An Introduction to the Southeastern Woodlands Native Americans

Program Details

Native American Ecology

Undeniably, Indigenous peoples were the first “ecologist” of the Americas. Traditionally Native peoples of the Americas interacted with and perceived the living natural environment as an extension of human existence respecting it as a source of power and life itself. In this presentation the audience will learn authentically (from a Native American) how indigenous peoples traditionally understood the living natural environment and further how we developed and processed systems of understanding the natural living world within human spaces. This traditional understanding bridged both our physical and metaphysical worlds. Our traditional perspectives of the world as Indigenous peoples are often quite different than the mainstream perspectives of the world people live in today. This presentation will visit a number of modern Western philosophies associated with the understanding and management of land and compare / contrast these philosophies with how Indigenous peoples traditionally understood the natural living world. To fully understand how environment fits into the human experience we will travel back in time through our imagination and study the role the natural living environment had with the first peoples of the Americas.