Biodiversity and Native America

Biodiversity and Native America PDF Author: Paul E. Minnis
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806133454
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Exploring the relationship between Native Americans and the natural world, Biodiversity and Native America questions the widespread view that indigenous peoples had minimal ecological impact in North America. Introducing a variety of perspectives - ethnopharmacological, ethnographic, archaeological, and biological - this volume shows that Native Americans were active managers of natural ecological systems. The book covers groups from the sophisticated agriculturalists of the Mississippi River drainage region to the low-density hunter-gatherers of arid western North America. This book allows readers to develop accurate restoration, management, and conservation models through a thorough knowledge of native peoples’ ecological history and dynamics. It also illustrates how indigenous peoples affected environmental patterns and processes, improving crop diversity and agricultural patterns.

Biodiversity and Native America

Biodiversity and Native America PDF Author: Paul E. Minnis
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806133454
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book

Book Description
Exploring the relationship between Native Americans and the natural world, Biodiversity and Native America questions the widespread view that indigenous peoples had minimal ecological impact in North America. Introducing a variety of perspectives - ethnopharmacological, ethnographic, archaeological, and biological - this volume shows that Native Americans were active managers of natural ecological systems. The book covers groups from the sophisticated agriculturalists of the Mississippi River drainage region to the low-density hunter-gatherers of arid western North America. This book allows readers to develop accurate restoration, management, and conservation models through a thorough knowledge of native peoples’ ecological history and dynamics. It also illustrates how indigenous peoples affected environmental patterns and processes, improving crop diversity and agricultural patterns.

Enduring Seeds

Enduring Seeds PDF Author: Gary Paul Nabhan
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816522590
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
As biological diversity continues to shrink at an alarming rate, the loss of plant species poses a threat seemingly less visible than the loss of animals but in many ways more critical. In this book, one of America's leading ethnobotanists warns about our loss of natural vegetation and plant diversity while providing insights into traditional Native agricultural practices in the Americas. Gary Paul Nabhan here reveals the rich diversity of plants found in tropical forests and their contribution to modern crops, then tells how this diversity is being lost to agriculture and lumbering. He then relates "local parables" of Native American agriculture—from wild rice in the Great Lakes region to wild gourds in Florida—that convey the urgency of this situation and demonstrate the need for saving the seeds of endangered plants. Nabhan stresses the need for maintaining a wide gene pool, not only for the survival of these species but also for the preservation of genetic strains that can help scientists breed more resilient varieties of other plants. Enduring Seeds is a book that no one concerned with our environment can afford to ignore. It clearly shows us that, as agribusiness increasingly limits the food on our table, a richer harvest can be had by preserving ancient ways. This edition features a new foreword by Miguel Altieri, one of today's leading spokesmen for sustainable agriculture and the preservation of indigenous farming methods.

Neither Wolf Nor Dog

Neither Wolf Nor Dog PDF Author: David Rich Lewis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195362667
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
During the nineteenth century, Americans looked to the eventual civilization and assimilation of Native Americans through a process of removal, reservation, and directed culture change. Policies for directed subsistence change and incorporation had far-reaching social and environmental consequences for native peoples and native lands. This study explores the experiences of three groups--Northern Utes, Hupas, and Tohono O'odhams--with settled reservation and allotted agriculture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each group inhabited a different environment, and their cultural traditions reflected distinct subsistence adaptations to life in the western United States. Each experienced the full weight of federal agrarian policy yet responded differently, in culturally consistent ways, to subsistence change and the resulting social and environmental consequences. Attempts to establish successful agricultural economies ultimately failed as each group reproduced their own cultural values in a diminished and rapidly changing environment. In the end, such policies and agrarian experiences left Indian farmers marginally incorporated and economically dependent.

On Land and Sea

On Land and Sea PDF Author: Lee A. Newsom
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 081731315X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
During the vast stretches of early geologic time, the islands of the Caribbean archipelago separated from continental land masses, rose and sank many times, merged with and broke from other land masses, and then by the mid-Cenozoic period settled into the current pattern known today. By the time Native Americans arrived, the islands had developed complex, stable ecosystems. The actions these first colonists took on the landscape—timber clearing, cultivation, animal hunting and domestication, fishing and exploitation of reef species—affected fragile land and sea biotic communities in both beneficial and harmful ways. On Land and Sea examines the condition of biosystems on Caribbean islands at the time of colonization, human interactions with those systems through time, and the current state of biological resources in the West Indies. Drawing on a massive data set collected from long-term archaeological research, the study reconstructs past lifeways on these small tropical islands. The work presents a wide range of information, including types of fuel and construction timber used by inhabitants, cooking techniques for various shellfish, availability and use of medicinal and ritual plants, the effects on native plants and animals of cultivation and domestication, and diet and nutrition of native populations. The islands of the Caribbean basin continue to be actively excavated and studied in the quest to understand the earliest human inhabitants of the New World. This comprehensive work will ground current and future studies and will be valuable to archaeologists, anthropologists, botanists, ecologists, Caribbeanists, Latin American historians, and anyone studying similar island environments.

Wildlife on the Wind

Wildlife on the Wind PDF Author: Bruce L. Smith
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1457181134
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
In the heart of Wyoming sprawls the ancient homeland of the Eastern Shoshone Indians, who were forced by the U.S. government to share a reservation in the Wind River basin and flanking mountain ranges with their historical enemy, the Northern Arapahos. Both tribes lost their sovereign, wide-ranging ways of life and economic dependence on decimated buffalo. Tribal members subsisted on increasingly depleted numbers of other big game—deer, elk, moose, pronghorn, and bighorn sheep. In 1978, the tribal councils petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to help them recover their wildlife heritage. Bruce Smith became the first wildlife biologist to work on the reservation. Wildlife on the Wind recounts how he helped Native Americans change the course of conservation for some of America's most charismatic wildlife.

The River of Life

The River of Life PDF Author: Michael Marchand
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110275880
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Sustainability defines the need for any society to live within the constraints of the land's capacity to deliver all natural resources the society consumes. This book compares the general differences between Native Americans and western world view towards resources. It will provide the ‘nuts and bolts’ of a sustainability portfolio designed by indigenous peoples. This book introduces the ideas on how to link nature and society to make sustainable choices. To be sustainable, nature and its endowment needs to be linked to human behavior similar to the practices of indigenous peoples. The main goal of this book is to facilitate thinking about how to change behavior and to integrate culture into thinking and decision-processes.

People and Plants in Ancient Eastern North America

People and Plants in Ancient Eastern North America PDF Author: Paul E. Minnis
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816502240
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description


The Buffalo and the Indians

The Buffalo and the Indians PDF Author: Dorothy Hinshaw Patent
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618485703
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description
Countless herds of majestic buffalo once roamed across the plains and prairies of North America. For at least 10,000 years, the native people hunted the buffalo and depended upon its meat and hide for their survival. But to the Indians, the buffalo was also considered sacred. They saw this abundant, powerful animal as another tribe, one that was closely related to them, and they treated it with great respect and admiration. Here, an award-winning nonfiction team traces the history of this relationship, from its beginnings in prehistory to the present. Deftly weaving social history and science, Dorothy Hinshaw Patent discusses how European settlers slaughtered the buffalo almost to extinction, breaking the back of Indian cultures. And she shows how today, as Indians are reviving their cultures, they are also restoring buffalo herds to the land. Featuring William Munoz’s stunning full-color photographs, supplemented with paintings by well-known artists, this book is an inspiring tale of a successful conservation effort. Author’s note, suggestions for further reading, index.

Food Production in Native North America

Food Production in Native North America PDF Author: Kristen J. Gremillion
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 0932839584
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
This book in the SAA Press Current Perspectives Series provides a broad overview of the development of agriculture and other forms of resource management by the Native peoples of North America. Its geographical scope includes most of the continent’s temperate zone, but regions where agriculture took hold are emphasized. Temporally, this volume looks back as far as the first indigenous domesticates that emerged in the midcontinental region and follows the story into the era of European conquest.

Native Americans and the Environment

Native Americans and the Environment PDF Author: Michael Eugene Harkin
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 080320566X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Often cited as one of the most decisive campaigns in military history, the Seven Days Battles were the first campaign in which Robert E. Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia-as well as the first in which Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson worked together.