Director's Commentary

Director’s Commentary
Video #1: Anthropogenic Nature-Noble Savage and Primitive Land Ethic
Kathryn Prociv, Mike Maguigan, James Schempp

Assigned Problem
The purpose of our movie was to address the debate of the “noble savage.” This debate is simple: were Native Americans really as sustainable and environmentally friendly as we believe? Throughout history, stories and movies illustrate a romanticized view of the Native Americans. They are portrayed as being one with Mother Earth, practicing sustainable land management, and leaving small ecological footprints. However, with surmounting archaeological evidence we find out Native Americans actually were not so loving and respectful of nature, but instead exploitative and opportunistic when it came to resources and land management. You can find more information on this topic in Dr. Hull’s book, Infinite Nature, pages 10-16.

Rationale
The basic sequence of our movie goes as follows: introduction, which addresses the popular romanticized myth that Native Americans were sustainable and nature-friendly; filmed footage, which involves Chief Seattle’s public service announcement, nature walk that resulted in an accidental forest fire, and his sad walk toward the polluted pond; conclusion, which sums up our position where we conclude that Native Americans actually were very exploitative and unsustainable.
We sequenced our movie like this in order to make our point as strong as possible. The introduction, filled with images of pristine nature and accompanied by a brilliant Australian voice-over, is meant only to initiate the debate of whether or not Native Americans were sustainable, or unsustainable but illustrate the romanticized view as addressed above.
The scene with Chief Seattle and his announcement is meant to exhibit the false pretenses, lies, façade that Native Americans loved nature. We had him mess up purposely, as if he didn’t know or care what he was saying, and to illustrate how many of these stories were a fabrication of Hollywood; hence the “and cut” and entrance of the “production manager.” Also, if you listen closely we tell you exactly what some of the exploitative activities were including driving entire herds of buffalo off cliffs, killing too many animals than actually needed, and clearing forests for personal gain. Speaking of clearing forests, when Chief Seattle flicks his cigar and consequently creates a blazing forest fire, his nonchalant response shows how easily they cleared entire forests with no regard to the forest habitat.
Next, we do a parody on the “Crying Indian” public service announcement in which a Native American sheds a tear after witnessing pollution everywhere. In our movie, you watch as Chief Seattle approaches a polluted pond looking very sad and upset. However, when asked if he’s crying because of the pollution, he exclaims he just has allergies! Not what you were expecting was it?
Finally, our conclusion with the return of our brilliant Australian narrator is used to sum up our point. Instead of solely scenes of pristine nature like in the introduction, this had images of environmental degradation, animal death, and urban development to illustrate our point that Native Americans degraded the land, bled locations dry of resources, and were exploitative.

Compare/Contrast to class discussions and book
Contrast: The book mentions that perhaps the Native Americans were unable to see the relationships between their actions and consequences of their actions on the environment. Therefore, if they didn’t realize that they were hurting the environment, how could they stop?
In our movie, we imply that Chief Seattle knew exactly what he did after he burned the forest when he states “wow, that really got out of hand,” “oh well, we got rid of pests and now I will be able to see my enemies,” and “there are plenty of other forests.”

Compare: In the book, whole villages would have to move to a new location after completely depleting the resources of another.
Movie suggests this very point when the production manager asks Chief Seattle what they should do since they depleted all of the resources at a given location. He answers with, “move everyone out and we will go settle around my vacation home on Easter Island.” Clearly, moving to a new location was an easy solution.

Compare: The book suggests that the Native Americans overhunted animals to extinction, and were very wasteful in that they killed more than they needed, and allowed the leftovers to rot.
Chief Seattle alludes to this directly. When asked what to do with the extra buffalo he says to take only what was needed, and drive the rest off the cliffs or burn the extras.

Compare: In the chapter, there is a very specific section on the civilization of Easter Island and how the pristine, resource rich land eventually became a barren wasteland due to resource exploitation. This civilization, it is believed, perished as a direct result to environmental mismanagement.
When Chief Seattle suggests that the tribe can move to Easter Island for its next location, he alludes that Easter Island is still plentiful in terms of resources. However, as evidenced by his track record with land practices, perhaps this portends the eventual fate of Easter Island as suggested in the book.

Contrast: According to both the book and George Bird Grinnell’s “What We May Learn from an Indian,” modern farmers and settlers should have important lessons to learn about land management and farming philosophy from Native Americans.
The entire purpose of our video was to argue that Native Americans were unsustainable, wasteful, and exploitative. Therefore, from our point of view modern persons should have absolutely no lessons to learn from Native Americans because as far our movie suggests, they did nothing but degrade the environment.

References

Major Problems in the History of American Technology, Kupperman, Malone, White (1998)
https://www.msu.edu/~colem104/paper3.htm

This essay briefly discusses the wasteful management of the land by the Native Americans. It mentions how they used forest fires to ease hunting and open up land for animals that could not live in dense forests as well as getting rid of pests. These pests were mostly reptiles. It goes on to talk about their over-hunting of deer. They would hunt young, old, and pregnant deer in any give season.

Native Americans of North America, Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2009
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761570777_30/Native_Americans_of_North_America.html

In the hunting section of this article on page 30, the author uses the term “Paleo-indian” to describe the oldest Native Americans that roamed North America. This article discusses the hunting of the large mammals such as the mastodon, woolly mammoth, and the saber tooth tiger. It mentions that shortly after the end of the ice age these large mammals went extinct, possibly due to over-hunting, and were replaced by smaller mammals. It also mentions the wasteful method of running the animals over cliffs.

The American West, AmercianWest.com (2008)
http://www.americanwest.com/pages/indians.htm

This article states that before European settlers and explorers came over to North America, the estimated Native American population above what we now recognize as Mexico was ten million people. It goes on to discuss that these Natives did not recently move there, but rather anthropologists believe that they were there around twenty to thirty thousand years ago.


“Not-so-noble savages raped environment, says author” by Mark Rowe www.independent.co.uk/news/notsonoble/savages/raped/environment/author/1096875.html

This article provided a great deal of information on one specific author’s perspective of the “noble-savage myth”, and the response of environmentalists and the academic community. The author, Robert Whelan, is the assistant director of the health and welfare unit of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a “right-wing think-tank”. Whelan argues that Native American tribes, contrary to the myths surrounding them, were merely people without especially wonderful or destructive environmental practices, they simply took what they needed similar to European culture. He contends that local populations destroyed native game populations and fundamentally altered the environment, even asserting that deforestation of the Americas was greater before Columbus arrived than immediately afterward. Environmentalists rebutted and rejected his claims, citing the value of Native American land ethics as far beyond modern day standards. In addition, the world wildlife fund has described his study as “completely unfair”, stating that in modern times a third of the natural world has been eliminated in 25 years. He provides strong arguments, but also faces equally strong counter-arguments, and both are backed by considerable evidence.

“The Ecologically Noble Savage Debate” by Raymond Hames
http://www.unl.edu/rhames/ms/savage-prepub.pdf

This particular reference provides a helpful overview of how the entire debate originated and has progressed, offering both the viewpoints of those who argue for and against the “myth” of the noble savage. Mr. Hames outlines how the debate is comprised of two different types of studies, the “first addresses the issue of conservation among native peoples and narrowly focuses on case studies of resource use of ethnographic, archaeological, or historic sources. The second thread is broader and more humanistic and political in orientation and considers the concept of ecological nobility in terms of identity, ecological knowledge, ideology, and the deployment of ecological nobility as a political tool by native peoples and conservation groups”. In whole he gives a balanced view of arguments, how they have evolved and progressed, and where they will likely proceed in the future

Prelinger Archives
http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger

Fantastic resource! This is where we got our forest fire video, and all our music clips from.

Stock Images
http://www.sxc.hu/

This resource contained thousands of images, copyright free, and available for use. We were able to grab multiple pictures from here to incorporate our slideshows. Most of our images of nature came from this source.

Pics4Learning
http://pics.tech4learning.com/

Similar to Stock Images, this resource was great for picture acquisition. These pictures were slightly bigger and clearer than stock images. This resource was good for our images of Native Americans and their civilizations.