Only Slaves Climb Trees - Revisiting The Myth Of The Ecologically Noble Savage In Amazonia

Professional and popular publications have increasingly depicted native peoples of Amazonia as \u27\u27natural\u27\u27 conservationists or as people with an innate \u27\u27conservation ethic.\u27\u27 A few classic examples are cited repeatedly to advance this argument with the result that these cases tend to be generalized to all indigenous peoples. This paper explores the premise that many of these systems of resource conservation come from areas of Amazonia where human survival depends on careful management of the subsistence base and not from a culturally imbedded \u27\u27conservation ethic.\u27\u27 Where resource constraints do not pertain, as in the case of the Yuqui of lowland Bolivia, such patterns are unknown. Finally, the negative consequences of portraying all native peoples as natural conservationists is having some negative consequences in terms of current struggles to obtain indigenous land rights