Forgotten Fires: Native Americans and the Transient Wilderness

Abstract

Omer C. Stewart, (edited and with introductions by Henry T. Lewis and M. Kat Anderson), Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002, xi + 364 pages (cloth).Reviewer: Marc PinkoskiUniversity of VictoriaForgotten Fires: Native Americans and the Transient Wilderness, Omer Stewart's posthumously published opus on Indian burning practices, is a curious and fascinating book. Given the rise of uncontrollable brush fires throughout the world, the book contains a breadth of study on a timely topic that is unparalleled in either anthropology or environmental studies. The quite remarkable facts of the book, however, are that the bulk of it was written almost five decades ago, and that Stewart's demonstration of the humanity of Native Americans, through the technology and knowledge of burning practices, is a prescient depiction of Indian agency that many more recent accounts still do not recognize.The book is divided into four sections. The first is a co-authored introduction written jointly by the editors, Henry Lewis and M. Kat Anderson. This introduction details the history of the book, and why it was originally rejected for publication. It also outlines a cogent argument for the continued relevancy of the material, dated though it may be, by presenting the text as a historic document. The primary function of the introduction is to situate the book within the anthropological and ecological literature as a forerunner to challenges of the perception that Native Americans were benign agents in their landscape, and emphasise that they were, and continue to be, makers of and participants in the environment. The editors offer as a final contribution of the book the necessity for management officials to reconsider the role of burning practices in the recent and long-term history of the North American landscape. They argue that Native American agency in controlling, caring for, and managing lands through various forms of traditional ecological knowledge has a deeply rooted history in the ecology of the continent.The next two sections round out the editors' introduction to the text by offering a critique of the original monograph and situating it in a contemporary context of both anthropology and ecology. Lewis, writing the anthropological critique, points out that burning practices did not fall under the normal anthropological ethno-science examinations. He surmises the reason for this omission is due to the perception of hunter-gatherers as having little or no effect on their environments. Lewis also alludes to the fact that Stewart's difficulties in publishing the text may have come from his theoretical and political orientation, one which led him into direct conflict with Julian Steward as an expert witness in Indian land claim cases. Although this is a contentious statement, Lewis does offer reasoned support for it, and there is no doubt that Stewart's description of Native American's relationship to the environment attributed a greater agency than the theory of either Leslie White or Julian Steward--both of whom Lewis points to as representative of the dominant trend in anthropological theory in the 1950s and 60s in studies of ecology. Lewis asserts that Stewart's theoretical orientation, and the conclusions that he drew from it, were out of step with many of his contemporaries. For this reason alone, and given Stewart's success at the Indian Claims Commission hearings at the expense of Julian Steward and his cohort, his work is worthy of greater examination.Anderson's ecological critique puts forward an argument similar to Lewis'. Anderson insists that most ecologists base their formulations on premises that counter to the idea that Indians shaped the ecology of certain plant communities with fire (p. …