This is a false dichotomy.
Natural species come and go, as have various cultures over the millennia.
Promote the lives of people as individuals, he argues, and not their worthless cultures. Blake rightly states that emphasis should be directed to the causes of the dispossession, marginalization, and premature deaths of so many of the world's indigenous peoples, but he fails to appreciate the importance of culture in ultimately addressing these problems. In giving voice to this view, Blake links himself with a growing clique of academics and environmentalists who claim to speak with the interests of indigenous peoples at heart, as if they intimately understand their struggles and know what is best for them. In his latest book, The Culture Club, for instance, University of Sydney anthropologist Roger Sandall argues that federal policies of self-management for Aborigines in Canada and Australia and the Maori of New Zealand have not advanced their cause. Such an outlook, Sandall argues, when foisted on indigenous peoples, has led many to the mistaken belief that their cultures are worth preserving.