Are Tribal Religions More Environmentally Responsible than Christianity?

In my last blog article, we saw that the origin of the Earth’s modern environmental problems has nothing to do with the rise and spread of Christianity. Nevertheless, many spiritually minded (but non-Christian) environmentalists suggest that the religions of tribal cultures are better sources for environmental ethics and guidelines in environmental stewardship than Christianity. But are they right? Demonstrating they are wrong is the topic of this and the next two articles.

Many people today have a romanticized, Hollywood-tainted image of tribal cultures. They visualize early American Indians, as well as Australian Aborigines and native Africans, as living in a harmonious, ecologically sensitive relationship with nature. After all, hunting deer and buffalo and gathering wild vegetables and roots were methods of sustenance similar to that of wild animals. Such food gathering did not upset the balance of nature. Native peoples were assumed to have taken from the land only what they needed and no more. Pollution was not a problem because no one used synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. Bodily waste was naturally recycled in the ecosystem. A simple thatched hut or teepee required few natural resources. A small fire used little fuel. Walking left only footprints. In sum, the popular image of aboriginal cultures is that people enjoyed a lifestyle that had little negative impact on nature.

There is a reason that Native American and other tribal cultures throughout the world appear to have been more environmentally friendly than Western societies. For thousands of years, their way of life was closely tied to the land, and survival depended entirely on a successful relationship with the natural world. As a result, native peoples developed a remarkable knowledge of their physical environments, and their cultural identity became inseparable from nature and the land.

It is often taken for granted that the apparent ecological consciousness observed in aboriginal tribal societies was directly related to their religious beliefs. For this reason, many environmentalists have suggested that Westerners turn to Native American cultures for insight into environmental ethics and guidance in environmental stewardship. In reality, however, this respect for nature did not play out in effective conservation efforts. The so-called “Ecological Indian” is more myth than fact. Native Americans were not innocent of environmental abuse, and few tribes lived in continuous harmony with nature.

Native Americans (and other tribal cultures) often used fire to manipulate the environment for their own interests. This practice was widespread across the continent, and on the Great Plains fires could be a hundred miles across. Fires were used to drive and encircle animals so that they could be more easily killed; to create forage for animals the Indians depended on for food (or alternatively, to ruin forage and force animals into areas where they were more easily hunted); to improve pasture for horse herds; to clear land for crops; and even as a weapon against their enemies—both Indian and white.

It has also been documented by archaeologists that Indian tribes in North America engaged in massive overkill by stampeding entire bison herds over cliffs, slaying many more animals than the tribes could possibly use. Reportedly, more than a thousand bison have been slaughtered in a single hunt. Nor did Indians always use every portion of the kill, as often alleged. Sometimes just the best part of the meat was taken (the tongues and humps) and the rest was left to rot. Artist and anthropologist George Catlin, who lived several years among Native Americans, recorded the following event:

When I first arrived at this place, on my way up the river, which was in the month of May, in 1832, and had taken up my lodgings in the Fur Company’s Fort, . . . [I was told] that only a few days before I arrived (when an immense herd of buffaloes had showed themselves on the opposite side of the river, almost blackening the plains for a great distance), a party of five or six hundred Sioux Indians on horseback, forded the river about mid-day, and spending a few hours among them [the buffalo], recrossed the river at sun-down and came into the Fort with fourteen hundred fresh buffalo tongues [emphasis his], which were thrown down in a mass [to be traded for whiskey]. . . .
This profligate waste of the lives of these noble and useful animals, when, from all that I could learn, not a skin or a pound of meat (except the tongues) was brought in, fully supports me in the seemingly extravagant predictions that I have made as to their extinction, which I am certain is near at hand. . . .(Quoted in American Environmentalism (172).

In recent times, Native Americans have willingly accepted the negative consequences of modern technology in order to promote economic development. On the Navajo and Hopi reservations, for example, strip mining and power plants provide jobs, but at the expense of pollution and scarred, stripped lands.

This is not said to disparage Native Americans or to deny the fact that indigenous people throughout the world, regardless of whether they are motivated by survival necessities or love of nature, typically express a deep respect for their natural surroundings. Many tribal people today express a great desire to protect the land. The question at hand is not whether tribal people exhibited a reverential and ecological sensitivity to nature, but whether those sentiments were an explicit teaching in their religious beliefs. More to the point, do tribal religions provide ethical principles and guidelines for environmental stewardship? Answering this question requires that we examine the religious beliefs of tribal societies before the influence of Christianity and Western culture. We’ll explore this in next week’s blog article. ©

* The blog articles in this series are adapted from my book Should Christians Be Environmentalists?, published by Kregel Publications in 2012. The blog articles do not contain all the chapters, data, quotes, references, or my personal experiences, which the book includes. So, for “the rest of the story” you will need to purchase the book, which is available in both paperback and Kindle. This and the following articles are copyrighted material and may not be reproduced in book or article form. But feel free to send links to these articles to your personal email list, Facebook friends and groups, Twitter followers, or other people who may enjoy them. I encourage interested reader to subscribe to my blog or request to be added to my personal email list. This will ensure that you receive notices whenever I post a new blog article or other ministry related materials.