Why Is First Nations Lived In Harmony With The Environment?

Before the Europeans came to Canada, Natives had their own culture, traditions and norms. These differences were obvious to the Europeans who sailed to Canada, their interactions with the Native peoples proved these vast differences. One major difference noted was that the Iroquois organized their societies on different lines than did the patrilineal western Europeans. Iroquois women “by virtue of her functions as wife and mother, exercised an influence but little short of despotic, not only in the wigwam but also around the council fire.” “She indeed possessed and exercised all civil and political power and authority. The country, the land, the fields with their harvests and fruits belonged to her … her plans and wishes modeled the policy and inspired the decisions of council.” The Europeans were astounded by this way of life.

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

For years, the Native Americans lived a very solitary life with their own unique way of living, that was until the European’s showed up with their very complex way of living. Harmony with nature was a very important aspect of Native American culture. The Native people embraced nature with no intention to modify it unlike the Europeans. They simply cared more about nature and what it had to offer. The spiritual connection between the land and these Natives were distinctive from the Europeans also due to the fact that to the settlers, land meant wealth. As a European, if you owned any land you were considered a wealthy upper class human being. As a Native, no one owned the land and anyone could benefit from the land.

Additionally, Royal gives clarification for Native Americans’ positive stereotypes. He explains, “ But this is far from modern concepts of ecology. Native Americans in fact overhunted deer and beaver even before the arrival of the white man, and did not seriously try to preserve the resources in the vicinity of their villages. As a result, the typical woodland village, having exhausted local soil and game, had to move on average every eight to 10 years” (Royal 47). Although the Native Americans did not destroy the environment like Europeans on such a large scale, they are not trying to protect the environment either. This opposes the stereotypes that Native Americans are model ecologists. Royal also examines the inhumane sides of Native American tribes. Royal reveals, “The

The migration of European settlers and culture to North America is an often examined area. One aspect of this, however, is worthy of deeper analysis. The conquest of North America by Europeans and American settlers from the 16th to 19th centuries had a profound effect on the indigenous political landscape by defining a new relationship dynamic between natives and settlers, by upsetting existing native political, economic and military structures, and by establishing a paradigm where the indigenous peoples felt they had to resist the European and American incursions. The engaging and brilliant works of Andres Rensendez and Steve Inskeep, entitled respectively “A Land So Strange” and “Jacksonland”, provide excellent insights and aide to this analysis.

The economic and cultural influences of the 19th century Hudson Bay Company had a significant impact on the diet and food practices of the Northern First Nations Peoples, which impact created a dependency on the government. From this dependency Northern Canada emerged as a welfare state. Prior to European contact, the First Nations exercised regular hunting and gathering practices, relying on game animals as a key meat source. These Peoples, such as the Barren Ground caribou hunters and the Ojibwa fishing villagers, were considered affluent as they had stable food resources which supplied a surplus to their needs (Coates 1989). Resource management strategies, such as hunting multiple species, had been established and were practiced by the hunters to avoid food shortages or scarcities (Coates 1989). Most tribes which based their food supply on a primary large animal – such as the barren ground caribou – would also hunt secondary prey sources, like the beaver (Coates 1989). However, modifications were made to these management strategies as the First Nations responded to the demands created by the open market of the 19th century Hudson Bay Company. The Peoples developed as commercial

They used what is known as a diffused substinance pattern. By this we mean that by using resources available to them lightly as opposed to intensely using the same resources, they were conserving for the future. These tribes would spiritualize nature. In this culture everything was significant. They held reverence for the environment and a strong kinship with nature. Often these people observed respectful guidelines to avoid spiritual retaliation. For instance, the bones of the beaver would be returned to the river where it had been trapped. This was believed to keep the beavers there plentiful.

The colonisation of North America by the Europeans became one of the most crucial points for the native North Americans. The differing experiences of contact between both cultures had overwhelmingly disastrous impacts on the normal way of life. From such contact arose the issue of land disputes, in turn resulting in massacres and frontier wars which could have otherwise been unnecessary. The factors stated above provide a suitable stimulus for a discussion in regards to the varying encounters of the Indigenous North Americans.

The reading, “We Must Farm to Enable us to Live” explores the many hardships the Plains Cree encountered with agriculture on the reserves, in which they were forced to live on. One of the first misconceptions the reading looks at is how “Nineteenth century European observers tended to see the Great Plains as a timeless land, as a place without history, its

American history frequently centers on the issues of ethnic diversity and resource allocation. In the contemporary, we begin to see the experiences of the Native inhabitants of the Americas in contrast to European settlers and colonizers, is a prime example of this process in motion. When European settlers first arrived to the New World in the 15th century, firstly the Spanish, they brought with them a material cultural based upon an economic standard of resource exploitation, which in a sense was hostile to most of the Native peoples of the Americas. For instance, as Blackhawk notes that, Europeans built permanent settlements consisting of immovable structures, whereas many of the Great Basin peoples were semi-migratory in nature. Additionally, as Europeans claimed possession over the land, its resources, and began a process of territorial delimitation, Native peoples whose lives

During the end of the nineteenth century, the United States had formed policies which reduced land allotted to Native Americans. By enforcing these laws as well as Anglo-American ideals, the United States compromised indigenous people’s culture and ability to thrive in its society.

The people of the Laguna Pueblo reservation had a respect for the land they lived on. Exhibiting the beliefs of most Native American tribes, they always hunted in certain places and knew the balance of the earth. When other people, the “white people” (page 172), started to overtake the land, they knew they would not be able to stop them from demolishing both the land and the animals that lived there. This shows the evolution of the Native American culture and life as other settlers with differing beliefs found the lands.

The historical literature of First Nations and Peoples’, within North America, have shown inaccuracies and a lack of certain components. This being said, the contents of written history often reflect the points of view of those who have written it; the majority of the historical records composed appear to be homogenized, and

In Jeannette Armstrong’s poem, History Lesson, she writes in perspective of Indigenous people reacting to the first encounters with European settlers. Historically, Indigenous people did not have a positive encounter with the first settlers due to their clash of beliefs and values of how communities and structures should run. Instead, they had many disagreements which caused the partial destruction of their whole culture. It is clear that Armstrong uses the theme of history to portray the destruction that the first European settlers had on the Indigenous way of life through various points in history. Armstrong imbeds the theme of history throughout her poem to further emphasize her stance on the assimilation of the Indigenous people with the restricting and destructive effects the early settlers had on them throughout history.

After the white people came, they made laws and regulations that restricted some of the daily practices the Ojibwe put value in. Broker explains the effects of one these regulations that focused on manonim, a wild rice considered precious to the Ojibwe. “These laws set the time for taking the rice, disregarding the wisdom of the ricing leaders who could truly say when the rice was ready. To the Ojibway, the new system was a desecration, for the first rice to ripen was to be offered to the Gitchi Manito and be carried on the wind. For a time the Ojibway had to buy licences and so pay for what had always been a part of their life” (Broker, 118).