HCN offers bogus theories
We had the fantastic “theories” of Columbus “finding” North America when as many as 140 million North Americans had not “lost” it. And the “stories” of Pilgrims encountering “wilderness” when indigenous people cultivated a wide variety of crops the colonizers’ pigs wreaked havoc upon.
Now in the May 13, 2002, HCN, we have repeated the “theory” of mass extinctions of vast herds of animals by a tiny group of, supposedly, newly arrived people. This is yet another bogus, racist theory easily undermined.
Vine Deloria (Red Earth, White Lies) and Wade Churchill (A Little Matter of Genocide) are two academic authors who have punched mastodon-sized holes into the theories of Bering Strait migrations into the Western Hemisphere and that these same humans killed every big animal in sight almost overnight.
Sure, it is obvious that any new condition changes a habitat. But the book review by Ed Marston, article by Dan Flores, and interview of Michael Soulé in the May 13 issue all appeared obligated to pull out this tired extinctive smear. They didn’t need to do this to point out that managing habitat for diversity and collective (generational) good is historically more successful than fattening up “50,000 cattle and sheep” for individual, short-term profit.
Kali Kaliche
Williams, Arizona
