I was thinking about Bill Mason and his comment that roughly “...wilderness is a white man’s concept...”. I decided to dig out my old copy of Jace Weaver’s Defending Mother Earth (which IMHO is an excellent window into nonwhite perspective on “wilderness”). And also cracked through this in the morning.

As more visitors than ever make their journey to the BWCA for the first time (myself included) I am curious for folks thoughts: do you think anyone contemplates this juxtaposition of cultures and philosophies?

I work in IT now, but my first college degree is in Philosophy - Environmental Ethics from UW-Stevens Point. I often miss the nuance of debate regarding ethics.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts and debate. Cheers.

This is from the second link: "To pave a piece of earth is to trammel it. To cover it with condominiums or cotton fields, to route vehicles across its soil, to spray it with insecticides; all these acts truncate the potential of the living community of organisms in the landscape.

But if Native peoples were (and are) a vital part of natural landscape processes shaped over millennia, if cultural burning and gentle diversions of snowmelt and ritual clearing of desert springs actually allow the landscape to approach its full natural potential, if the landscape in fact depended on Native peoples every bit as much as it did on beavers or bears or salmon, then barring those people and their practices from the landscape would be limiting that landscape’s capacity. It would be trammeling the land.

Put bluntly, the exclusion of Native people from the living landscapes they once maintained might well be in and of itself a violation of the spirit of the Wilderness Act."

This seems a naive notion. Native people, once they learn to harness carbon fuels and hydraulics and extend lifespans with antibiotics and vaccines and develop an appreciation of cheap, soft, cotton t-shirts and cheap beef raised on corporate farms, are as landscape altering as the rest of us. Unless you're talking about the 82 or so undiscovered Native people deep in the Amazon, who will be discovered next week or next year, we nearly all alter the Earth now with the same technology.

I don’t disagree that evangelizing and attempting to hijack Native ethics (of course recognizing there’s over 400 federally recognized tribes - they don’t all think alike) can be problematic - especially when cherry picking historical elements. I do think your response ignores the impact of settler-colonialism though. Sure people take advantage of fossil fuels, cotton, fertilizer and pesticides. I also think there is a thread of story, tradition, ethics and community in Native communities that runs highly counter to how most of us white folks live our lives in relation to the wilderness (as a vacation spot vs. a home).

My original intention with this post was to needle-at the concept of wilderness as a vacation spot, place to visit and commune with and how perhaps that is different than how we treat a city, country home etc.

I was originally impressed by Bill Mason’s desire to point out the fact that how us white folks view wilderness is problematic when considering the context of current and historical Native perspective - a quick example of this: the evolution of Western fire management techniques to include the Native perspective on utilization of fire and controlled burning.

Cheers again

Picking on White folks regarding wilderness attitude is not much of a debate. It has been my experience some believe humans are superior and support the hierarchy or dominant model where resources, things with less value, are used for personal benefit. Others believe we are all partners on this planet and would do well to respect what happens to one part effects all parts. I think this partnership model is what we romanticize as the native way, and perhaps it was.
I think what we have seen with the invasion of the wilderness reflects the impact of the dominant model on a forum of folks more in line with the partnership model. The wilderness offers harmony and good vibrations I do not experience in the city. It is a vacation for my mind and spirit, not so much my body.

bhouse46: "Picking on White folks regarding wilderness attitude is not much of a debate. It has been my experience some believe humans are superior and support the hierarchy or dominant model where resources, things with less value, are used for personal benefit. Others believe we are all partners on this planet and would do well to respect what happens to one part effects all parts. I think this partnership model is what we romanticize as the native way, and perhaps it was.
I think what we have seen with the invasion of the wilderness reflects the impact of the dominant model on a forum of folks more in line with the partnership model. The wilderness offers harmony and good vibrations I do not experience in the city. It is a vacation for my mind and spirit, not so much my body."

I wouldn’t characterize my challenges as “picking on” per-se, but rather an attempt at shining a light on our unspoken concepts of privilege, and some folks concepts of Western superiority (medicine, Etc). I view it as definitely worthy of debate vs. viewing discussion of whiteness as a nonstarter. After all the people who lived first in the BWCA were definitely not white.

As a fan - and worker in - the database world I would love to see some data sets from the FS around visitor demographics - I have to imagine white folks are the primary visitors and beneficiaries of the Wilderness designation. I was just trying to challenge myself in contemplating the unspoken ways in which I can view a place I am drastically excited to visit, as well as contemplating who’s home it was and still is.

One thing that I thought of as I was typing that last paragraph is the still smoldering debate around fishing rights in Wisconsin as an example of concepts and misinterpretations around rights, privileges, treaties etc.

Lastly, I agree completely about concepts of cooperation and partnership. Good points.

Almost seems like since we have places we can call a “Wilderness” we can trash the rest of the world. Thank goodness for the many people who work across the globe to actually work at maintaining other areas also. If we all did our part we’d have near wilderness experiences right out our doors. Many many great places here in our country and across the globe.
I’m guessing most of us who venture to the “wilderness” are there for the mind and spirit over our bodies needs.

Mr. 84 wrote: " I do think your response ignores the impact of settler-colonialism though."

I reply.: We bulldozed the Native peoples, no doubt, greatly abetted by disease. I once read that the Native population of what would become America was 100,000,000 when Europeans first arrived, reduced to 10,000,000 by smallpox and other diseases. The conceit of Manifest Destiny put millions more in the ground.

I do believe that Native people lived more lightly on the land centuries back, but I think their humility around nature was due largely to nature smacking them aside the head, again and again, whereas our hubris is due to mastering cement and electricity and antibiotics. However, nature is commencing to smack us upside the head on a heretofore unseen scale.

I'm enjoying this chat and I hope others do too.

Ben: "Almost seems like since we have places we can call a “Wilderness” we can trash the rest of the world."

Gosh, Ben, you might be right and that terrifies me.

I'm going to wait for the movie version on this one.

I remember studying the subject of wilderness in my college recreation and natural resource management classes.

We learned that in our culture the term wilderness has many meanings, based on both objective and subjective physical, mental and psychological qualities all swirling together to create what we now have. There is no universally accepted definition of wilderness.

The BWCAW is called "wilderness" because of its designation in federal legislation. Legislation means politics, which brings to mind the saying "you don't want to see how laws and sausages are made." Given today's utterly poisoned political environment I would say it is a huge tribute to people trying to preserve something they valued through a process of compromise.

Here's a good book on the subject:

Wilderness and the American Mind by Roderick Nash

yogi59weedr: "I'm going to wait for the movie version on this one."

Would it be directed by Coppola, the Coens, Hitchcock, Burton, Carpenter, or Houston?

gkimball: "I remember studying the subject of wilderness in my college recreation and natural resource management classes.


We learned that in our culture the term wilderness has many meanings, based on both objective and subjective physical, mental and psychological qualities all swirling together to create what we now have. There is no universally accepted definition of wilderness.


The BWCAW is called "wilderness" because of its designation in federal legislation. Legislation means politics, which brings to mind the saying "you don't want to see how laws and sausages are made." Given today's utterly poisoned political environment I would say it is a huge tribute to people trying to preserve something they valued through a process of compromise.


Here's a good book on the subject:
Wilderness and the American Mind by Roderick Nash"

Thank you for the recommendation. You bring up a good point “...in our culture...” regarding wilderness. As I am largely ignorant of anishinaabemowin I wonder if there is a word for “wilderness” or if that was introduced post-American federal government. Anyways, just a musing.

At least federally, I think it is fair to say that wilderness has a specific designation and one that places man as “other” or perhaps “outsider”; a perspective that seems at odd with other culture. Clearly our politics in America bend towards consumerism, usage, and extraction more than for wide tracks of land with heavy consideration 7 generations beyond our own. This is lamentable in my opinion.

yogi59weedr: "I'm going to wait for the movie version on this one."

I think they made it already? Wall-E.

doorbluff84: "

yogi59weedr: "I'm going to wait for the movie version on this one."

I think they made it already? Wall-E. "

There is also Avatar.

We have been chipping away at wilderness since the humans have walked the earth and have been doing it an an ever increasing rate. To me, wilderness means “untouched by humans”. All we have left is degrees of remote areas.

This thread got me thinking about the demographics of visitors to the BWCA. I couldn't find any information specific to the BWCA, but I did come across information on the racial makeup of visitors to our National Parks. It is overwhelmingly white......95%. I'm pretty sure it's overwhelmingly white in the BWCA as well.

missmolly: "This seems a naive notion. Native people, once they learn to harness carbon fuels and hydraulics and extend lifespans with antibiotics and vaccines and develop an appreciation of cheap, soft, cotton t-shirts and cheap beef raised on corporate farms, are as landscape altering as the rest of us. Unless you're talking about the 82 or so undiscovered Native people deep in the Amazon, who will be discovered next week or next year, we nearly all alter the Earth now with the same technology.
"

True. The cultures, mindsets, spiritual views, and lifestyles are so different now from what they were centuries ago, that most of the old ways are lost to time.

Same with my northern European heritage.