I reviewed Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Global Conservation and Native Peoples, by Mark Dowie. This book is about the surprising upside-down effect of the conservation movement, especially in establishing the National Park Service.  Without understanding how active Native Peoples were in managing ecosystems to increase their vitality and health, they were systematically removed. Conservative efforts with the National Park Service and Wilderness Preservation act. The misunderstanding of the role of Native Peoples in ecosystem health is made clear by an interview that I have on Sept 1, 2010 with tribal elders in the Cowachin Valley on Vancouver Island, BC. This was after interviewing an historian and writer in the same region.

He was very knowledgeable, particularly about the European settlers and their effect on the Native People region. He lamented the devastating affect that settler patterns had on Native cultures and economies, not to mention important traditions and trading practices. Laws had forbidden tribes speaking their language; participating in rituals they have followed for generations and ways of gathering and hunting food. The historian has written about this impact extensively as a way to educate modern inhabitants of the history of robbing tribes of their own history. He was a very sympathetic writer.

I asked him to talk about the first known arrival of Europeans into the region. The story of the 1863 arrival is well documented.  The historian gave the often told version of how, when the European Hudson Bay Company, they found the Native villages empty. The assumption was they had fled to avoid the potential conflict. The Europeans took over the established Native village while they established their own communities. It was many months before contact was made and with careful feeling one another out, contact was established.

This story left me and my colleague wondering why the Natives had abandoned their village in the face of the arrival. Where they especially peaceful as a people? Not the historian had told us how warrior engagement between tribes, before and after that time, was frequent. They defended territory and took people and resources from other tribes. Where they afraid of exposure to disease? It was clear that they tribes had had earlier exposure to Russians and Japanese bringing small pox with them.

Scars were evident even to early Settlers.

Then we met with Dr. Luschiim Arvid Charlie, a tribal elder, who gave me permission to tell his stories. One of those stories was the one the European landing. We were startled when Luschiim told us that they “abandoned village” was not true. He reminded us hat they were first a nomad people and they particularly took responsible for healthy land and waters. To achieve that is was important to allow is to rest. Completely! They have moved to different grounds for a few years to support the land regenerating itself. They were not running. They were working their understanding of how you play your role in nature’s health. They also moved seedlings to create protective barriers, created control burns of forests that coupled their ability to seeing seasons and cycles with what gave the forest capacity to make itself healthy.

What a difference paradigms make. How we see and understanding the world is dependent on the worldview we already have in our head. And that conflicted view has continued for over two generations.