The idea that North America was some untouched, “pristine” wilderness before colonizers showed up is actually a concept rooted in anti-Indigeneity and I want y’all to throw it out of your minds.

The fact is humans are part of the environment whether we admit it or not and harvesting and taking part in the ecosystem is inevitable. The way we plant and harvest can be the difference b/t lush landscapes and dust bowls

The difference between now and pre-colonizer invasion is that Indigenous peoples knew how to harvest and manage the land in ways that actually increased biodiversity and was sustainable for millennia.

When colonizers came they purely didn’t want to believe that Indigenous people could possibly know anything more than basic hunting/gathering and that they just happened to have lush landscapes due to luck, not bc they actually had complex agriculture/forestry management

And it’s also important to remember, Indigenous land management is highly place based, so different peoples had their own relationships to their land. I would never try to incorporate the Hawaiian ahupuaa system elsewhere bc it’s developed based on our island ecosystems

Edit: should probably have not just said North America, this is definitely a world wide issue