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Documents
Richard Nelson, “The Watchful World”
(Extract from Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1983: 14–32.)
Because most pre-Columbian Indians did not have a written language, there are few primary sources that describe their understandings of the natural world. For this reason, we’re going to turn first to an anthropologist’s account of one Native nation and their views on nature. Technically, what we are looking at here is a secondary source, which describes how American Indian hunters, the Koyukon people of Alaska, understood the natural world.
There are at least two limitations to the usefulness of this document. First, it is by a white anthropologist, Richard Nelson, so we must remind ourselves that we are actually receiving this account of the Koyukon world view second hand. Nelson often quotes Koyukon people’s descriptions of their beliefs from interviews he had with them (these appear in italics). But he also quotes his own thoughts as recorded in his journal during his research (these appear in roman, and end with “Huslia Journal,” and the date of the entry). Be careful not to confuse the two.
Second, Nelson was describing Koyukon beliefs of the 1970s. To assume that Indian beliefs of the distant past were similar to the 1970’s Koyukon views is risky. Indian peoples were and are culturally diverse. Just because a community of people in Alaska thought in particular ways in the 1970s does not mean that their ancestors of centuries back, much less Indians living thousands of miles away at the same time, thought similarly. (Would your beliefs about religion and nature be a good indicator of the convictions of your ancestors in, say, 1490?) Nevertheless, other evidence suggests that historical Indian beliefs had many parallels to Koyukon religion. Richard Nelson provides us with a coherent interpretation of Indian natural understandings, and for this reason his account remains one of the most useful introductions to the subject.
Nelson describes a perception of nature that was alive and well at the time he lived amongst the Koyukon. The way of life and world view he describes are in fact still vigorous, especially in the remote reaches of Alaska, the Canadian north, and in places in the continental United States. In this sense, the cultural world he sketches for us here is part of modern America – thinking about it as just “history” would mean missing one of the most important insights which environmental history has to offer: that not all people think about nature in the same way. Nelson is attempting to present us with a view of nature through Koyukon eyes. Whatever else we say about his interpretation, there is no doubt that Koyukon people see the natural world as a universe of spirits, most of them having great and potentially dangerous powers. Environmental history often leads us, in surprising ways, to the connections between peoples and their creators.
What in the Koyukon view of nature strikes you as different from your own understandings of nature? Is the Koyukon world generally more “natural” than your world? And is “nature” one thing among the Koyukon? Is nature separate from other parts of the Koyukon world? Or do its distinctive entities, spirits, presences, and forces infuse all aspects of Koyukon life? Do different parts of Koyukon nature have different meanings?
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There’s always things in the air that watch us
A Way of Seeing
… Traditional Koyukon people live in a world that watches, in a forest of eyes. A person moving through nature – however wild, remote, even desolate the place may be – is never truly alone. The surroundings are aware, sensate, personified. They feel. They can be offended. And they must, at every moment,