With Native American Expertise Comes Heightened Enjoyment, And Preservation, Of The Wilds

American citizens are visiting natural areas in greater numbers than ever before. The NPS lists a total of 234 million recreational visits each year currently, with that number rising with every new vacation season. The natural legacy of the USA is one to be treasured, and no one knows that better than the Native American Nations. There is a clear lineage of reverence and connection with nature in indigenous tradition and folklore, from the time-honored huckleberry pick through to the clear influence of fauna in the grand clothing and accessories worn by each nation. Through their experience can come a heightened enjoyment of the natural areas of America.

Survival skills

Native American tribes were not only linked to the land; they were custodians of it. An in-depth knowledge of their natural environment and how to survive in it was key to the success of early tribes, and this knowledge can come in useful now. Survival skills from knife work through to how to safely light a fire are part and parcel of the native American tradition. As History.com shows, native Americans have always paired together their skills on living off the land with other resources, even when government rations came into place, combining their rations with what they could harvest in creative ways.

Natural preservation

This reverence for the wilderness and its natural resources and beauty is forming a strategy to help re-wild areas destroyed by human exploitation. Yale Environment 360 noted how returning lands to indigenous American Nation control has led to a huge charge towards conservation. These tribes, who have more in common with the land and more knowledge than could be gathered in multiple centuries by colonist inheritors, have helped to heal the land and return it to its origins. Among other things, this has seen the natural range of bison rapidly extend past the 1899 lows following mass bison hunting. This provides an opportunity for explorers and vacationers to see American lands how they were originally meant to be experienced.

Fire prevention

Just as indigenous tools are returning land to how it used to exist, they are helping to fight the good fight against the destruction of habitats in the future. A study published by Nature highlighted how frequent, small burning of vegetation in lands managed by native American tribes helped to prevent larger-scale wildfires. As wildfires start to engulf much of the west coast on a seasonal basis, this will become a tool of perhaps critical importance. Preventing and mitigating these wildfires will preserve natural environments and, even, homes. The oldest methods, created with ingenuity and without technology, are often the most transformative.

In this way, indigenous Americans are custodians of the environments held most sacred by American citizens. The expertise tribes built over their long histories can form the basis of a modern preservation and survival strategy for wild areas. This will preserve these environments longer than they could be in the current state.

By. Kylee Carter