| 16 March, 2004 In the early 1600s, pilgrims sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in search of religious freedom. They colonized on the East coast, bibles in hand, and began to spread the word of God. In the Old Testament of the Bible, Genesis 1:22 says God created humans, then “God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on earth.” The Bible was used to justify the broadly interpreted “manifest destiny,” which validated the conquest of any foreign land and its people, including Native Americans. Not only has this belief led to the gradual destruction of the earth’s resources, but also to the destruction of native cultures. Believing that the natives were savage, the new Americans were determined to Christianize or Catholicize the so-called savages. In doing so, the new Americans encroached upon the natives and dismantled the foundations of their culture. Many of these indigenous cultures that were being assimilated believed in the vital role that humans played in the ecosystem. They saw all organisms as a part of a larger whole. They believed that by hurting any part of the larger whole, they were hurting themselves. One of the hundreds of groups of Native Americans, the Pueblo natives of New Mexico, lived simple lives in harmony with the earth. According to Rina Swentzell, a member of the tribe, the Pueblo people believed that the most important relationship for humans is “with the land, the natural environment, and the cosmos, which in the Pueblo world are synonymous” (Swentzell 450). The architecture of the Pueblo people emphasized the importance of this bond between humans and nature. Construction methods and materials for the buildings were uncomplicated. The most direct methods were combined with the most accessible materials. In this way, the Pueblo people wasted nothing. Everything that they used came from the earth, and eventually went back into the earth. Buildings were organic entities just as any creature. The structures were born, and eventually they decayed. All of their buildings emulated the earth because they believed that aesthetics and the universe were indistinguishable. Communal participation among the Pueblo people was another cultural practice that manifested itself through their use of space. This custom was evident in their buildings, which were constructed by people in the community. Everybody in the village, including the elders and children, helped construct and decorate the straightforward, earthy buildings. Their homes comprised of complexes of interconnected rooms and homes (Pueblo Indian History Online). Nobody had much private space, for their concept of privacy was much more internal than external. Privacy of mind and thought was satisfactory because they didn’t need to hide the body and its natural functions from each other. Sharing was essential to the people, who shared both outdoor and indoor spaces. This communal style of living demonstrates the belief that the earth cannot be owned; it is intended for everybody to share. Western culture embraces the opposite belief. The nature of the capitalist system that America was founded on is self-centric. We Americans were taught to believe that land is not free, but it is marketed and purchased for personal gain. In the early years of the United States, Native American affairs were governed in a way that revealed our self-serving ways. The natives didn’t claim to own the land, so we declared it ours for the taking. In order to accomplish this conquest, the Committee on Indian Affairs was established in 1775 to cope with Native Americans as efficiently as possible. The committee, for the most part, accomplished their long term goal, to assimilate the natives into the new American culture through several means. One of the methods used was to send native children to boarding schools. By educating the children, the committee could distance them from their cultural heritage. There is no better way to indoctrinate a culture with foreign beliefs than to teach its children from a young age. The children were taken away in busses to attend boarding schools, given new names and uniforms, and were forbidden to speak their native languages. This concrete, wooden and glass environment was completely alien to the children. One of the most foreign ideas that the children were forced to accept was the complete domination of the environment. . The boarding schools themselves demonstrated the domination of the environment that the Bible had commanded. The paved playgrounds prevented the children from playing in the dirt, from interacting with the earth. Barbed wire fences constructed around the property kept civilians and animals out. The buildings conveyed a message that the community was not to be trusted, and that there was a need for protection and privacy. The structures demonstrated the separation of the children from the villagers and other outsiders. Separation was a recurring theme at the boarding schools. For example, the buildings at the schools were separated and given specific functions. Teachers divided the students from each other to categorize their abilities. The hierarchy of grade levels, which coincided with the physical floor levels of the building, symbolized a continuous striving for something bigger and better. Here the native children would learn that Americans are never satisfied with the moment because, as the phrase goes, the grass is always greener on the other side.This separatism in all aspects of the schoolprepared the students for American society; they would learn to live in separate homes, have separate functions (jobs) in society, and most importantly, live in total separation from the environment. And separatism only reinforced the American ideals of expansion by teaching them to be dissatisfied with the present. A fundamental difference between many Native Americans and modern Americans is how we view the present. Most natives took joy in the present. They also took joy in their work. Separation of work and play would have been unnatural. In Perspectives on the North American Indians, A Hopi chief recounts the education he received as a child: “Learning to work was like play. We children tagged around with our elders and copied what they did. We followed our fathers to the fields and helped plant and weed. The old men took us for walks and taught us the uses of plants, and how to collect them. We joined in gathering rabbitweed for baskets, and went with them to dig clay for pots. We would taste this clay as the women did to test it” (Nagler 89). Today it seems that most Americans despise their places of work. The main purpose of their job is to pay the bills. Aren’t we all looking forward to the day when we will retire with lots of money? Most Americans tend to look to the future for happiness, and they tend be discontented with the moment. In the relentless pursuit for happiness, we have been fooled into thinking that money will bring us joy. The goal of our existence today has been summed up in the phrase, “whoever dies with the most toys wins.” We must realize that happiness will not be found in the future if we cannot find it in the present. When we are unhappy with the moment, we will always be looking for something to make us content. In America, we are trained to spend and consume to fill the hole of dissatisfaction with the moment. The earth cannot sustain our bad habit of over-consumption forever.Native Americans knew that sustainability was of key importance. Their desires were usually limited to those that fulfilled the requirements for survival. In contrast, our lives are much more complex, as is our happiness much more conditional. A lesson that can be learned from Native American simplicity is this: when one reduces the desires for material wealth and possessions, one also diminishes the unhappiness caused by the inability to fulfill the desires. Not only is endless consumption preventing us from finding true contentment, but it is also depleting the earth’s natural resources faster than ever before. However, it wasn’t always this way. America’s addiction to expansion began with the early explorers of the Wild West. When settlers of the frontier began to move west, spectators’ eyes lit up with aspiration. The frontier was a land full of opportunity for those who were willing to take the risk. Spectators often gambled large sums of money to construct small towns in dry, vacant lands. If one were lucky, a railroad would be built in his town, which would bring many travelers (and their spending money) from far away. If the spectator wasn’t so lucky, the town would be abandoned. But that didn’t really matter. There always seemed to be a second chance in this land, where “growth was destiny and where expansion and purpose were the same” (Shames 57). Opportunity seemed to be endlessly fertile; the frontier was limitless. Thus, cities and towns continued to blossom throughout the western United States, eventually resulting in the gradual transformation of the rural life to the urban life. In 1990, 75% percent of Americans lived in urban cities (US Census Online). Americans shifted from a position of living with nature to living completely disconnected from nature in cities and suburbs. Today, our cities and suburbs, our houses, and even our cars are a reflection of the American fascination with expansion and the frontier. Take the SUV, for example. The names of SUVs such as Ford Explorer, Isuzu Rodeo, Ford Bronco, and Jeep Wrangler are all directly evocative of Wild West folklore. In the 1980’s, when the SUV craze first began, the national productivity rate was shriveling while the national debt was mounting. People were finally beginning to realize the limits of the economic frontier. According to David Goewey, the explosion of SUV sales may represent a “reassertion of a courageous American defiance in response to threatened frontiers” (Goewey 115). The SUV embodies the ideals of careless expansion; these gas guzzlers were carelessly designed without the environment in mind. Most of the SUVs on the market today can only drive for 12 miles per gallon in the city. Many SUVs like the enormous Ford Excursion are so large that they are not subject to any kind of fuel economy standards at all. The statistics show that global warming caused by car emissions is an ignored problem; one in every four cars bought today is an SUV (SUV.org Online). The SUV embodies an escapist fantasy, allowing us to overcome time and space in an encapsulated vehicle that shelters us from the natural world. America’s love affair with SUVs demonstrates the furthering gap between humans and the environment. Our isolated homes, cars and cities contain us in a contrived world where we are disconnected from the source of all life, the natural world. As we’ve seen, the way that we construct and live in our spaces demonstrates this fact. We are deceived by the illusion that we are independent from the source. This disconnection from the environment is causing us to overestimate the earth’s ability to sustain our lifestyle of endless consumption. By learning about the sustainable ways of the Native Americans, we can develop a better understanding about the relationship between humans and the earth. I don’t claim to have an answer to the global eco-crisis, but we’ve got to start somewhere. However impossible the task of reducing our consumption may sound, minimizing our destruction of the environment will not require us to fully abandon the social constructs that we have so firmly established for ourselves. There are so many places to begin, such as reducing our dependence on resources like fossil fuels, plastic, and wood. Today we are presented with a choice. We can continue to deny the fact that we are using up and polluting all of our resources, or we can take initiative and begin changing our lives to live with the earth, not against it. Sources Cited Goewey, David. “Careful, You May Run Out of Planet.” Signs of Life in the USA . Ed. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003. Nagler, Mark. Perspectives on the North American Indians. Montreal: Carleton University Press, Shames, Lawrence. “The More Factor.” Signs of Life in the USA . Ed. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003. SUV.org. “SUV Environmental Concerns.” <http://www.suv.org/environ.html> Swentzell, Rina. “Conflicting Landscape Values: The Santa Clara Pueblo and Day School.” Signs of Life in the USA . Ed. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003. The Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers. US Census. “Population: 1790 to 1990.” <http://www.census.gov/population/censusdata/table-4.pdf> |