Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Environment native americans
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Environment native americans
California, once a land of legendary beauty, is now easier to see as a concrete paved state, overrun with cars and absent of the old growth redwoods that once defined the coasts. As a state that leads the nation in environmental and political reform, California is failing to protect the natural environment from the hazards of clear cutting, diverted waterways, and toxic dumping. Each of the aforementioned issues are examples of how corporations, governments, and residents are trashing California. Through analysis of the ways that Native Americans once tended to the land, a solution might be found that can allow California's natural treasures to be conserved and enjoyed for generations.
The dwindling Coastal Redwoods serve as a prime example of how environmental degradation can occur even after public outcry. During the Gold Rush, profit driven timber companies from around the nation purchased land in California with the intention of harvesting lumber. The preferred sources of lumber were thousand-year-old redwoods, which made up the spectacular forests that lined California's coast. As shown in the film, “Redwoods,” private companies who own the majority of Coastal Redwood land have harvested 95% of the original old growth redwoods, even as protesters and public committees cried foul. The clear cutting practices that enable extensive profits for timber companies have horrible impacts on the land around them, including loss of wild habitats, extinction of species, and erosion of the land. However, these negative effects are not always experienced by the consumers of old growth redwood products. Local governments and populations, even if they are concerned by these problems, do not have mechanisms available to compel these comp...
... middle of paper ...
...rom the indigenous lifestyle how to remain in balance with the environment, by recognizing that what goes around, comes around.
California has been trashed in an attempt to extract resources, grow population, and discard waste beyond the land's capacity. Efforts to save resources have led to recycling and conservation programs, which are good steps in the right direction, but these programs do not prevent future environmental degradation. California acts as an example to the United States as we tackle the issues of private ownership of natural resources, overpopulation in arid areas, and exploitation of impoverished communities. Rather than looking to the future for solutions, corporations and governments could adopt circular concepts of time, and emulate the Native American successful cultivation of California, by caring for the land and taking only what we need.
These two sides of the issue bring about a major controversy in America today. Should the Pacific Northwest’s old growth forests and the welfare of the Northern Spotted Owl be sacrificed for America’s economy, and the jobs of the people in the logging industry? Which should be placed at a higher value, the forests in the Pacific Northwest and the northern spotted owl, or the American economy and the jobs and welfare of thousands and thousands of people?
In Mark Fiege’s book “The Republic of Nature,” the author embarks on an elaborate, yet eloquent quest to chronicle pivotal points in American history from an environmental perspective. This scholarly work composed by Fiege details the environmental perspective of American history by focusing on nine key moments showing how nature is very much entrenched in the fibers that manifested this great nation. The author sheds light on the forces that shape the lands of America and humanities desire to master and manipulate nature, while the human individual experience is dictated by the cycles that govern nature. The story of the human experience unfolds in Mark Fiege’s book through history’s actors and their challenges amongst an array of environmental possibilities, which led to nature being the deciding factor on how
A number of ideas, suggestions, and points can be extracted from “Illinois Bus Ride,” a passage from Aldo Leopold’s collection of essays entitled A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. However, there must be one main thesis that the author is attempting to get through to his audience. Leopold argues that we Americans have manipulated the landscape and ecosystem of the prairie so that it seems to be nothing more that a tool at our disposal. All aspects of what was once a beautiful, untamed frontier have been driven back further and further, until they were trapped in the ditches.
The Native American’s way of living was different from the Europeans. They believed that man is ruled by respect and reverence for nature and that nature is an ancestor or relative. The Native American’s strongly belie...
The Conservation movement was a driving force at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was a time during which Americans were coming to terms with their wasteful ways, and learning to conserve what they quickly realized to be limited resources. In the article from the Ladies’ Home Journal, the author points out that in times past, Americans took advantage of what they thought of as inexhaustible resources. For example, "if they wanted lumber for their houses, rails for their fences, fuel for their stoves, they would cut down half a forest at a time; and whatever they could not use or sell they would leave to rot on the ground. They never bothered their heads to inquire where more wood was coming from when this was gone" (33). The twentieth century opened with a vision towards the future, towards preserving the land that had previously been taken for granted. The Conservation movement came along around the same time as one of the first major waves of the feminist movement. With the two struggles going on: one for the freedom of nature and the other for the freedom of women, it stands to follow that they coincided. As homemakers, activists, and citizens of the United States of America, women have had an important role in Conservation.
I think it is agreed by all parties that it is an eyesore to see these people blockading the roads to prime tree-cutting land and bombarding our most respectable government with impractical proposals. It is not so Herculean a task to discourage these self-named “environmentalists” in their follies by paying them no heed. However, a new generation of them has sprung up. Citing how it is in fact profitable to protect the environment, they try to pull blindfolds over the public’s eyes. Therefore, whoever could find an easy and economically sound method of reclaiming these lost souls would deserve to be made the head of our nation at the very least.
Native Americans have suffered from one of America’s most profound ironies. The American Indians that held the lands of the Western Hemisphere for thousands of years have fallen victim to some of the worst environmental pollution. The degradation of their surrounding lands has either pushed them out of their homes, made their people sick, or more susceptible to disease. If toxic waste is being strategically placed near homes of Native Americans and other minority groups, then the government industry and military are committing a direct offense against environmental justice. Productions of capitalism and militarism are deteriorating the lands of American Indians and this ultimately is environmental racism.
Before the 1970s, environmental policy was not the more publicized issue that it is today. After the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969, the environmental movement really took off. The federal government took the situation into their hands and paid more attention to environmental policy than they had been doing in the past. While the states still have quite a bit of power when it com...
In 1989, seventy five percent of Americans identified themselves as environmentalists, and the number has continued to grow since then (Walls 1). Environmentalism is now the most popular social movement in the United States, with over five million American families donating regularly to environmental organizations (Walls 1). Environmentalists today focus on what kind of world they hope to see in the future, and largely deal with limiting pollution and changing consumption rates (Kent 1 and 9). Modern environmentalists also have much different issues than those Carson’s America faced. With climate change becoming more threatening each year, protection of the natural world is needed more than ever. Pollution has caused the warmest decade in history, the deterioration of the ozone layer, and species extinction in extreme numbers (Hunter 2). It not only threatens nature, but also human populations, who already suffer from lack of clean water and poisoning from toxic chemicals (Hunter 16). Unlike environmental actions in the 1960’s, which were mostly focused on protection, a massive increase in pollution has caused efforts to be focused on environmental restoration (Hunter 16). Like in the time of Silent Spring, environmentalists are not only concerned with one country. Protecting the environment remains a global issue, and every nation is threatened by the
California water war has been an great example of different cities fighting against each other since they all share the common characteristics of greed, and selfish. Back in the 1800’s, Los Angeles grew largely in populations when finally it outgr...
For about five years California has experienced above average temperatures and a lack of rain. This lack of rain and snowfall has caused California to become increasingly dry, starting arguments over whose right to water is more important and who needs to be more mindful with their use of water. Farming in California truly began during the gold rush when water was redirected to land where food was grown for those looking for gold (Siegler, 2015). The farmers that have stayed on that land now have senior water rights (“Water wars”, 2015). Farmers that settled their land before 1914 are those with senior water rights (Terrell, 2015). Governor Jerry Brown has called for a cut in water use by one-quarter percent to people living
Magoc, Chris J. Environmental Issues in American History: A Reference Guide with Primary Documents. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2006. Print.
Since the rise of the American environmental romanticism the idea of preservation and conservation have been seen as competing ideologies. Literary scholars such as Thoreau and Muir have all spoke to the defense of our natural lands in a pristine, untouched form. These pro-preservation thinkers believed in the protecting of American lands to not only ensure that future generations will get to experiences these lands, but to protect the heavily rooted early American nationalism in our natural expanses. Muir was one of the most outspoken supports of the preservation ideology, yet his stylistic writing style and rhetoric resulted in conservation being an adopted practice in the early 20th century
For many decades California holds the title as being the best Arcadian environment out there. Starr as well as many other authors have commented on how humans have always had “a respectful closeness to nature”(13), locating and adventuring out into some of the most beautiful places our earth encapsulates. All over California these places are evident from the beautiful redwoods to the Sacramento mountain ranges, the dream of a natural paradise is obtainable. Whether you want to go fishing, surfing, kayaking, or hiking , it is up to you to decide, for many imagining this dream is easy. As we approach the top of the hill shimmering with reflections of crisp green forest trees and wildlife roaming in all directions the quaint bungalow appears. Surrounded by open blue skies and rugged dirt trails this home is among the many hidden treasures that still exist today. The bright and airy porch containing two small white rocking chairs, perfect for a small cup of tea and a good book. As you enter the house the smell of pine and citrus fill the air bringing back memories of last summer’s adventures. Many aspects of California art and Chicano Park in particular expose the dream of a natural Arcadia. While some pieces endorse the dream others threaten the dream, and every once in a while you will find a piece that simultaneously accomplishes both.
The IK embedded in the stories reveal how such knowledge is instrumental in ushering in and mitigating ecological catastrophe (Woollett, 2007). Cajete (2000) observes that “ultimately, the goal of Indigenous education is to perpetuate a way of life through the generations and through time. The purpose of all education is to instruct the next generation about what is valued and important to a society” (p. 184). In Canada, Native schools have begun to emerge where Native people (of particular tribal groups) conduct education for children in their own languages and develop a curriculum which is based on reclaiming traditional knowledges and worldviews, for example, the importance of land and environment and what land and environment means to Aboriginal