This book has sold 73 copies at UPB since publication. Talk about a mind on fire! Kat Anderson has written a white-hot study on the land use practices of California Indians after decades of deep research at Berkeley and among indigenous people around the state. The familiar history of dispossession, genocide, and assimilation is told in new detail and horror. More important is the remarkable range of examples and perspective Anderson presents on the ways California Indians managed and lived in our landscapes. They harvested and used many of the plants we value in the Berkeley Hills today — willow, elderberry, oaks, hazelnut, soaproot, yampah, miner’s lettuce, mugwort, bunch grasses, etc. – and they understood what kinds of disturbances help rather than hurt these beneficial plants. Yes, they burned frequently, but often very specifically. And their methods of irrigating, pruning and coppicing, sowing, tilling, transplanting, and weeding add up to a land-use sophistication far beyond our modern understandings of how to preserve and to protect our wild lands. William McClung, UPB, East Bay Hills land steward.
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Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources by M. Kat Anderson (University of California Press, 2005).
This book has sold 73 copies at UPB since publication. Talk about a mind on fire! Kat Anderson has written a white-hot study on the land use practices of California Indians after decades of deep research at Berkeley and among indigenous people around the state. The familiar history of dispossession, genocide, and assimilation is told in new detail and horror. More important is the remarkable range of examples and perspective Anderson presents on the ways California Indians managed and lived in our landscapes. They harvested and used many of the plants we value in the Berkeley Hills today — willow, elderberry, oaks, hazelnut, soaproot, yampah, miner’s lettuce, mugwort, bunch grasses, etc. – and they understood what kinds of disturbances help rather than hurt these beneficial plants. Yes, they burned frequently, but often very specifically. And their methods of irrigating, pruning and coppicing, sowing, tilling, transplanting, and weeding add up to a land-use sophistication far beyond our modern understandings of how to preserve and to protect our wild lands. William McClung, UPB, East Bay Hills land steward.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.