Biodiversity and Native America
Contributors: Paul E. Minnis (Editor); Wayne J. Elisens (Editor)
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: July 2000
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 310
ISBN-13: 9780806132327
Subjects: Management of land & natural resources; Native American Anthropology; Ethnic Studies - Native American Studies; Ecological Anthropology; Social Science; Indians of North America; Sociology; The Americas; Ethnobiology; Anthropology - General; Human Geography; North America; Anthropology - Cultural; Biodiversity; Biological diversity; Indians of Mexico
First sentence: Native peoples have been neither passive consumers of nature's economy nor primitive rapists of pristine natural environments.
Description: "Exploring the relationship between Native Americans and the natural world. Biodiversity and Native America questions the widespread view that indigenous peoples and minimal ecological impact in North America. Introducing a variety of perspectives - ethnopharmacological, ethnographic, archaeological, and biological - the expert contributors show that Native Americans were active managers of natural ecological systems.

The book covers groups from the sophisticated agriculturalists of the Mississippi River drainage region to the low-density hunter-gatherers of arid western North America."--BOOK JACKET.