Self Preservation

Having lamented the absence of a detailed account of the evictions executed in the formation of America's National Parks (see post here), I now discover that Mark Dowie's Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Global Conservation and Native Peoples (MIT Press, 2009) offers just such an account. Dowie argues that while the aims of the conservation movement had behind them an in many ways admirable moral imperative, their conflation of the "natural" with a landscape empty of humans resulted in the persecution of native populations. The subsequent displacement of such populations from their homelands, in areas including Yosemite, Yellowstone and Mesa Verde, was so agressively undertaken as to allow them to classify, in contemporary terms, as refugees.

In a recent article, Dowie suggests that a major source of the conflict between conservationists and resident peoples was "conflicting views of nature," along with "radically different definitions of 'wilderness.'" While recent attempts to understand the notion of the "wild" or of "wilderness" (in the work of Jay Griffiths, Richard Mabey and Robert Macfarlane amongst others) may seem to be merely interesting exercises in philosophical history, Dowie's point suggests that a faulty or one-dimensional understanding of these terms can in fact have serious, widespread consequences over a lengthy historical range. His other important observation is that "the very landscapes they [the conservationists] seek to protect owe their high biodiversity to the practices of the people who have lived there, in some cases for thousands of years." Behind this claim is another - that man is himself an intrinsic part of the natural world, and any attitude or philosophical stance that suggests that nature stands outside man, and is available for his contemplation without consequence, is sadly misguided. While the motive behind such contemplative exercises might very well be the understanding of the self, creating emptied landscapes in order to faciliate insight is no preservation of the "natural" at all, and as such can provide limited insight into the human self, which can surely only truly be understood in relation to the natural world, other humans included.

(Image: Miwok-Paiute ceremony, Yosemite Park, 1872)

Verdigris: Greenwash of the Greeks

In a preview of his forthcoming book The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America, Douglas Brinkley states that “over the years, Roosevelt has been denied his environmentalist due.” TR provides something of a challenge to those seeking to redress this balance and trace his “green” convictions, as Brinkley himself admits. Certainly, TR was instrumental in establishing 230 million acres of protected wilderness in the United States, and famously collaborated with John Muir and the Sierra Club in their efforts to preserve wild land. Muir’s wilderness walk with the president in Yosemite (pictured) is a crucial part of the mythology of both men. But TR’s passion for hunting, alongside his approval of both the Roosevelt Dam in Arizona and the Panama Canal project, make his respect for the natural world inconsistent to say the least. We must hope that Brinkley’s book addresses such issues in depth, even at the expense of its own thesis, and that it also considers the fate of resident communities and homesteaders asked to clear the National Parks.

The book, due out in June, rides the crest of a green publishing wave, as well as tapping into America’s fascination with its past presidents. The title’s evocative use of “warrior” and “crusade” buys into TR’s own penchant for patriotic military rhetoric, a hangover from his Cavalry Rough Riders days. It would be pleasing to see a less acquiescent approach within the book itself.

Our environmental heroes are often problematic – our attempts to “green” historical figures, even more so. This is particularly true of those whose great power and responsibility pull their morality in conflicting directions. We might consider the green patina retrospectively applied to these figures to be a kind of verdigris. The latter suggests a venerable age – these figures, we argue, have been green for a long time. The process of making verdigris (literally, the green of the Greeks, that used by Greek artists) is far from natural, however. One such process, dating from the Middle Ages, was to bury treated copper in dung. The shit was scraped off; the green remained. An unstable pigment unless bound in oil, verdigris fades when exposed to light. Perhaps Brinkley might contemplate the instructive example of verdigris on the eve of publication.