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Holthaus, Gary: Learning Native Wisdom: What Traditional Cultures Teach us About Subsistence, Sustainability and Spirituality

The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, 2008, 280 pp, ISBN 978-0813124872

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Notes

  1. Here Holthaus’s argument closely parallels Keith Basso’s Wisdom Sits in Places (1996). Basso’s work discusses the link between language and landscape among the western Apache tribes of the United States.

  2. Many anthropologists have questioned this idea. My understanding on this matter has been shaped by many conversations with the anthropologist Robin Wright, but see also Krech 1999 and Reichel-Dolmatoff 1976. Reichel-Dolmatoff uses the term equilibrium to capture the dynamism that exists between the indigenous cultures that comprise the subject of his study and their habitats and means by this something different than achieving balanced or harmonious relationships, which are often envisioned as rather static relations.

  3. For further discussion of the gap between values and practices specifically related to environmental ethics see Peterson (2006).

References

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  • Reichel-Dolmatoff, G. (1976). Cosmology as ecological analysis: A view from the rain forest. Man, 11(3), 307–318.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Religion and the Environmental Program, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA

    Lucas F. Johnston

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  1. Lucas F. Johnston
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Correspondence to Lucas F. Johnston.

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Johnston, L.F. Holthaus, Gary: Learning Native Wisdom: What Traditional Cultures Teach us About Subsistence, Sustainability and Spirituality. J Agric Environ Ethics 22, 607–610 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-009-9175-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-009-9175-4

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