The ecology movement’s Indian-lands symbol flattened Europe into mere dominion ideology

Evidence

In the 1960s, the Native-American became a symbol in the ecology movement’s search for alternatives to Western exploitative attitudes. The Indian animistic belief-system and reverence for the earth as a mother were contrasted with the Judeo-Christian heritage of dominion over nature and with capitalist practices resulting in the “tragedy of the commons” (exploitation of resources available for any person’s or nation’s use). But as will be seen, European culture was more complex and varied than this judgment allows. It ignores the Renaissance philosophy of the nurturing earth as well as those philosophies and social movements resistant to mainstream economic change. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 163

Categorization

• XREF: Speaks directly to the settler-colonial and land/place threads across the polyad; connects to Merchant’s own caution against romanticizing and to critiques of the ecological Indian stereotype.