It’s just racism someone dressed up real pretty so they can pat themselves on the back for how enlightened they are.

But indigenous people didn’t “live in balance with nature”.

They didn’t “live in balance” in a way that was significantly different from the Spanish, French, or English colonists or the Africans imported via the slave trade. Or the various plethora of native species they co-habitated with.

But there was a pre-colonial ecological balance. Native agricultural practices were largely sustainable, as evidenced by the centuries of farming and herding that colonial settlers initially discovered and exploited. The Plymouth Rock and Jamestown settlers had no idea how to survive in Massachusetts or Virginia early on, relying heavily on trade until they could figure out the effective farming and fishing practices that would become common. European colonies regularly failed right next door to native communities that flourished.

What “upset the balance” was three-fold

• Sudden, rapid emigration of colonial settlers fleeing the Thirty Years War. Overwhelmingly composed of younger men (the surplus males of the Old World) with poor health and a mandate to work themselves to death for the benefit of others, these early settlers weren’t trying to build a sustainable community. They were often sent over to work as soldiers, miners, or fur harvesters, with the intention of returning or retiring once they’d “made their fortune”.

• The Columbian Exchange of non-native species and diseases, which resulted in mass die-offs of native flora and fauna alike. The arrival of European diseases in America are estimated to have killed between 80% and 95% of native populations, often wiping out entire communities before a single European arrived.

• Industrialization, particularly in the wake of the Civil War, which introduced petrochemicals and air pollutants responsible for the mass die-off of entire biomes.

All of these can - directly or indirectly - be blamed on European settlement.

equating industrialization with techological process is pretty fuckin eurocentric of you.

Not to mention that “indigenous” hunting practices was the cause of extinction of numerous species like the mammoth and similar big mammals.

It is idealisation of primitivism, which is not the answer to our problems in any way.

not to mention there was a TON of variety in hunting practices as indigenous populations vary widely.

here is an interesting book about the subject (on my to read list) https://archive.org/details/ecologicalindian0000krec

Honestly, it’s life in general. When trees first evolved, they were essentially an invasive species; nothing at the time could break through the lignin that makes them so tough, and so nothing could eat them for millions of years. They would grow, absorb CO2, die, and just lie there until they got buried, then more would grow in their place and absorb more CO2 over and over until the global levels dipped and the planet got colder, causing an ice age.

Devastation happens every time a species ends up in an environment without any natural predators or other mitigating factors. Life doesn’t have a point where it looks around, says “yeah, that’s enough” and stops growing - it needs something to keep it in check. Humans just change way faster than any other life ever has, so the problematic traits become more and more problematic, and the natural checks and balances of the world are way too outpaced to do anything about it.

Not here to argue, but I would like those examples. That’s not something that comes up often.

from ‘noble savage’ to racist implications that they couldn’t if they tried

They’re the same picture.

To accuse the first nations led Lakota Law Project of racism against themselves is a an actual terrible take.

This is such a gross misreading of the post lol

It literally says “Indigenous people have shown” and not something about them having some innate characteristics that result in their living in balance with the earth. It should be obvious that their idologiy and culture is meant by the post, as it is exactly that what other can actually learn from many indigenous peoples and it is alao exactly what colonialism is actively destroying

I say this as someone who has logged hundreds of hours in several games.

Please widen you sources of information, and, please, you need to go outside more.

This is incredibly dismissive of not only native cultures that wiped themselves out (or at least wiped out large animal species) but also of the other European and Asian cultures that had their own imperialist expansion, some nearly to the same degree as the English.

This made too much sense to me.

I don’t care for it. I wish to go back to my previous levels of understanding.

This is a very fun but also anglocentric and supremacist story.

In fairness thinking Dwight was right is like thinking Palpatine is a democracy loving guy because the Senate voted for him.

Yes? What’s your point? Was the land irreversibly damaged by their fighting over land? Surely you can’t be trying to compare the ecological impacts tribal warfare to modern industry?

We need to do away with the financial part entirely, it’s what is killing us.

Mhmm tell that to the first nations led Lakota Law Project.