‘Only To The White Man Was Nature a Wilderness’: Why We Need to Listen to Native Americans About the Earth

In this article, Daisy Culleton explores how adopting Native American environmental values could help us all.

Nature is a powerful substance; one small dose every day can drastically improve our mental and physical well-being, as well as foster social cohesion and positive environmental attitudes. In fact, connecting with the natural world could be considered the antidote for many of the problems afflicting modern society. Yet, the amount of time people spend outside is decreasing at an alarmingly fast rate. A study commissioned by the Flower Council of Holland revealed that the average Brit spends only 32 minutes a day in nature, with Londoners spending just 28 minutes outdoors each day. The Nature of the Americans National Report, conducted by DJ Case and Associates, a communications firm dedicated to conservation, found that the same issue is occurring across the pond in the United States. Out of the 12,000 adults surveyed, over half were spending 5 hours or less outside each week. So why are we becoming so nature-deficient?

Rapid technological change, the lure of social media, busy work schedules and the prevalence of desk-based jobs are all partly responsible. However, the trend of urbanisation is possibly the greatest factor determining why we, as a nation, are gradually spending less and less time outside. Between 1960 and 2022, the urban population in the UK grew by 15.4 million, while the rural population decreased by around 846,500. This shift from rural to urban areas has resulted in fewer people having access to well-kept green spaces. A study by BUPA confirmed this issue. It found that more than half of Brits (52%) do not have a park within walking distance, and 1 in 8 (12%) live over an hour away from one. However, ultimately, the reason why we are spending less time in nature matters very little. What is concerning is that our physical separation from the natural world, whether due to the lack of green spaces or our addiction to our phones, is causing many of us to disconnect from nature almost entirely.

To truly reap the mental, physical, and social benefits the environment has to offer, we should give Native Americans a prominent platform in Environmental politics. Being a marginalised group, their opinions on the environment have often gone unheard. However, it’s time we integrate their environmental values into the global mainstream. Doing so will help all of us connect with nature and support Native Americans, who are among the communities most affected by the climate crisis. But what are their beliefs? Native Americans, also known as Native Indians, First Americans or the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, are a diverse group of people and each tribe and nation has their own particular views. However, whilst it is important to not homogenous them, generally speaking, Native Americans’ outlook on the environment sharply contrasts with Western philosophies on the environment.

To Native Americans, humanity is inextricably connected with the natural world. They value the earth as a spiritual extension of oneself. Under their collective eyes, the land cannot be separated from humanity because, much like a vital organ, without it, we would cease to breathe, or even exist for that matter. For this reason, in Native American culture there is no word for the ‘environment’. They also operate under the belief system that all objects – living and non-living – have an individual spirit which forms part of the greater soul of the universe. This belief is more commonly known as Animism.

Additionally, as they understand mankind shares a two-way, reciprocal relationship with the natural world, wherein if mankind looks after nature, it too will look after us in return. Therefore, Native Americans view themselves as stewards and custodians of the natural world, allowing their respect for the spirit of the land to infuse all aspects of their daily lives.  Meanwhile, in the Western world, we tend to view the environment as an ‘other’, meaning something entirely unattached from mankind. From a Western perspective, natural resources are viewed as commodities to be exploited. As a result, we fail to grasp the significance of connecting with the natural world and incorporating it into our everyday lives. This stark difference between Western and Native American environmental cultures played a large role in the early history of the United States of America.

When European settlers arrived on what is the North American continent, they severed the spiritual relationship the Native American population had carved with their natural surroundings. European settlers painted the American landscape with a Eurocentric and ethnocentric brush. To favour their narrow-minded interests, they depicted the continent as a virgin wilderness full of wild savages. By utilising this wilderness discourse, they pit European ideas of civilization against the natural and spiritual ideologies of Native Americans. In turn, they concealed the white possession of Indigenous land and justified their desire to conquer and transform the land to fit settler culture. Chief Luther Standing Bear, who was chief of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux) tribe surmised this harmful European logic, writing that ‘only to the white man was nature a wilderness and only to him was the land infested with wild animals and savage people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery.’ Standing Bear, who was also a progressive activist and author, even went on to predict the dangers of our current path. He said ‘The old Lakota was wise. He knows that man’s heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too.’

Black Foot, Standing Bear, Big Eagle, Sioux. Three members of the Sioux tribe pose in Indian Village, 1898. Image Credits: Boston Public Library on Unsplash.

Standing Bear's words sadly ring true. Rampant capitalism is at the heart of the reasons for our growing distance from the natural world and subsequently our endless unrest. Like European settlers, we still fail to appreciate the earth as Native Americans do. Our habits clearly indicate that many of us still consider ourselves as completely separate from the natural world, perhaps even superior to it. Native Americans’ interconnectedness with nature is clearly something that we could all learn from. It is the wisdom that we so desperately need. As we spend less time outdoors and become further removed from natural spaces, it is crucial that we begin to articulate the natural world for what it truthfully is – a vast organ that sustains humanity. By perceiving the earth through this distinctly Native lens, we are likely to seek nature out more often and in turn, absorb all the wonderful benefits it has to offer. Thus, if we were to embody the Native perspective, even just a little, we could begin to heal ourselves and the earth all at once.

About the author: Daisy Culleton is an American Studies and History graduate from the University of Nottingham. She has a keen interest in both Art and Environmental History.