> Finally, am I the only sick of these stereotypical images of 'native indigenous cultures living in simple harmony with nature' a la Avatar? This is a valid c

> Finally, am I the only sick of these stereotypical images of 'native indigenous cultures living in simple harmony with nature' a la Avatar? This is a valid criticism of the depiction of aboriginal cultures. But I've come to believe that there is a subtle racism in not accepting that aboriginals intentionally chose to develop cultures which were durable and in 'harmony with nature.' They are the same homo sapiens with the same intelligence and nature as the homo sapiens of Europe or from other more 'advanced' societies. They could have chosen to develop their culture in such a way that led to being 'out of harmony' just as easily as some other peoples did. Aboriginals in say, Australia, had plenty of time to develop a more advanced society (some estimates say they've been there 40k years). When western people depict them as living close to the land, I smell a whiff of the subtext 'because they couldn't do any better'. Yeah they could have done otherwise, but they chose not to! I work with a group of engineers and lately because of attending a conference, we have started to talk a lot about climate change. Some of the ideas our group initially came up with are really ridiculous, like some kind of machine to extract carbon from the atmosphere and to sequester it. It's called a tree, they are everywhere, and they do it for free. They will propagate by themselves if we just had the patience to let them do so.