spatheandspadix:

Academic hills I will die on:

-Land-use history didn’t begin with European colonization and if, like me, your research focuses on post-settlement land use it’s important to acknowledge that fact.

-The great American wilderness is a grossly inaccurate colonialist fantasy.

-Human influence, specifically that of indigenous people, is all over the ecology of what is currently called America.

-Human interaction with other organisms is not inherently negative
because it’s “unnatural.” We’re all family whether we want to admit it
or not.

-Human/Nature dualism is awful and wrong.

-Environmentalism that focuses on “humans are bad” and verges on some Catholic-style “fallen man” ideology is also awful.

-Environmentalism that uses this mentality to reproduce colonialism by supposedly protecting nature from indigenous land management needs to stop.