Momaday: Native American culture vs American culture

Looking back on past readings in the class, I realized that there have been multiple authors who have influenced my view about nature and the conservation of it. A few weeks ago we looked at N. Scott Momaday’s thoughts with passages from A First American Views His Land. This text looks at how Native Americans view and feel about the land around them, which provides a start contrast to how the modern American views nature. For instance, Native Americans view nature as they are able to live in harmony with it, as a Native American “lives on the land; he takes his living from it; but he does not destroy it” (573). They view nature as being able to provide for them but they do not take more than what they need. From prior knowledge, Native Americans will hunt a deer and use every part of it, leaving none of it to go to waste.

Modern Americans, however, do not view nature in this way. Large companies and the like will view nature as a source to be exploited, not taking into account the consequences of their actions. We constantly hear about pollution, deforestation, and climate change, yet the world around us still continues to be exploited. Additionally, we as Americans tend to also be more wasteful; the amount of thrown away food and other resources can be astounding. Reading Momaday made me think of the many ways I could be wasteful—for instance, the apartment complex I live in does not have a recycling system, so every piece of paper thrown out seems like a waste instead of it possibly being reused.

One of the questions that came up when we discussed Momaday was that, seeing the differences between how American culture and Native American culture both view nature, is it possible for ours to love it too? And I do think it is possible for American society to value nature but we would have to change the structure of our system. There are companies and products we look at being sustainable and will try to purchase from them than from other companies known to exploit and pollute, yet compared to the rest of the system this only seems like a small step. One day I hope that Americans can get over their greed and change the system to value nature more, but for now we have to rely on small changes and hope it makes a big enough difference down the road.