“Where Man …Does Not Remain”: Native Americans and the Euro-American View of Wilderness

“Where Man …Does Not Remain”: Native Americans and the Euro-American

View of Wilderness

Craig W. Allin

Humanities & Arts Interest Group

Cornell College

March 18, 2004

A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. An area of underdeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, . . . with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable. . . . [§2c]

The Wilderness Act (1964): Definition of Wilderness

“Where Man …Does Not Remain”: Native Americans and the Euro-American

View of Wilderness

Craig W. Allin

Humanities & Arts Interest Group

Cornell College

March 18, 2004

For more than two centuries European Americans have made an imagined wilderness part of their national identity. . . . But from the start there was a problem. What has been called wilderness is some of the oldest inhabited land in North America. . . .

—Elliott West (1997)

“Where Man …Does Not Remain”: Native Americans and the Euro-American

View of Wilderness

Craig W. Allin

Humanities & Arts Interest Group

Cornell College

March 18, 2004

Euro-American Perceptions of Native Americans & Wilderness:

Three Eras

Romantic InclusionHomestead Act & Pacific Railway Act (1862)

Hostile Exclusion Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (1971)

Awkward Accommodation

Romantic Inclusion

Wilderness inhabited by wild animals and by wild – “primitive” or “uncivilized” or “savage” – men.

Wilderness bad!

George Catlin & Henry David Thoreau

O beautiful for pilgrim feetWhose stern, impassioned stressA thoroughfare for freedom beatAcross the wilderness!

— Katherine Lee Bates

“Buffalo Chase with Bows and Lances”George Catlin (c.1832)

“Big Bend on the Upper Missouri, 1900 Miles above St. Louis” George Catlin (1832)

“River Bluffs, 1320 Miles above St. Louis”George Catlin (1832)

“Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” Thomas Moran (1872)

Hostile Exclusion

Cultural incompatibility

Manifest Destiny

Homestead Act & Pacific Railway Act (1862)

Indian Reservations

National Parks

Blackfeet Chiefs, c. 1891Source: Philip Burnham, Indian Country, God’s Country, p. 128a.

Remains of Sheepeater Wickiups, Yellowstone[NPS Photo]

United States Supreme Court (1899)Source: Vassar College

Source: Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness, p. 59.

Evolution in Yellowstone

Source: Yellowstone.net

[NPS Photo]

Wild Goose Island, Glacier National ParkBob Feinberg Photo, America’s Parks Online

Grinnell Lake, Glacier National Park[Craig Allin Photo]

“Glacier Park Indians” hired by the Great Northern Railroad to decorate its East Glacier Lodge

Source: Robert Keller & Michael Turek: American Indians & National Parks, p. 58.

Blackfeet telephone operator at the Great Northern Railroad’s Many Glacier Hotel in Glacier National Park (1925)

Source: Philip Burnham, Indian Country, God’s Country, p. 128c.

Blackfeet in Glacier National Park, 1915[NPS Photo]

A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean . . . an area of underdeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable. . . . -- § 2 (c)

The Wilderness Act (1964): Definition of Wilderness

Awkward Accommodation

Rediscovering Indianson

“the last frontier”

[Photo by Craig Allin][www.asuaf.org/~cush6994/]

Awkward Accommodation

Alaska Statehood Act (1959)

104 million acres to the state

Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (1971)

Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (1980)

Nixon signs Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act extinguishing aboriginal rights and providing 40 million acres and $1 billion in

compensation to Alaska Native villages & corporations.Source: Channel 6 Television Denmark, Native Experience.

Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act

(1980)

New Units Acreage

National Parks 44 million

National Wildlife Refuges

55 million

Wilderness Areas 56 million

Unprecedented subsistence rights

Source: NPS

Village of Anaktuvuk Pass, Gates of the Arctic National Park

[NPS Photo]

[Photo by Arun J. Jain]

Denali National Park[Paw Print Photography]

Sport Hunting Is Big Business in Alaska

[“Best” Hunt Company Photo] [Chikatna Guide Service Photo]

Subsistence Rights established in ANILCA

effectively guarantee motor vehicle use in Alaska

wilderness areas.[NPS Photo]

Native Americans & Wilderness Preservation Today

Timbisha Indian Reservation proposed within Death Valley National Park.Oglala Sioux claim parts of Badlands National Park Wilderness.Havasupai traditional use area excluded from Grand Canyon National Park Wilderness.Acoma Pueblo residents allowed motorized access to wilderness areas in El Malpais National Monument. Tohono O'odham of Arizona seek legal control over the Baboquivari Peak Wilderness Area.

Native Americans & Wilderness Preservation Today

Nez Perce management of wolf recovery in Idaho wilderness areas.Salish and Kootenai management of Flathead Reservation to protect grizzly bears. Intertribal Sinkyone Wilderness Park in California.

Historical Progression

Inclusion: Native Americans inhabitants are essential to the concept of Wilderness.

Exclusion: Absence of all inhabitants including Native Americans is essential to the concept of Wilderness.

Accommodation: The relationship between Native Americans and Wilderness Preservation is becoming less well defined.

Past, Present & FutureHistorically, Wilderness Preservation has often been accomplished at the expense of Native Americans interests.

More recently, recognition of Native American interests has often been accomplished at the expense of Wilderness Preservation.

In the future Wilderness Preservation my be the ally or the enemy of Native American interests, but wilderness is a good thing to have around.

“Valley of the Yosemite” Albert Bierstadt (1864)