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On the one hand, this sounds cool. On the other hand ... my understanding is the U.S. took so much land through violence and lying, and often with some rhetori

by abeppu 7y ago

On the one hand, this sounds cool. On the other hand ... my understanding is the U.S. took so much land through violence and lying, and often with some rhetoric about how the native people that didn't farm or settle and live on specific parcels weren't "civilized". There was an assumption that Americans establishing farms and towns and whatever was inherently superior to the way Native Americans occupied the land they had been on since time literally immemorial. So it's cool, it's kinda bad-ass what she's doing. But isn't it also fucked up? Isn't it deeply hypocritical to occupy land that was taken from people in part using the justification that the way they lived wasn't civil or modern or productive enough, and then try to live on it in a "wild" way? I don't know anything about the specifics of the history of interactions of the tribes of the Okanagan area, where Twisp is. But I'm guessing that their inheritance didn't give them the freedom to choose how they wanted to live, or how they wanted to relate to a changing world. And I'm disappointed that absolutely none of that is even mentioned in passing in this article.

georgeoliver 7y ago
Not to discount your comment which I largely agree with, but to the article's credit there is at least passing mention: >Some suggest that the primitive-skills community can run the risk of appropriating indigenousness. Practitioners of bushcraft draw liberally from the world’s traditions but are themselves typically white people, often endowed with at least some degree of privilege. “There is an inherent colonialism built into the primitive-skills idea,” says Kiliii Yüyan, a photographer, survival expert, and one of Lynx’s occasional collaborators, who is a Chinese-American descendent of the Nanai people of Siberia. “Part of the idea is that you can be air-dropped into anywhere and survive off the land. Indigenous literally means ‘of a place’—survival is almost the exact opposite of that.”
- zelltech 7y ago
  no matter where they hide or what they do in america, nowhere/nothing is safe from just calling them colonizer/cultural appropriator
- abeppu 7y ago
  I guess what I think is absent is a recognition that Lynx is able to do what she does in part because she is a beneficiary of a history which specifically prevented others from living on the land. "Appropriation" of skills from traditional practices to me reads as a distinct harm from the very physical appropriation of actual territory.
samatman 7y ago
> But isn't it also fucked up? No. This sort of self-flagellation is tedious. Occupying stolen land is the human condition. How that land is occupied makes it neither better nor worse, so either every article about a way of life in America contains this kind of breast-beating, or none should. It being predictable and low-information, I favor the latter. I'm replying to you because of your last paragraph, specifically this: > But I'm guessing that their inheritance didn't give them the freedom to choose how they wanted to live Which is a denial of the agency of Native Americans. They lost a war, had their food sources systematically exterminated and were subject to ethnic cleansing and genocide. No fun, as my own people can tell you from their more recent history. Any descendent of those people has the same freedom to live as Lynx does, more even, since she's a British national and they are American citizens. Some few no doubt do this. It's their choice in any case.

by abeppu 7y ago

georgeoliver 7y ago

Not to discount your comment which I largely agree with, but to the article's credit there is at least passing mention: >Some suggest that the primitive-skills community can run the risk of appropriating indigenousness. Practitioners of bushcraft draw liberally from the world’s traditions but are themselves typically white people, often endowed with at least some degree of privilege. “There is an inherent colonialism built into the primitive-skills idea,” says Kiliii Yüyan, a photographer, survival expert, and one of Lynx’s occasional collaborators, who is a Chinese-American descendent of the Nanai people of Siberia. “Part of the idea is that you can be air-dropped into anywhere and survive off the land. Indigenous literally means ‘of a place’—survival is almost the exact opposite of that.”

zelltech 7y ago
no matter where they hide or what they do in america, nowhere/nothing is safe from just calling them colonizer/cultural appropriator
abeppu 7y ago
I guess what I think is absent is a recognition that Lynx is able to do what she does in part because she is a beneficiary of a history which specifically prevented others from living on the land. "Appropriation" of skills from traditional practices to me reads as a distinct harm from the very physical appropriation of actual territory.

samatman 7y ago

> But isn't it also fucked up? No. This sort of self-flagellation is tedious. Occupying stolen land is the human condition. How that land is occupied makes it neither better nor worse, so either every article about a way of life in America contains this kind of breast-beating, or none should. It being predictable and low-information, I favor the latter. I'm replying to you because of your last paragraph, specifically this: > But I'm guessing that their inheritance didn't give them the freedom to choose how they wanted to live Which is a denial of the agency of Native Americans. They lost a war, had their food sources systematically exterminated and were subject to ethnic cleansing and genocide. No fun, as my own people can tell you from their more recent history. Any descendent of those people has the same freedom to live as Lynx does, more even, since she's a British national and they are American citizens. Some few no doubt do this. It's their choice in any case.