Contemporary American Conception of Wilderness - Essay Example

Americans, for the most part, have always defined the wilderness as being an environment in which ordinary human beings struggled to be able to provide for themselves and their families. Moreover, this unrealistic notion disregards the fact that the American Indians lived comfortably in that supposed ‘harsh wilderness’ for virtual centuries; only to be unceremoniously cast out of it so that pampered tourists could continue to take pleasure in the illusion that they still had places in their nation which were preserved in their original and pristine state.

Cronon openly avows that the notion of the preservation of the wilderness is actually a myth of mainstream cultural construction (Cronon, LoPrete, and Demos, 2003). The supposedly ‘American Wilderness’ was once the home of American Indians who farmed the land to produce food and lived on it as well. They also freely owned this land. Today, the notion of hunting societies gaining sustenance from the wilderness is in direct conflict with the statutes that sustained the concept of environmentalism. Environmental dualism holds that environmentalists have a duty to safeguard “unspoiled” environments. This means that the natural inhabitants of these lands who farm or hunt in them are viewed as threats to the natural condition of the land. Read More