Native Resiliency vs. Colonial Optimization
Sustainability is a complex goal, intertwined with different base values, view of scale, and community; but, nonetheless, it is possible, probable, and was actually the way of life for many indigenous people. This case study demonstrates the original sustainability and how colonization and urbanized ideologies ultimately transformed that sustainable way of living. The map shows the transitions of different land quality, environmentally effects, social and culture effects, and the economic values that allowed for much of this change to occur. This is important in our modern setting simply because our values are similar and based from the original colonial ideas. The economic structure and values of capitalism is still very prominent in the American identity and function, where the social norm of consumerism and ownership is still heavily focused.
Before colonization, there was indeed a sustainable society that worked and shared the space in which they lived with the nature. The native community utilized the local adaptive cycles to keep it balanced even with their presences. With adaption themselves to the environment, Native people survived for thousands of years.
To understand the best way to create a sustainable society, we must look at the social and economic understanding of the past, showing us the characteristics of a society that makes an unsustainable function vs. a sustainable one. We start with the example of North American Colonization.
In this map, we discuss the natural adaptive cycle and its changes through the colonial process. An adaptive cycle is a representation of nature resiliency, or how well and fast a system can respond to change. During the colonial era, this natural cycle that the Native American people were working with got disrupted by the colonists, simply by their desire for optimization. Optimization is the opposite of resiliency; instead of keeping the ecosystem in a balance, it is the action to use the resources to the maximum for personal benefit.
Adaptive Cycle Natural
The interplay discusses the relationship between the individual players of the adaptive cycle. The fit describes those social institutions size to the scale, meaning that one institution may be to large, throwing the local cycle off.
The perspective of analysis used to create the transition map consisted of the two very different sides demonstrated to have clashed at the time of colonization. The perspective of the Native American portrays the detriments of the colonization process, simply more than ecological disaster, but the uprooting of way of life. It included the transition from values of the Earth, nature, and community to those of the colonizers. The true different set of understandings and perspectives combine to ultimately create the issue of modern sustainability. The diversity of each view work to see how resilience can balance optimization, especially in such a growing urban society as America is today. The Native sustainability and perspective works as a base for industrial users to keep their growth with out ecological problems that will hurt them economically. In this diverse era of thought, the differences in value and solution may be difficult in the beginning, but may too provide a clever way to move both resilience and optimization to a positive future.
*
Blackhawk, Ned. Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983. Print.
Harris, Ian and Micheal Mainelli. The Price of Fish; A New Approach to Wicked Economics and Better Decisions. Boston, MA: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2011. Print.
Howarth, Richard, eds. Humans in the landscape: An Introduction to Environmental Studies. New York: Norton, 2011.
Salt, David and Brain Walker. Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006. Print.