Similarities Between Ahtna And Koyukon

A consistent fact of both human and environmental history is the ability of man to utilize the natural resources available to them from the environment to ensure their own survival and cultural prosperity. This fact remains consistent in the development of civilizations within North America between the indigenous Native Americans and European and European-American colonists. Between both groups, specifically the indigenous Ahtna and Koyukon, dissimilar perspectives and goals lead to varying transformation of the continent. The fundamentally contrasting viewpoints between the Ahtna and Koyukon groups and American settlers regarding the natural world lead to significant impacts on the environment. Therefore, these consequences on the environment

The basis of understanding of the “wilderness” was that it represented the devil’s landscape and was ever devouring, therefore necessitating the need to conquer not only for God but for own personal gain and gratification in a new environment. To the colonists, nature was something to conquer, and as mentioned in Taylor’s Wasty Ways, “…settlers meant to amass the property that endowed independence, with all its promises of material comfort, social respectability, and political rights. They also found encouragement in the precedent of their parents and grandparents, who had persevered through similar travails” (Taylor 300). Colonizing the environment not only became a conquest for salvation, but the chance of living a better life as their ancestors have. This chance, in the “New World”, was a chance to secure an individual’s future prosperity in a new environment. Thus, the ability to do this established the expendability of the environment for European colonists, resulting in the environment of the initial colonies becoming abrasive and unstable towards those who lived within and unnecessary casualties occurred. What remains consistent of this line of thinking is that it has remained in a rather similar form in American culture and socio-economic prosperity. The reliance on

Although individual case studies do not speak for the entirety of the period of European-American settlement, they do serve as good examples of these viewpoints and outcomes. The contrasting viewpoints on nature of the Ahtna and the settlers was congruent with their results. As mentioned by William Cronon in Kennecott Journey, “Natives of the Copper River valley had lived in relative balance with their fellow organisms… Providing fur coats to the citizens of Moscow or Peking or New York City, on the other hand, was an entirely different matter. Wild game populations could hardly help failing in the face of such demand” (Cronon 39). As clearly evidenced by Cronon, living alongside the land vs utilizing the land for its use made for an obvious ending in the context of the settlers in Kennecott. The frightening notion of the rapid expendability of resources in an environmentally rich region created a civilization that was quickly unsustainable. This unsustainable style of existence needs to exist as a lesson for our contemporary society, as our own expendability of nature has only recently been recognized. Kennecott has shown that one viewpoint must be understood to successfully coexist and