The Trumpeter (2000)

ISSN: 0832 6193

Ways of Knowing:
Acceptable Understandings Within Bioregionalism, Deep Ecology, Ecofeminism, and Native American Cultures

Annie Booth

Annie Booth is an Associate Professor in Environmental Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia. She has extensive interests in environmental ethics, indigenous environmental views, and resource dependent communities.

Ways of Knowing: Acceptable Understandings

Nature that fram’d us of four elements,
Warring within our breasts for regiment,
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:
Our souls whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous Architecture of the world:
And measure every wand’ring planet’s course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless Spheres
Will us to wear ourselves and never rest . . .

Christopher Marlowe
Tamburlaine the Great (1590)

Knowledge: the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association; the sum of what is known: the body of truth, information, and principles acquired by humankind.
Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary

We seek for it, strive for it, we pay to gain it; knowledge is vital to individuals’ and societies’ continued well-being. Many of us have learned to distinguish between knowledge and wisdom, but knowledge remains central to our undertakings. But where do we get “knowledge,” the facts, the data points, the ideas, that we accept as true, real or correct? This article doesn’t present a formal discussion of epistemological theory. Rather it is a sketch of the sources of knowledge that three ecosophies—bioregionalism, ecological feminism, and deep ecology—accept as true, valid and useful. The kind of knowledge that is valued is often suggestive of the broader characteristics of a given worldview.

In addition, this essay undertakes to offer comparisons and contrasts not just between the three ecosophies but between these ecosophies and Native American perspectives. For all, the example and precedent of indigenous peoples has been of considerable significance in formulating theory. Supporters of deep ecology claim to have been particularly influenced in their ideas by indigenous perspectives. It seems, therefore, worthwhile to examine one source of inspiration while discussing the different perspectives on knowledge in deep ecology, bioregionalism, and ecological feminism.

The Importance of Sources

The sources of “knowledge” are key to whether that collection of ideas, facts, and data points are accepted as knowledge. And the sources themselves tell a great deal about the individual or group associated with those sources. Witness the extensive and careful critique of “techno-industrial” or “Cartesian” derived knowledge by both ecological feminists and deep ecologists (some of which is reviewed later in this article). Justifiably, they suggest that the characteristics of “acceptable” knowledge—rationality, linearity and objectivityobscure or distort how we understand the world around us.

Another issue to consider is the importance of validation conferred by the source. The responses people have to different presentations of “knowledge” are instructive. Presentations of “knowledge” through television and movies are often better absorbed by non-philosophers than articles in Nature or even Scientific American or Popular Science or the Trumpeter. If we are to create sources of “environmental knowledge” for the public, then perhaps the “play’s the thing.” However, the source needs legitimation and acceptance on the part of philosophers as well.

The Bioregional Worldview

Bioregionalists have not spent much time constructing debates over appropriate sources of knowledge. This is not to say they do not engage in some theoretical construction and debate, but rather that they seem more interested in the practical applications of ideas, rather than how such ideas were derived. In a passage on scale and morality, for example, Sale continually stresses words such as “practical,” “concrete,” and “direct connections.” He speaks of the point of knowledge “where abstractions and intangibles give way to the here and now, the seen and felt, the real and known.”1 These are the qualities which are valued in a knowledge base.

Broadly, however, there seems to be an inclination among bioregionalists to accept most sources of knowledge (emotional, rational, mythical, factual, abstract, artistic or logical) as useful and/or necessary. For example, a bioregionalist “bundle,” which is created around a specific bioregion, contains a variety of materials. One focused on the Lower Hudson bioregion contains the following:

Similar bundles also exist for the San Francisco Bay Watershed and the Rocky Mountains as well as other bioregions.

The importance of knowledge derived from art, poetry, literature, even drama, seems to be of as much importance as is knowledge derived from more conventional sources, which, for bioregionalists, might include ecology, biology and history. Artistic understandings are thought to be particularly important for the creative and spiritual well-being of people and the broader community.3 An article in Raise the Stakes (one important source of bioregional information) even focuses on the use of drama to promote urban bioregional ideas. Drama attracts people through visceral appeal rather than intellectual arguments.4 Such a broad understanding of appropriate knowledge, in an applied way, distinguishes bioregionalism from many ecosophies and from the techno-industrial worldview.

Many bioregionalists also stress the importance of emotions and feelings as a source of information, sometimes in an almost mystical fashion:

What is actually there? We see one thing, feel another, hear yet another. Look at the grass blade under a microscope and it’s something else again. What is it if we don’t touch it, don’t touch it with our senses, don’t touch it with our mind. . . just BE THERE with it (emphasis in original).5

However, such stresses come without much theoretical support or debate: it is simply accepted as natural.

The Deep Ecology World View

In contrast to bioregionalism, both supporters of deep ecology and ecological feminism have invested much time in a debate over appropriate ways of knowing. In part this seems to be because both are intimately involved with creating an alternative to the western techno-industrial world view and one contrast they draw is in appropriate knowledge. In the western world view there is a long history of stressing the logical, the rational, and the linear in acceptable knowledge, and of basing the exploration of the world, science, on the Cartesian model with its emphasis on those traits.6 Both deep ecology and ecological feminism arose, in part, from the perception that this narrow conception of appropriate knowledge was severely lacking. Supporters of deep ecology and ecofeminism have therefore spent much time arguing that other ways of knowing had to be revalued, or, if necessary, re-created.

Deep ecology supporters, even when discussing the practical application of knowledge, often seem caught in more formal, more philosophical, less applied forms of discussion than do bioregionalists and, until recently, ecofeminists. First and foremost disciplinary academics, deep ecological theorists advocate the use of other forms of knowledge, but have themselves employed rational, logical arguments following philosophic traditions.7 Since this is what they have been trained to do, it is not surprising, but it has lent a sense of mixed-messages to their ideas. One wonders where the “alternative way of knowing” really is while ploughing through tedious, elaborate and unnecessarily complex presentations loaded with jargon on the importance of intuitive understanding. Interestingly, until recently, ecofeminist theorists managed to avoid this mixed-message problem, perhaps because, while academically trained, many were not professional academics. With the growth of interest in ecofeminism, and with everybody and anybody jumping on the publication bandwagon, many ecofeminist writings are also becoming overly academic. Some recent contributions to the field have been tedious, elaborate, jargon-laden and unnecessarily complex.

In spite of presentation problems, deep ecology makes a considerable effort to elaborate on the necessity of ways of knowledge that are outside traditional western world views. As in bioregionalism, there is a new stress on valuing and encouraging emotional and creative forms of understanding as equal to the rational and linear. And it stresses the importance of experience as a form of understanding and knowledge. For example, look at how one theorist, Bill Devall, explains the principal attributes of deep ecology:

The term “deep ecology” refers to finding our bearings, to the process of grounding ourselves through fuller experience of our connection to earth . . . Deepness is felt in the way we are experiencing our lives. Deepness of thinking means articulating basic priorities, or more or less intuitive beliefs. Deepness means exploring our dreams to recognize our archaic unity with all life and basic symbols . . . Deepness implies an attitude of dwelling-in-the-moment, meditating; letting one’s own rhythms and perceptual room open up; respecting and including what is there, what comes, involving the flow of actions from the level of unconsciousness that William Reich calls ‘eros’ (emphasis added).8

A key task in deep ecology is the cultivation of ecological consciousness: of being aware of our surroundings and of those beings that are around us as well. Part of this consciousness is clearly intuitive for it involves appreciating the “actuality of rocks, wolves, trees and rivers . . ..” What this means, I think, is seeing such things not as background for our lives, however important, but as real, vital and as much in the foreground of existence as each of us is in our minds. There is little in Cartesian rationality that could adequately demonstrate this to us, without reference to utility, something clearly different from what Devall is arguing. Logical arguments have long been used to make the case that other forms of life are not worthy of our sustained interest and concern: they are different, and when they do share attributes with us (the ability to feel pain, for example) it is in some lesser, different way. Seeing other forms of life, including a group life such as a river, as of equal relevance as we are ourselves is an intuitive leap. When it seems to occur in people it is often as part of an emotional response: we feel that we are right, as in the case of many animal rights activists. And to discredit them, they are dismissed as non-logical and irrational, clearly implying that such considerations are inappropriate ways of understanding the question in “real” life. Thus, intuition becomes, as an alternative, an important way of knowing the world, as does feeling and emotion.

Deep ecology supporters, then, centre themselves on intuition as an acceptable knowledge. Arne Naess characterizes comfort with such knowledge as something ingrained, and perhaps particular to, people attracted to deep ecology. An interview with Naess included the following exchange:

Stephan Bodian:

This brings us back to the question of information versus intuition. Your feeling is that we can’t expect to have an ideal amount of information but must somehow act on what we know?

Arne Naess:

Yes. It’s easier for deep ecologists than for others because we have certain fundamental values, a fundamental view of what’s meaningful in life, what’s worth maintaining. . . the quality of life, in the sense of basic satisfaction in the depths of one’s heart or soul, should be maintained or increased. This view is intuitive, as are all important views, in the sense that it can’t be proven. As Aristotle said, it shows a lack of education to try to prove everything, because you have to have a starting point. You can’t prove the methodology of science, you can’t prove logic, because logic presupposes fundamental premises.9

Such intuited understanding is the basis for much of deep ecology’s platform.

Experience is also a basis for knowledge. In this, deep ecology shares an understanding with bioregionalism, which also appears to value experiential learning. Knowing something in your bones is essential to the transformation of the individual and society that ecophilosophy is attempting to create, and is only found through bone-influencing experience. However, I think the two consider experiences on different levels. Bioregionalists seem to see much of that vital experience coming from the work of living with the land, of making a living from it without doing harm. It is experience that is grounded, quite literally, in soil and sun and green plants and house building and celebration. Gut-level experience. The supporters of deep ecology, however, seem to speak of the essential knowledge of experiences as more mental than physical activity. While grounded in the physical activities many deep ecology enthusiasts engage in—aikido and other martial arts, mountain climbing, hiking, for instancethe result of these experiences should be a transformational mental change, although derived from experience. Warwick Fox writes,

Rather than dealing with moral injunctions, transpersonal ecologists are. . . inclined far more to what might be referred to as experiential invitations: readers or listeners are invited to experience themselves as intimately bound up with the world around them. . . (emphasis in original).10

This experience of knowing the self as part of the rest of the world, caught up in it inextricably, is at the core of deep ecology’s transformative potential. It is however, something very different from the experiences at the heart of bioregionalism, which focus on connections at a far more pragmatic level.

The Ecofeminist Worldview

In contrast with bioregionalism and deep ecology, an ecofeminist sense of appropriate knowledge is not easily defined, principally because it has not been clearly defined in ecofeminism. Rather, there are conflicting theories under debate. There is none of the generally-agreed-upon, open-to-personal-interpretation theory found in deep ecology or bioregionalism. At the heart of ecofeminist debate is the role of the rational and objective versus the role of the emotional and the subjective.

As with deep ecology and bioregionalism, ecological feminism began as a critique and rejection of the western cultural worldview with its overemphasis on rationality, and linearity. It argued against a Cartesian science which elevated the material and objective above the spiritual and the subjective as appropriate ways of knowing the world.11 However, from the first, the ecofeminist discussion has been a more critical and complicated enterprise, perhaps because ecofeminist supporters perceived that they had more to lose. The consequences of the wrong argument seemed likely to include the ongoing oppression of women and the loss of a badly needed liberating opportunity. This sense of possible loss may account for the fact that many ecofeminists approached the debate in a highly combative way. Ecofeminist debate may also be more combative because it has been part of an older debate inherited from feminist theory, with no resolution apparent for either feminists or ecofeminists.

At the heart of the debate was ecofeminism’s early need to reclaim subjectivity, feeling, emotion, and caring as legitimate sources of knowledge, precisely because they were disregarded feminine values which needed reclamation. The concepts themselves seem to have been lost in the controversy that raged over whether anything could count solely and truly as a “feminine” attribute. (This argument has been carried on on many fronts, not merely over valid ways of knowing. It is at the heart of the splits in the ecofeminist movement today.)

Whether seeking to reclaim them as “feminine” ways of knowing (i.e. ways particularly associated with, or possibly unique to, women) or merely arguing that such ways need to be re-valued, ecofeminist theories have argued the following: an ecofeminist (or feminist) way of knowing must acknowledge “the central importance of the erotic, the private, the personal. . . Its central ontological category is not substance, but relation.”12 Ecofeminist knowledge, says Rose,

transcends dichotomies, insists on the scientific validity of the subjective, on the need to unite cognitive and affective domains; it emphasizes holism, harmony, and complexity rather than reductionism, domination and linearity.13

Finally, ecofeminist knowledge stresses the importance of understanding found through personal connection and caring.14 An excellent example of such a knowledge is demonstrated in the interest many ecofeminists have taken in the animal rights movement.15 Whatever one thinks of such interests, the interests are clearly felt by those involved: the animal rights activists are often motivated by a personal love of animals or by experiences with abused animals.

Like deep ecology and bioregionalism, ecological feminism stresses the importance of experience, and personal experience at that. However, the ecofeminists seem to be talking about experience in a sense more related to bioregionalism than deep ecology. There is a stress on bodily experience, on what is learned through working with muscle and bone, rather than the mental exercises some supporters of deep ecology advocate. Thus, French writes of returning to the mediating experience of pleasure as it stresses to the individual the importance of the body’s experiences.16 It is the body which links us to our feelings:

All knowledge is rooted in our sensuality. We know and value the world, if we know and value it, through our ability to touch, to hear, to see. Perception is foundational to conception. Ideas are dependent on our sensuality. Feeling is the basic bodily ingredient that mediates our connectedness to the world. . . In the absence of feeling there is no rational ability to evaluate what is happening.17

Ecofeminists such as French, Harrison, Kheel, and others argue that it is these feelings which we must recover as legitimate sources of knowledge. It is feeling and personal experiences which lead us to care, a possible solution to the techno-industrial worldview’s alienated and ecologically destructive approach to the world. Both Lahar and Kheel argue that, without a sense of personal connection and caring about an object or event, we will not be able to act in an ethically sound manner. Abstract ethical principles (such as are found in traditional philosophy and often in deep ecology) are insufficient as they fail to evoke any true commitment and can easily be manipulated to meet other ends.18

Both the emphasis on emotion and on caring, have come under attack by other ecofeminists. Biehl in particular sees this growing focus as a rejection of the benefits and value of rationality, a dangerous trend she argues. Biehl argues it is the ecofeminists’ focus on holism that leads them to embrace a personal, experiential subjectivity as a feminine value. Yet there is nothing liberating for either women or men in a complete embrace of subjectivity or of experiential caring as a basis for improving our relations with each other or the natural world:

Not only is ‘caring’ compatible with hierarchy, if it is grounded in any way in ‘women’s nature’—or men’s for that matter—let alone in social constructions, it lacks any institutional form. It simply rests on the tenuous prayer that individuals will be motivated to ‘care.’ But individuals may easily start or stop caring. They may care at their whim. They may not care enough. They may care about some but not others. Lacking an institutional form and dependent on individual whim, ‘caring’ is a slender thread on which to base an emancipatory political life.19

To embrace experience, feeling, and subjectivity as legitimate ways of knowing is, according to Biehl and other critics, to reject rationality, and a necessary objectivity. It is to throw away the best in western cultures along with the worst of its rational excesses. Yet, for all their enthusiastic reclamation of emotion and subjectivity, I don’t see ecofeminists taking that step. Most are legitimately wary of moving from one extreme to another: from hyper-rationality to hyper-emotionality. As Plumwood and King point out, to focus on emotion and subjectivity to the exclusion of other forms of knowledge is to fall into the old dualistic trap ecofeminists set out to criticize: either emotion or rationality.20 “Feminism and the Revolt of Nature.” Heresies # 13 4(1): 12–16. pp. 13–14. They are not alone in this belief. Plumwood, Kheel, and Code also argue the need to have both objectivity and subjectivity, reason and emotion, experience and idea.21

While somewhat divided amongst themselves, ecofeminists seem to arrive at a sense of appropriate knowledges that is similar to that of deep ecology and bioregionalism, and yet it is also a good deal more complex.

The Native American Worldview

Comparing the knowledge systems of indigenous North American cultures, with 20,000 to 40,000 years of elaboration, and the three ecosophies, perhaps 20 years in development, is difficult. The first is too complex to be articulated on more than a superficial plane. The latter can be discussed as something relatively separate from everything else. Yet I think there is some merit to attempting this task in this context. Because each of the three ecosophies have taken some inspiration from what they understand of Native philosophy, it’s worth looking at what they have picked up on and what they may have ignored.

Native Americans were/are among the most practically and pragmatically grounded philosophers, while at the same time amongst the most visionary in terms of their understanding of appropriate knowledges. Their cultures are an implicit critique of the western model of rationality versus emotion, mind versus body, action versus thought. Oddly, they are an embodiment of what ecofeminists such as King and others are attempting to articulate.

Knowledge comes from a number of sources. Knowledge which has to do with making a living comes from personal observations and those made by ancestors. Concrete knowledge of where to find game, edible plants or materials for constructing shelters is essential. Yet knowledge that comes from myths and legends, from such “non-rational” sources as dreams and visions, are equally valued. Myths and visions give shape to a physical reality and allow understanding of reality, but they are also something more. Laguna Pueblo Allen describes myth this way:

myth is more than a statement about how the world ought to work; its poetic and mystical dimensions indicate that it embodies a sense of reality that includes all human capabilities, ideal and actual. . . Myth is a kind of story that allows a holistic image to pervade and shape consciousness, thus providing a coherent and empowering matrix for action and relationship.22

This is precisely what ecofeminists are attempting to describe, a way of understanding the world that brings together all possibilities of the mind and body. What is “real” and what is “non-real” to us (the physical world versus a vision) is not distinct in Indian cultures. Instead, they are different aspects of the same thing. Momaday, a Kiowa, describes this as the existence of a physical vision and an imaginative vision. To function, they must be aligned, a practice at which, he argues, Indian cultures have been particularly effective.23 Western cultures refuse to allow an alignment of the two; we persist in seeing them as isolated ways of seeing. One is of very little value.

Allen argues that Native American cultures are based on visions and dreams, and the survival of those cultures requires regular and dedicated renewal of those visions by members of the community.24 In one sense, the personal experience of vision questing becomes the basis for community survival. This idea is very similar to what ecofeminists are attempting to articulate. The idea of vision questing as a source of knowledge has also been adopted by deep ecological practitioners, although with a slightly different purpose. In deep ecology, vision questing is a way of realigning the private individual with his or her appropriate place in the universe. Vision questing serves this function for Native Americans as well, but there is a far greater emphasis (perhaps its primary emphasis) on community renewal.

The linkage between such esoteric sources of knowledge and the applied “rational” knowledge of the physical world is demonstrated by the perhaps 40,000 years of generally successful, although not perfect, coexistence with North American ecosystems. It is this sort of blood and bone knowledge of the earth that bioregionalists are attempting to regain through their own experience. A Yurok holy man talks of “seeing” as essential in true knowledge:

To see means to see what is actually there, what actually exists; not what you want to be there, but what is really there. It’s all seeing (emphasis in original).25

What he is talking about is not projecting human wants and desires, but seeing the land for what it is and what it can do, the essence of bioregionalism. Such seeing, however, only comes with experience and living with the earth.

Conclusions

The quest for knowledge is complicated by the form in which we are willing to accept that knowledge. Ecophilosophy is contributing to the expansion of our horizons by suggesting the different sorts of knowledge we might come to value, in time, in our search for better relationships with the natural world. Deep ecology, ecofeminism and bioregionalism still appear to have a long route to travel in their development of an epistemology. The most telling comment I’ve heard about the sources of knowledge we are all seeking, ecosophers, Natives, and others, came in a personal letter from Ronald Goodman of the Rosebud Lakota Reservation. He wrote:

Going from big to little regions, going from capitalist to socialist, going from patriarchy to matriarchy—As long as the discourse remains merely secular and merely scientific—I think it’s doomed. I mean, if it doesn’t kindle us up to singing, if it doesn’t quicken us to dance, to gratitude and praise—what kind of knowledge is it?26

It’s a good question and one that it might profit all of us to ask.

Endnotes

1. Kirkpatrick Sale. 1985. Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books. p. 53.

2. “Reinhabit the Hudson Estuary: The Hudson Estuary Bundles.” Includes Thomas Berry. No Date. The Lower Hudson River Basin as a Bioregional Community.

3. See, for example, Frisco Bay Mussel Group. 1978. “Living Here.” In Peter Berg (ed.). 1978.Reinhabiting a Separate Country. San Francisco, CA: Planet Drum Foundation. pp. 125-131.

4. Nelson Denman. 1991. “Reach Young People with Green City Theatre.” Raise the Stakes 17(Winter): 7.

5. Steve Stanfield and Dale Pendell. 1978. “Finding the Bones: Portrait of a Community.” In Peter Berg (ed.). 1978. Reinhabiting a Separate Country. San Francisco, CA: Planet Drum Foundation. pp. 63-98. p. 78.

6. Morris Berman. 1981. The Reenchantment of the World. Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press; Carolyn Merchant. 1980. The Death of Nature. San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row.

7. Deep ecology’s originator, Arne Naess, and scholar Warwick Fox are particularly good examples of this. See Arne Naess. 1989. Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: Outlines of an Ecosophy. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press; and Warwick Fox. 1990. Toward a Transpersonal Ecology. Developing New Foundations for Environmentalism. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, Inc.

8. Bill Devall. 1988. Simple in Means, Rich in Ends. Practising Deep Ecology. Salt Lake City, UT: Peregrine Smith Books.p. 11.

9. Stephan Bodian. 1982. “Simple in Means, Rich in Ends: A Conversation with Arne Naess.” The Ten Directions (Summer/Fall): 7, 10-14. pp. 11-12.

10. Fox 1990: 244-245.

11. See in particular the critique in Ynestra King. 1981. “Feminism and the Revolt of Nature.” Heresies # 13 4(1): 12-16.

12. Patsy Hallen. 1987. “Making Peace With Nature: Why Ecology Needs Feminism.” The Trumpeter 4(3): 3-14.p. 5.

13. Hilary Rose. 1984. “Beyond Masculinist Realities: A Feminist Epistemology for the Sciences.” In Ruth Blieir (ed.). 1984. Science and Gender: A Critique of Biology and Its Theories on Women. New York, NY: Pergamon Press. pp. 57-76. p. 72.

14. See Judith Plaskow and Carol P. Christ. 1989. “Introduction.” In Judith Plaskow and Carol P. Christ (eds.). 1989. Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality. San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row. pp. 1-13; Stephanie Lahar. 1991. “Ecofeminist Theory and Grassroots Politics.” Hypatia 6(1)(Spring): 28-45; and Marti Kheel. 1985. “The Liberation of Nature: A Circular Affair.” Environmental Ethics 7(Summer): 135-149.

15. See Greta Gaard (ed.). 1993. Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, or the special issue of Hypatia, on Ecological Feminism, 6(1): Spring 1991.

16. Marilyn French. 1985. Beyond Power: On Women, Men, and Morals. New York, NY: Summit Books. p. 444.

17. Beverly Wilding Harrison. 1989. “The Power of Anger in the Work of Love.” In Judith Plaskow and Carol P. Christ (eds.). 1989. Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality. San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row. pp. 214-225. p. 218-219.

18. Kheel 1985: 144; Lahar 1990.

19. Janet Biehl. 1991. Finding Our Way: Rethinking Ecofeminist Politics. Montreal, Que: Black Rose Books. p. 150.

20. Val Plumwood. 1991. “Nature, Self, and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism.” Hypatia 6(1)(Spring): 3-27. p. 7, and Ynestra King. 1981.

21. See Lorraine Code. 1988. “Experience, Knowledge and Responsibility.” In Morwenna Griffiths and Margaret Whitford (eds.). 1988. Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. pp. 187-204; Plumwood 1991; and Kheel 1985.

22. Paula Gunn Allen. 1986. The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. pp. 104-105.

23. N. Scott Momaday. 1976. “Native American Attitudes to the Environment.” In Walter H. Capps (ed.). 1976. Seeing With a Native Eye. New York, NY: Harper and Row. pp. 79-85.

24. Allen 1986: 107.

25. Peter Matthiessen. 1981. “Native Earth.” Parabola 6(1) (Winter): 6-17. p. 15.

26. Ronald Goodman. Rosebud Lakota Reservation, South Dakota. Letter to Annie Booth, November 16, 1990.