Krech demonstrated recently, Indians sometimes killed
more animals than they needed for food, sometimes
outstripped certain resources such as trees, and
certainly altered local landscapes and
environments.[1] The two books under consideration
here suggest strongly, however, that not only did the
diverse Indian peoples understand and utilize the
American natural environment in a manner more apt to
preserve biological integrity than did Europeans,
those Indians who preserve traditional culture today
(language, religion, lifeways, and so on) seem to be
much better equipped to preserve biodiversity and
healthy ecosystems than mainstream American society. "


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