#then tore it all down for their picture perfect square crops and wondered why the land was no longer giving the way it used to
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felsartdump · 4 months ago
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"There are ways for us to be in balance with nature, and that our environmentalism should respect that and push for sustainability over preserving “pristine” human-less landscapes."
You know what the most frustrating thing about the vegans throwing a fit over my “Humans aren’t Parasites” post is?  I really wasn’t trying to make a point about animal agriculture. Honestly, the example about subsistence hunting isn’t the main point. That post was actually inspired by thoughts I’ve been having about the National Park system and environmentalist groups.
See, I LOVE the National Parks. I always have a pass. I got to multiple parks a year. I LOVE them, and always viewed them as this unambiguously GOOD thing. Like, the best thing America has done. 
BUT, I just finished reading this book called “I am the Grand Canyon” all about the native Havasupai people and their fight to gain back their rights to the lands above the canyon rim. Historically, they spent the summer months farming in the canyon, and then the winter months hunter-gathering up above the rim. When their reservation was made though, they lost basically all rights to the rim land (They had limited grazing rights to some of it, but it was renewed year to year and always threatened, and it was a whole thing), leading to a century long fight to get it back. 
And in that book there are a couple of really poignant anecdotes- one man talks about how park rangers would come harass them if they tried to collect pinon nuts too close to park land- worried that they would take too many pinon nuts that the squirrels wanted. Despite the fact that the Havasupai had harvested pinon nuts for thousands and thousands of years without ever…like…starving the squirrels. 
There’s another anecdote of them seeing the park rangers hauling away the bodies of dozens of deer- killed in the park because of overpopulation- while the Havasupai had been banned from hunting. (Making them more and more reliant on government aid just to survive the winter months.) 
They talk about how they would traditionally carve out these natural cisterns above the rim to catch rainwater, and how all the animals benefitted from this, but it was difficult to maintain those cisterns when their “ownership” of the land was so disputed. 
So here you have examples of when people are forcibly separated from their ecosystem and how it hurts both those people and the ecosystem. 
And then when the Havasupai finally got legislation before Congress to give them ownership of the rim land back- their biggest opponent was the Parks system and the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club (a big conservation group here in the US) ran a huge smear campaign against these people on the belief that any humans owning this land other than the park system (which aims at conservation, even while developing for recreation) was unacceptable. 
And it all got me thinking about how, as much as I love the National Parks, there are times when its insistence that nature be left “untouched” (except, ya know, for recreation) can actually harm both the native people who have traditionally been part of those ecosystems AND potentially the ecosystems themselves. And I just think there’s a lot of nuance there about recognizing that there are ways for us to be in balance with nature, and that our environmentalism should respect that and push for sustainability over preserving “pristine” human-less landscapes. Removing ourselves from nature isn’t the answer. 
But apparently the idea that subsistence hunting might actually not be a moral catastrophe really set the vegans off.  Woopie. 
#the amount of times i have to explain to ppl#especially those folks who get all uppity about there being 'kids' or 'teens' literally just existing in the world#like no#dont fall for the idea that for a place to be 'pristine' it has to be devoid of humans or life#you think you can visit a flower garden and get mad there are bugs there?#who do you think helped pollinate the flowers?#your suburban paradise that involves buildings that people made for your comfort but no people there to inhabit them is a capitalist trap#and the idea that people are inherently bad for the ecosystem by simply existing in it#is rooted in white supremacy and far right extremist ideals that people are somehow bad simply by being born#if you're hearing your neighbours laughing and enjoying the outdoors thats human thats right thats good that community#when white colonists came to the americas and saw all the ways the Indigenous had nurtured the land and its animals#they legit thought they stumbled into paradise and disregarded that people could legit just DO THAT#then tore it all down for their picture perfect square crops and wondered why the land was no longer giving the way it used to#they tried to overharvest rice ffs and told the Indigenous that they were 'wasting the crop' by not getting every single grain of rice#and ignored the explanation and importance of leaving some of said plant or harvest for the land and surrounding wildlife#like this is an old old argument that a lot of aggressive vegans use because i think ultimately at their core they're trying to help but#just like far right shit its so easy to find yourself trapped in the ideology that#in order to do something right you have to have something AGAINST#like you can be vegan without feeling like its you vs the world#or that the rest of the world is wrong#but it's a nuance that#like OP said#is usually completely lost#anyways thanks for coming to my ted talk
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