The Cultural Work of Ecological Restoration: Reading the Role of Indigeneity inThree against the WildernessandBuffalo for the Broken Heart

Abstract

Ecological restoration strives to create the material circumstances for an increase in the biodiversity of an ecosystem. Restoration projects are generally ongoing, active engagements with an ecosystem aimed at restarting and facilitating the dynamic processes of evolution. To complement the scientific nature of restoration, prominent contributors to the field have expressed a keen interest in a cultural component of this work.1 Recognizing that the roots of ecological degradation extend well beyond the scientific realm, restoration ecologists posit the need for an ontological shift to ensure the success of restoration projects in perpetuity. This call for new cultural knowledge and practices has a long history in American environmental discourse, especially in looking to Native Americans as models; however, it has often been carried out problematically, resulting in what environmental anthropologist Shepard Krech calls the Ecological Indian trope.2 By decontextualizing indigenous customs, this trope “occludes its actual connection to the behavior it purports to explain” (Krech 27). As a result, the environmental lessons garnered from Native American cultures become separated from the geographic specificities out of which they arose and within which they are most productively implemented. Further, the trope renders indigenous cultures obsolescent by confining them to an antiquated past that has few corollaries to the present moment.