Indigenous Guides and Naturalist Vistas: Twentieth-century Naturalists, Nature Writing, and the Role of Indigenous Collaborative Voices.

• In Event: On the Road with Environmental History: Travel, Transportation, and Tourism

Abstract

American nature writing in the twentieth century included the work of trained western scientists and amateur naturalists who traversed the Americas from Central America to the Arctic Circle, from the north woods of North America to Patagonia in South America. Through immersion and observation authors developed ecologically conscious modes of thought and expressed those ideas in conservation-focused publications. Containing influential conservation and preservation ideas, therefore, such publications are important to scrutinize with decolonizing methodologies for the presence or absence of Indigenous voices and influences. Traveling naturalists sometimes engaged Indigenous individuals as guides and/or otherwise significantly interacted with regional communities. Writers throughout the century such as William Beebe (South America), Olaus and Mardy Murie (Arctic Circle), and Anne LaBastille (Central America), among others, acknowledged Indigenous spaces, but did not adequately illustrate how local beliefs and practices demonstrated Indigenous maintenance of those spaces. Moreover, these naturalist publications generally adhered to western colonial views of natural resources and when it came to local Indigenous land uses, these works did not usually offer evidence of collaborative engagement between authors and Indigenous peoples. Although these publications and the ideas they contain are not directly related to the history of conservation legislation inside or outside the U.S., they are indicative of how, across the globe, the ideologies of the modern environmental era have not been historically collaborative, by nature. Without effective collaboration, Indigenous environmental knowledge could be appropriated or ignored, with both circumstances illustrating detrimental effects of settler colonialism. There is more acknowledgement today about the importance of collaborative work between western science and Indigenous thought, but the legacies of past scientific approaches continue to have long-standing implications in political, economic, and cultural realms.

Author

• Dale Potts, South Dakota State University