| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 39.2

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 39.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

*Native Americans and the Environment: Perspectives on the Ecological Indian*. Edited and Introduction by Michael E. Harkin and David Rich Lewis. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. xxxiv + 367 pp. Illustrations, tables, notes, indices. $24.95, paper.)
This volume originated at a forum to debate Shepard Krech III's controversial 1999 book, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New York). Four of the essays in the present volume (Krech, Ranco, Braun, Lewis) were first presented at that forum, the others were solicited subsequently. All speak more or less directly to one or more of Krech's Ecological Indian case studies, though few of the essays strongly criticize Krech's book.	1
Ranco (Penobscot), one of just two Native American essayists included, chastises Krech for failing to adequately recognize the colonial context of the majority of his examples. He suggests that "assessing one culture to meet the standards of another culture's stereotypes of them seems a dubious project ..." (p. 34). For Ranco, Krech's deconstruction of the "Ecological Indian" undermines the "ecological legitimacy" of contemporary Indian tribes, and "[f]or the Penobscot Indian Nation, as for many other Indian nations, ecological legitimacy and recognition are matters of life and death" (p. 43). By contrast, Feit is critical of Krech for mishandling the archival evidence. He dismembers Krech's argument that fur company agents taught Indians to conserve beaver, challenging Krech's presumption of scholarly disinterest.	. . .

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