Sunday, January 29, 2012

How do the camp and the wilderness contrast?

In James Welch's novel Fool's Crow, none of the Blackfeet Indians or other Natives would have used the terms "wilderness" or "camp." These are terms that would have been used by white outsiders.
For Blackfeet and other Natives, wilderness would be called simply "the world" or "nature." While Westerners often view nature which is not under human control as wilderness, Native Americans view nature as something they are part of. The Earth is considered a mother that nurtures and gives life, rather than something to exploit, tame, or conquer, as many Europeans and their descendants view it.
The "camp" would have been referred to as the village or town by Blackfeet. Camp is something temporary. Blackfeet and other Plains Indians, often called nomadic by outsiders, typically returned to the same sites each year. Their towns were mobile, but the winter towns and summer towns were their habitual places to live. In that respect, they were similar to Vikings, the Irish, or even many Americans traveling to campgrounds in RVs today.
Within both nature and the village, the Blackfeet were expected to live by natural law. The village and its people were seen as part of nature, of it and not separate; animals, plants, and the land itself were seen as relatives to the people.

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