What do you think?
Rate this book
Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources
John Muir was an early proponent of a view we still hold today—that much of California was pristine, untouched wilderness before the arrival of Europeans. But as this groundbreaking book demonstrates, what Muir was really seeing when he admired the grand vistas of Yosemite and the gold and purple flowers carpeting the Central Valley were the fertile gardens of the Sierra Miwok and Valley Yokuts Indians, modified and made productive by centuries of harvesting, tilling, sowing, pruning, and burning. Marvelously detailed and beautifully written, Tending the Wild is an unparalleled examination of Native American knowledge and uses of California's natural resources that reshapes our understanding of native cultures and shows how we might begin to use their knowledge in our own conservation efforts.
M. Kat Anderson presents a wealth of information on native land management practices gleaned in part from interviews and correspondence with Native Americans who recall what their grandparents told them about how and when areas were burned, which plants were eaten and which were used for basketry, and how plants were tended. The complex picture that emerges from this and other historical source material dispels the hunter-gatherer stereotype long perpetuated in anthropological and historical literature. We come to see California's indigenous people as active agents of environmental change and stewardship. Tending the Wild persuasively argues that this traditional ecological knowledge is essential if we are to successfully meet the challenge of living sustainably.
M. Kat Anderson presents a wealth of information on native land management practices gleaned in part from interviews and correspondence with Native Americans who recall what their grandparents told them about how and when areas were burned, which plants were eaten and which were used for basketry, and how plants were tended. The complex picture that emerges from this and other historical source material dispels the hunter-gatherer stereotype long perpetuated in anthropological and historical literature. We come to see California's indigenous people as active agents of environmental change and stewardship. Tending the Wild persuasively argues that this traditional ecological knowledge is essential if we are to successfully meet the challenge of living sustainably.
555 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
218 people are currently reading
4120 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
June 30, 2014
LITERALLY AMAZING. destroys both anthropological and ecologic assumptions about native californians and their role in the landscape, that is, CA was NOT a pristine wilderness (and as much as i like muir: SUCK IT, muir), much of the abundance and beautiful structure of the plant communities resulted from indigenous expert care and knowledge! book deconstructs white/western concept of wilderness and integrates native californian history + current concerns w/environmental problems. CREDITS NATIVE PEOPLE WHO WERE SOURCES OF INFORMATION!!!!! (which is super important in this context because a lot of native knowledge is disregarded- columbusing eh?)
basically i'm pissed this wasn't required reading for like all my major's classes. not even ethnobotany came close!!
basically i'm pissed this wasn't required reading for like all my major's classes. not even ethnobotany came close!!
March 23, 2015
“Nature really misses us,” laments M. Kat Anderson. “We no longer have a relationship with plants and animals, and that’s the reason why they’re going away.” Anderson is the author of Tending the Wild, in which she describes the relationships that California Indians have with the plants and animals, the rocks and streams, the sacred land which is their ancient home. It’s an essential book for pilgrims who strive to envision the long and rugged path back home to wildness, freedom, and sustainability.
In medieval Europe, hungry dirty peasant farmers succeeded in painstakingly perfecting a miserable, laborious, backbreaking form of agriculture that depleted the soil, and produced minimal yields with erratic inconsistency. They were malnourished, unhealthy, and most of them died young — whilst the lords and ladies, who claimed to own the land, wallowed in a rich sludge of glitter and gluttony.
When European explorers arrived in California, they discovered half-naked heathen barbarians who were exceedingly healthy, and enjoyed an abundance of nourishing wild foods that they acquired without sweat or toil. Clearly, these savages were people who suffered from a lack of civilization’s elevated refinements: agriculture, smallpox, uncomfortable ugly clothing, brutal enslavement, and religious enlightenment from priests who preached the virtues of love, but practiced exploitive racist cruelty.
In 1868, Titus Fey Cronise wrote that when whites arrived, the land of California was “filled with elk, deer, hares, rabbits, quail, and other animals fit for food; the rivers and lakes swarming with salmon, trout, and other fish, their beds and banks covered with mussels, clams, and other edible mollusca; the rocks on its sea shores crowded with seal and otter; and its forests full of trees and plants, bearing acorns, nuts, seeds, and berries.”
The greed-crazed Europeans went absolutely berserk, rapidly destroying whatever could be converted into money: forests, waterfowl, whales, deer, elk, salmon, gold nuggets. Grizzly bear meat was offered at most restaurants. There were fortunes to be made, the supply of valuable resources was “inexhaustible,” and the foolish Indians were so lazy that they let all of this wealth go to waste.
There were 500 to 600 different tribes in California, speaking many different languages. In North America, the population density of California Indians was second only to the Aztec capitol of Mexico City. They lived quite successfully by hunting, fishing, and foraging — without domesticated plants or animals, without plowing or herding, without fortified cities, authoritarian rulers, perpetual warfare, horrid sanitation, or epidemics of contagious disease. The Indians found the Europeans to be incredibly peculiar. The Pit River people called them enellaaduwi — wanderers — homeless people with no attachment to the land or its creatures.
The bulk of Tending the Wild describes how the California Indians tended the land. They did not merely wander across the countryside in hopes of randomly discovering plant and animal foods. They had an intimate, sacred relationship with the land, and they tended it in order to encourage the health of their closest relatives — the plant and animal communities upon which they depended.
Fires were periodically set to clear away brush, promote the growth of grasses and herbs, and increase the numbers of larger game animals. Burning significantly altered the ecosystem on a massive scale, but it didn’t lead to the creation of barren wastelands over time, like agriculture continues to do, at an ever-accelerating rate. California has a long dry season, and wildfires sparked by lightening are a normal occurrence in this ecosystem.
Nuts, grains, and seeds are a very useful source of food. They’re rich in oils, calories, and protein. They can be stored for long periods, enabling survival through lean seasons and lean years. The quantity of acorns foraged each year was not regular and dependable, but many were gathered in years of abundance. A diverse variety of wildflowers and grasses can provide a dependable supply of seeds and grains.
The Indians tended the growth of important plants in a number of ways — pruning, weeding, burning, watering, replanting bulbs, sowing seeds. Communities of cherished plants were deliberately expanded. The Indians were blessed with a complete lack of advanced Old World technology. They luckily had no draft animals or plows, so their soil-disturbing activities were mostly limited to digging bulbs, corms, and tubers, and planting small tobacco gardens.
Today, countless ecosystems are being ravaged by agriculture. A few visionaries, like Wes Jackson at the Land Institute, are working to develop a far less destructive mode of farming, based on mechanically harvesting the grain from perennial plants. This research is a slow process, and success is not expected any time soon.
California Indians developed a brilliant, time-proven, sustainable system for producing seeds and grain without degrading the ecosystem. So did the wild rice gatherers of the Great Lakes region. They built no cities, and they did not suffer from the misery and monotony of civilization. They had no powerful leaders, ruling classes, or legions of exploited slaves. They were not warlike societies. Their ecosystems were clean and healthy. They lived like real human beings — wild, free, and happy.
Tending the Wild is an important book. It presents us with stories of a way of life that worked, and worked remarkably well. This is precious knowledge for us to contemplate, as our own society is rapidly circling the drain, and our need for remembering healthy old ideas has never been greater.
In medieval Europe, hungry dirty peasant farmers succeeded in painstakingly perfecting a miserable, laborious, backbreaking form of agriculture that depleted the soil, and produced minimal yields with erratic inconsistency. They were malnourished, unhealthy, and most of them died young — whilst the lords and ladies, who claimed to own the land, wallowed in a rich sludge of glitter and gluttony.
When European explorers arrived in California, they discovered half-naked heathen barbarians who were exceedingly healthy, and enjoyed an abundance of nourishing wild foods that they acquired without sweat or toil. Clearly, these savages were people who suffered from a lack of civilization’s elevated refinements: agriculture, smallpox, uncomfortable ugly clothing, brutal enslavement, and religious enlightenment from priests who preached the virtues of love, but practiced exploitive racist cruelty.
In 1868, Titus Fey Cronise wrote that when whites arrived, the land of California was “filled with elk, deer, hares, rabbits, quail, and other animals fit for food; the rivers and lakes swarming with salmon, trout, and other fish, their beds and banks covered with mussels, clams, and other edible mollusca; the rocks on its sea shores crowded with seal and otter; and its forests full of trees and plants, bearing acorns, nuts, seeds, and berries.”
The greed-crazed Europeans went absolutely berserk, rapidly destroying whatever could be converted into money: forests, waterfowl, whales, deer, elk, salmon, gold nuggets. Grizzly bear meat was offered at most restaurants. There were fortunes to be made, the supply of valuable resources was “inexhaustible,” and the foolish Indians were so lazy that they let all of this wealth go to waste.
There were 500 to 600 different tribes in California, speaking many different languages. In North America, the population density of California Indians was second only to the Aztec capitol of Mexico City. They lived quite successfully by hunting, fishing, and foraging — without domesticated plants or animals, without plowing or herding, without fortified cities, authoritarian rulers, perpetual warfare, horrid sanitation, or epidemics of contagious disease. The Indians found the Europeans to be incredibly peculiar. The Pit River people called them enellaaduwi — wanderers — homeless people with no attachment to the land or its creatures.
The bulk of Tending the Wild describes how the California Indians tended the land. They did not merely wander across the countryside in hopes of randomly discovering plant and animal foods. They had an intimate, sacred relationship with the land, and they tended it in order to encourage the health of their closest relatives — the plant and animal communities upon which they depended.
Fires were periodically set to clear away brush, promote the growth of grasses and herbs, and increase the numbers of larger game animals. Burning significantly altered the ecosystem on a massive scale, but it didn’t lead to the creation of barren wastelands over time, like agriculture continues to do, at an ever-accelerating rate. California has a long dry season, and wildfires sparked by lightening are a normal occurrence in this ecosystem.
Nuts, grains, and seeds are a very useful source of food. They’re rich in oils, calories, and protein. They can be stored for long periods, enabling survival through lean seasons and lean years. The quantity of acorns foraged each year was not regular and dependable, but many were gathered in years of abundance. A diverse variety of wildflowers and grasses can provide a dependable supply of seeds and grains.
The Indians tended the growth of important plants in a number of ways — pruning, weeding, burning, watering, replanting bulbs, sowing seeds. Communities of cherished plants were deliberately expanded. The Indians were blessed with a complete lack of advanced Old World technology. They luckily had no draft animals or plows, so their soil-disturbing activities were mostly limited to digging bulbs, corms, and tubers, and planting small tobacco gardens.
Today, countless ecosystems are being ravaged by agriculture. A few visionaries, like Wes Jackson at the Land Institute, are working to develop a far less destructive mode of farming, based on mechanically harvesting the grain from perennial plants. This research is a slow process, and success is not expected any time soon.
California Indians developed a brilliant, time-proven, sustainable system for producing seeds and grain without degrading the ecosystem. So did the wild rice gatherers of the Great Lakes region. They built no cities, and they did not suffer from the misery and monotony of civilization. They had no powerful leaders, ruling classes, or legions of exploited slaves. They were not warlike societies. Their ecosystems were clean and healthy. They lived like real human beings — wild, free, and happy.
Tending the Wild is an important book. It presents us with stories of a way of life that worked, and worked remarkably well. This is precious knowledge for us to contemplate, as our own society is rapidly circling the drain, and our need for remembering healthy old ideas has never been greater.
December 19, 2013
I live in coastal central California, in a relatively rural environment. I often like to imagine what it was like before the arrival of Europeans. The usual history tells of small nomadic primitive savages living off the land, basically as scavengers. Sure, they could make a mean waterproof basket, but otherwise there is nothing much to say about these people. And very little is said about the landscape or ecology of the area. It is what it is, redwoods and oaks and such. This book tells a very different story, of populous, settled societies tending the land while enjoying a culture of abundance for hundreds of years. The sheer number of animals was stunning to the first Europeans, birds in the millions, deer and antelope in the hundreds of thousands, bears and lions and the rivers so thick with salmon that men on horseback could not cross. Those Europeans came from a culture of poverty and vast inequality, and quickly established the same sort of society here. We all take it for granted. Like them we can hardly imagine the opposite. it is true that a culture of struggle and hardship produced our modern civilization with all of its inventions and science, but at the price that for most people, life is hard and there is no end to unfairness and violence. We have only been here for a short time. My grandfather's grandfather's grandfather was around when the Spanish began to enslave the native residents here. it is estimated that their cultures here remained in equilibrium for a hundred times as many generations back. I am always enchanted to see a flock of quail scurrying about. This book informs me that less than two hundred years ago, such a flock would have numbered in the millions, that this region has been so vastly redone that my attempts at imagining it are futile.
Read
September 29, 2023Definitely a denser/more academic text but oh my god I learned so much. Anderson does an excellent job at breaking down the myths of “wilderness”, dispelling misconceptions about indigenous California, and revealing just how carefully the indigenous people of California stewarded these landscapes in the pre-colonial era (and to this present day!). I’ll be real too that I found this revelatory in terms of just how much of this landscape is edible - I truly did not realize and feel embarrassed in my ignorance on that front with native plants. Also incredibly interesting how whole sensitive ecosystems like Yosemite’s meadows are the result of indigenous stewardship. Anderson’s ending chapters detail the importance of indigenous knowledge in restoration projects and is right on the money with that. The amount of knowledge, care and attention that goes into harvesting and tending all of those plants is incredible. controlled burns to pruning to sowing of seeds to methods of harvest that generated more growth, all done in careful timing to create the maximum benefit for the plant/ecosystem as well as the people looking to harvest and use that plant.
Learned a lot. Will be thinking about this for a while!
Learned a lot. Will be thinking about this for a while!
October 8, 2019
-"...the foundation of this book—indigenous people's stewardship of the land carries important lessons for us in the modern world..."
-"There were no clear-cut distinction between hunter-gatherers—the category into which most California Indians had been tossed—and the more "advanced" agricultural peoples of the ancient world."
-"Through twelve thousand or more years of existence in what is now California, humans knit themselves to nature through their vast knowledge base and practical experience." (2)
-"The word for wilderness is absent from many tribal vocabularies, as is the word for civilization." (3)
-"California Indians have never advocated leaving nature alone." (6)
-"Much of what we consider wilderness today was in fact shaped by Indian burning, harvesting, tilling, pruning, sowing, and tending." (8)
-"One-third of the state's 6,300 native plant species are endemics and grow nowhere else on earth." (13)
-"In 1542 one hundred languages resonated across California's myriad landscapes—one quarter of the 418 native languages that existed within the borders of the present-day United States." (14)
-"Excluding desert and high-elevation areas, it was almost impossible for early Euro-American explorers to go more than a few miles without encountering indigenous people." (34)
-"Estimates of California's total population vary from 133,000 to 705,000; about 310,000 is the most widely accepted number." (34)
-"Alfred Kroeber listed between five and six hundred tribes as the number of sociopolitical groups that were autonomous and self-governing and encompassed a cluster of two or more separate villages led by a chief." (35)
-"The great linguistic diversity reflects the termendous length of time people have been here." (37)
-"California had been peopled for at least 12,000 to 13,500 years when European settlement began." (37)
-"Migration stories are absent from the lore of many tribes." (37)
-"The Sierra Miwok, for example, relied on nearly 160 plant species for food and more than 110 plant species for medicines." (42)
-"In aboriginal California, women were the ethnobotanists, testing, selecting, and tending much of the plant world, and men were the ethnozoologists, applying their intimate knowledge of animal behavior to skillful hunting." (41)
-"The California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) alleviated Yuka toothaches, fed Sierra Miwok stomachs, healed Wintu newborn babies' navels, and induced sleep among the Ohlone." (42)
-"Many of the 66 species of freshwater fishes, 46 amphibians, 96 reptiles, 563 birds, and 190 mammals that inhabited California were incorporated into the ethnozoologies of the tribes." (45)
-"A great variety of insects—grasshoppers, cicadas, ants, flies, crickets—were used for food and other items." (47)
-"While gathering or hunting, people all over California followed two overarching rules: Leave some of what is gathered for the other animals and Do not waste what you have harvested." (55)
-"From 1769 to 1890 the population plummeted from approximately 310,000 to 17,000." (64)
-1542: Spanish became first non-Indians on Alta California." (65)
-1769: First permanent European colony, Spanish, in Alta California. (72)
-"Though initially some indigenous people willingly joined the mission system, by 1787, recruitment was sometimes forced." (72)
-"Disobedient Indians were whipped with a barbed lash, subjected to solitary confinement, mutilated, locked in stocks and hobbles, branded, and sometimes executed." (75)
-"With the acquisition of horses from the colonists, these Indians changed from peaceful, sedentary, localized groups to semiwarlike, seminomadic groups." (82)
-"There were no clear-cut distinction between hunter-gatherers—the category into which most California Indians had been tossed—and the more "advanced" agricultural peoples of the ancient world."
-"Through twelve thousand or more years of existence in what is now California, humans knit themselves to nature through their vast knowledge base and practical experience." (2)
-"The word for wilderness is absent from many tribal vocabularies, as is the word for civilization." (3)
-"California Indians have never advocated leaving nature alone." (6)
-"Much of what we consider wilderness today was in fact shaped by Indian burning, harvesting, tilling, pruning, sowing, and tending." (8)
-"One-third of the state's 6,300 native plant species are endemics and grow nowhere else on earth." (13)
-"In 1542 one hundred languages resonated across California's myriad landscapes—one quarter of the 418 native languages that existed within the borders of the present-day United States." (14)
-"Excluding desert and high-elevation areas, it was almost impossible for early Euro-American explorers to go more than a few miles without encountering indigenous people." (34)
-"Estimates of California's total population vary from 133,000 to 705,000; about 310,000 is the most widely accepted number." (34)
-"Alfred Kroeber listed between five and six hundred tribes as the number of sociopolitical groups that were autonomous and self-governing and encompassed a cluster of two or more separate villages led by a chief." (35)
-"The great linguistic diversity reflects the termendous length of time people have been here." (37)
-"California had been peopled for at least 12,000 to 13,500 years when European settlement began." (37)
-"Migration stories are absent from the lore of many tribes." (37)
-"The Sierra Miwok, for example, relied on nearly 160 plant species for food and more than 110 plant species for medicines." (42)
-"In aboriginal California, women were the ethnobotanists, testing, selecting, and tending much of the plant world, and men were the ethnozoologists, applying their intimate knowledge of animal behavior to skillful hunting." (41)
-"The California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) alleviated Yuka toothaches, fed Sierra Miwok stomachs, healed Wintu newborn babies' navels, and induced sleep among the Ohlone." (42)
-"Many of the 66 species of freshwater fishes, 46 amphibians, 96 reptiles, 563 birds, and 190 mammals that inhabited California were incorporated into the ethnozoologies of the tribes." (45)
-"A great variety of insects—grasshoppers, cicadas, ants, flies, crickets—were used for food and other items." (47)
-"While gathering or hunting, people all over California followed two overarching rules: Leave some of what is gathered for the other animals and Do not waste what you have harvested." (55)
-"From 1769 to 1890 the population plummeted from approximately 310,000 to 17,000." (64)
-1542: Spanish became first non-Indians on Alta California." (65)
-1769: First permanent European colony, Spanish, in Alta California. (72)
-"Though initially some indigenous people willingly joined the mission system, by 1787, recruitment was sometimes forced." (72)
-"Disobedient Indians were whipped with a barbed lash, subjected to solitary confinement, mutilated, locked in stocks and hobbles, branded, and sometimes executed." (75)
-"With the acquisition of horses from the colonists, these Indians changed from peaceful, sedentary, localized groups to semiwarlike, seminomadic groups." (82)
February 13, 2025
A good look at California’s ecological history, including the traditional harvest and uses of plants like wild hyacinth in the valley where I live. I also learned that there used to be a great many more pinion pine trees near Mono Lake, but these were cleared out by settlers.
The author explains the many ways native peoples have maintained landscapes and species in a healthy balance over time. There are a variety of sources cited, including native voices giving more context to specific practices. Additionally there were accounts from astonished settlers who were flabbergasted by the “garden-like” appearance of California’s forests and meadows, yet who refused to acknowledge that this was due to historical care from native people.
The author explains the many ways native peoples have maintained landscapes and species in a healthy balance over time. There are a variety of sources cited, including native voices giving more context to specific practices. Additionally there were accounts from astonished settlers who were flabbergasted by the “garden-like” appearance of California’s forests and meadows, yet who refused to acknowledge that this was due to historical care from native people.
April 4, 2008
This book just blew me away. That the breathtaking landscape seen and commented on by such luminaries as John Muir was not, as he and many others thought, a pristinely untouched place, but a managed ecosystem (by the native peoples) is a one the exciting discoveries of my life. It weaves in with the biology and ecology of the native peoples plant community management a history of the atrocities and injustices done to the Indians of California which for me was a message that the place is tragically poorer for the loss and neglect of what the tribes of California knew about maintaining a healthy ecosystem. The amount of plant knowledge that had to be compiled and how well it is conveyed is incredible.
February 19, 2025
Read this for a paper but it’s extremely good, and very relevant right now.
January 26, 2021
Almost a great book. It does a good job explaining indigenous land management techniques and shows that hunting and gathering was much more sophisticated than most people assume. Rather than just wandering around and opportunistically snatching up any resource they happened to stumble upon, the people of California had very carefully worked to maintain a landscape that was more productive and less prone to catastrophic wildfires. By systematically burning the landscape at key times they were able to keep dangerous fuel loads from building up, prevent insect pests and fungal plant diseases from destroying their acorn harvests, produce healthier grass for the grazing animals they hunted and promote straighter growth of basketry and other building material. It also does a pretty good job explaining why this history is relevant to modern ecosystem restoration, park management and farming. It's one of those rare types of anthropology books that focuses almost entirely on things that matter, as opposed to so many others that waste your time mainly with the most provocative elements of the cultures or the author's personal adventure stories. Books like this that describe the history of local ecosystems and how indigenous people lived there really should be required reading for all high school kids. For California, I would guess that this is one of the better ones (since I'm from the northeast I have more interest in that bioregion and still haven't found any that really impress me yet, even though I've been interested in this subject for a long time).
That said, it still lacks detail in many areas. The main problem is that it's just not well organized at all, which makes the writing way too repetitive. This is something I complain about with a lot of books, especially environmental books that should be concerned about wasting paper, but this really is about as bad as it gets in that regard, and there's so much more that should have been discussed in here. Some of the info seems a little outdated as well. Her estimates about population are definitely on the low side. Even though she's trying to show that this region had some of the highest population densities of any hunter gatherer groups, she uses 1.5 per square mile as evidence of this. That's really not that high though, especially for coastal areas. The Chumash, which is actually a California tribe, are now thought to have been over 20 per square mile. And it also seems likely to me that more tribes were growing maize than she suggests. Considering that maize comes from central America and was already being grown in upstate New York 1,000 years ago I'm pretty skeptical that more indigenous Californians weren't growing it. If they were then the population of California would be way higher than she says. It's okay for a book like this not to have detailed explanations of sustainable farming since it's more about hunter gatherer land management but I'm not sure that the impression this leaves readers with is totally accurate. This is a pretty minor complaint though. As for the repetition, it definitely pisses me off but there still is enough good information in here for me to recommend reading this one. It's a very interesting and important subject that most people don't know much about.
That said, it still lacks detail in many areas. The main problem is that it's just not well organized at all, which makes the writing way too repetitive. This is something I complain about with a lot of books, especially environmental books that should be concerned about wasting paper, but this really is about as bad as it gets in that regard, and there's so much more that should have been discussed in here. Some of the info seems a little outdated as well. Her estimates about population are definitely on the low side. Even though she's trying to show that this region had some of the highest population densities of any hunter gatherer groups, she uses 1.5 per square mile as evidence of this. That's really not that high though, especially for coastal areas. The Chumash, which is actually a California tribe, are now thought to have been over 20 per square mile. And it also seems likely to me that more tribes were growing maize than she suggests. Considering that maize comes from central America and was already being grown in upstate New York 1,000 years ago I'm pretty skeptical that more indigenous Californians weren't growing it. If they were then the population of California would be way higher than she says. It's okay for a book like this not to have detailed explanations of sustainable farming since it's more about hunter gatherer land management but I'm not sure that the impression this leaves readers with is totally accurate. This is a pretty minor complaint though. As for the repetition, it definitely pisses me off but there still is enough good information in here for me to recommend reading this one. It's a very interesting and important subject that most people don't know much about.
June 30, 2025
This is an amazing book and a huge project of a read. Sections of this book (specifically chapters on basketry, above and below ground foods, and restoration principles) deepened my understanding on the possibilities of land restoration and indigenous management. We would probably have a better world if all Californians read the first 100 pages, which detail the insane abundance of the Californian landscape pre-contact, fostered by indigenous stewardship.
May 6, 2007
A groundbreaking work (if you can forgive the pun) that will strongly influence, and potentially profoundly change, the way we view nature, the subtle sophistication of the Native Americans, the importance of their knowledge in our own struggle to preserve our natural resources and heritage, and the horrific tragedy of genocide perpetrated against them by those who considered themselves "superior and advanced", but who were actually too arrogant, ignorant, unsophisticated, greedy, and brutal to recognize all they could have learned. The very attitudes that have brought our beautiful home planet to the brink of destruction.
This book is a primer of mindful environmentalism, responsible stewardship, and the humble recognition of our rightful and honest place in the world of living creatures.
For myself, it reminded me poignantly of what I have long believed, that the destruction and loss of tribal cultures was the harbinger of the environmental catastrophe we now face.
It can be said of Homo Sapiens, as much as of any species we have endangered or extincted,
"What right have we to drive these miracles off the Earth"
May we learn the lessons they have to teach us before
it's too late
This book is a primer of mindful environmentalism, responsible stewardship, and the humble recognition of our rightful and honest place in the world of living creatures.
For myself, it reminded me poignantly of what I have long believed, that the destruction and loss of tribal cultures was the harbinger of the environmental catastrophe we now face.
It can be said of Homo Sapiens, as much as of any species we have endangered or extincted,
"What right have we to drive these miracles off the Earth"
May we learn the lessons they have to teach us before
it's too late
March 6, 2023
This books is superlative. An excellent synthesis of what we know of the traditional stewardship practices of the indigenous people of California, it dives deeply into ethnology and ecology while still feeling compulsively readable. I’m thinking a lot these days about how to teach my students about genocide and colonialism and the way these historical forces effects on the landscapes we see here today, and this book offers a lot of food for thought. It’s also has me thinking about how we think about the baselines against which conservation and restoration initiatives are measured, and has made me realize that really sitting with the long history of human impacts on the natural world frees us from the binary of human and nature. I’m really excited about this book; and anyone who lives in or spends time in California should read it.
July 8, 2024
4.5 stars
really good! should be required reading for any californian, especially environmentalists/resource managers/ nature lovers. will shift the way you think and provide more perspective. only complaint is it gets a bit repetitive in the middle but u gotta push thru!!
really good! should be required reading for any californian, especially environmentalists/resource managers/ nature lovers. will shift the way you think and provide more perspective. only complaint is it gets a bit repetitive in the middle but u gotta push thru!!
August 6, 2023
Incredibly thorough and interesting. Will be reading it again, and using it as reference material.
October 27, 2025
I cannot overstate how much information this book contains and how transformative it was in my understanding of the landscape of California. It synthesizes information from western scientific methods and first person interviews from indigenous peoples. I would highly recommend this if you live in California or are interested in plants or history. What a phenomenal resource, if you see this review and have other recommendations similar to this book please tell me because the depth and breadth of this work is exactly what I'm looking for.
November 5, 2018
I would give it ten stars if I could.
April 2, 2022
This book is beloved, and deservedly so. After reading it, you will be persuaded that Native American people managed California with agronomic practices so advanced as to be illegible as agronomic practices at all to the outside observer, with results that were indistinguishable from a particularly lush and plentiful natural setting, and heartbreaking consequences in mismanagement that are only starting to be overcome (or tragically coming due with widespread wildfire).
It's a nearly perfect book: from introduction to conclusion, the concepts are revelatory, the tones are right, the sequencing is sensible, the writing is clear, the material is covered accessibly, and the coverage is comprehensive. It is only marred by a massive organizational flaw: in the middle section, encompassing most of the book, practices themselves are described again and again.
This repetition stems from uses or plants being gathered by topic, then each plant is covered, it's uses are coverage, how it is was managed to obtain those uses are covered, and then evidence from interviews and historical records are used to document those practices for that plant. The problem is that the management of these plants and the rationale behind them are largely the same from plant-to-plant and use-to-use. The writing was still exceedingly pleasant, and I would use it to fall happily asleep.
My advice: read from the intro all the way through the first part, then the first two chapters of the second part, and then from part three to the end. Then, skim what was skipped, diving in as interested. Table 5 in chapter 7, on the difference in yield density between Native American management and as found in the wild, is particularly striking.
It's a nearly perfect book: from introduction to conclusion, the concepts are revelatory, the tones are right, the sequencing is sensible, the writing is clear, the material is covered accessibly, and the coverage is comprehensive. It is only marred by a massive organizational flaw: in the middle section, encompassing most of the book, practices themselves are described again and again.
This repetition stems from uses or plants being gathered by topic, then each plant is covered, it's uses are coverage, how it is was managed to obtain those uses are covered, and then evidence from interviews and historical records are used to document those practices for that plant. The problem is that the management of these plants and the rationale behind them are largely the same from plant-to-plant and use-to-use. The writing was still exceedingly pleasant, and I would use it to fall happily asleep.
My advice: read from the intro all the way through the first part, then the first two chapters of the second part, and then from part three to the end. Then, skim what was skipped, diving in as interested. Table 5 in chapter 7, on the difference in yield density between Native American management and as found in the wild, is particularly striking.
January 1, 2018
This is one of the best books ever written. This is about more than anthropology, ethnobotany, and ecology. This is about a lifeway that sustained our ancestors for thousands of years, not just in California but across the world. Tending the Wild reveals what native peoples have long known, and what most of the colonized world has forgotten. While M. Kat Anderson never quite spells it out, her well-researched study still effectively illustrates the point that living an empathetic existence with the natural world leads to deep symbiosis. M. Kat Anderson describes how California Native Americans managed their ecosystems not only to provide for their nourishment, but at the same time to regenerate, and grow with even more abundance in the following years. This is counter-intuitive to the civilized point of view which is object-oriented and extraction-oriented. Many of us in the developed world have forgotten that relationship-oriented, reciprocal lifeway which holds the origins of all of us. Tending the Wild also indirectly dispels of the commonplace myth of hunter-gatherers living a hand-to-mouth existence without footprint on the land.
June 17, 2022
I skimmed over the parts of this I was less interested in, but overall found it an enjoyable and enlightening read. My take away is that the America that Europeans saw when they arrived was not an untamed wilderness, as depicted by them. The Native Americans had been tending it for tens of thousands of years, living off its bounty. This long relationship with the land created managed landscapes and a respect for the natural world. The other key point the author made was that treating nature as only something to be exploited or something to be completely left alone are opposite sides of the same coin. The middle ground - the one that the Native Americans had for thousands of years - is the one that is the most productive for both nature and for humans.
August 21, 2024
i want to put it on a syllabus/book club with:
the dawn of everything
blood meridian
parable of the sower
last child in the woods
name of the course is something to do with colonialism’s foundation of genocide and its (false) seperation of humanity from nature. staggering book. totally reshaped how i think of indigenous history and practices.
the dawn of everything
blood meridian
parable of the sower
last child in the woods
name of the course is something to do with colonialism’s foundation of genocide and its (false) seperation of humanity from nature. staggering book. totally reshaped how i think of indigenous history and practices.
July 19, 2018
This may be the most solarpunk book I've ever read though, of course, this book was written far earlier. A fascinating look at what constitutes ethnobotany, kind of text book in terms of writing. There were bits in the middle (especially with the burning practices) that grew to be a little redundant, but overall, very informative.
August 26, 2025
Five stars for the quality of content, three stars for the enjoyableness of reading. So much of this book was lists, so many lists, and I think it could’ve been half the length without sacrificing anything in terms of content or quality.
October 25, 2012
very academic, but good!
September 30, 2024
I read some of this in college for decolonial feminist theory. Revisiting this book some 4 years later because I've been low key thinking about it ever since then, it has really shaped my view on conservation, land management & foraging. I am filled to the brim with hope & grief, love & rage.
My notes:
In summary: LAND BACK
Resource etymology: rise again
Horticulture etymology: to garden with respect
25% of biodiversity in continental US is in Cali
Some disturbance (fire, harvesting, grazing, etc) to varying degrees increases biodiversity within ecosystems
Many native plant species disappearing due to conservation separating people from land, prohibiting their maintenance & harvesting that people & plants had mutually evolved to rely upon
Listening to the descriptions of pre-colonization California is so beautiful i want to cry its making me homesick for California 😭
False dichotomy of hunter gatherers vs farmer, & wilderness vs civilization
Middle way of the Californian Indian being a part of nature & in good relationship with their more than human kin, instead of separate from nature. The power dynamics of "management" vs "caring for"... Its all about reciprocity, respect, & intimacy baby 🌱💚
"The coin of alienation" 1 head of commodification & exploitation of resources the other head of idealization & separation from humans. This colonizing paradigm has wreaked havoc on the natural world we need to re-shape our connection to nature & one another as part of nature to build a future both worth living for & capable of sustaining life.
Rules for harvesting across many indigenous cultures: take no more than what you need (different specifics per tribes & ecosystems), offer gratitude, give back, always leave some behind for others & to make sure they can replenish for next year
Indigenous stewardship strategies: fire for felling trees, creating meadows, & decreasing the intensity of wild fire, pruning, propogating, transplanting, plant selection & sewing seeds, weeding, & digging irrigation channels especially notably done by the Owen's Valley Paiute.
Direct personal relationship with land through being a part of food web is vulnerable & intimate. Gathering food respectfully was seen as both good for the gatherer & good for the plants.
"Observing naturing can be a great pastime but tasting it moves the relationship beyond the platonic. Through the medium of native plants the minerals of the places I love have been knit into my bones." 🥵
My thoughts:
... attachment theory & land relationships? Miwok calling the settlers homeless after seeing the way they treated the land. What would it feel like to have the reciprocity of stewardship & loving relationship with the land imprinted on our nervous systems and an attachment to mother earth that spans generations.
Anti-civ discourse
I am revisiting an argument I had with an anarchist in Humboldt in my mind where I couldn't get them to really define civilization is a way that wasn't Eurocentric. Were Indigenous social systems not civilizations? I think there are ways to be connected to one another & the land that aren't inherently extractive & the MANarchist individualist I just need to run away to the woods where I can be a lone wolf survivor type beat irks me. Tbh I haven't read the anti-civ lit ( & he probs hasn't either lol) so maybe I'm fighting a straw man rn.
My notes:
In summary: LAND BACK
Resource etymology: rise again
Horticulture etymology: to garden with respect
25% of biodiversity in continental US is in Cali
Some disturbance (fire, harvesting, grazing, etc) to varying degrees increases biodiversity within ecosystems
Many native plant species disappearing due to conservation separating people from land, prohibiting their maintenance & harvesting that people & plants had mutually evolved to rely upon
Listening to the descriptions of pre-colonization California is so beautiful i want to cry its making me homesick for California 😭
False dichotomy of hunter gatherers vs farmer, & wilderness vs civilization
Middle way of the Californian Indian being a part of nature & in good relationship with their more than human kin, instead of separate from nature. The power dynamics of "management" vs "caring for"... Its all about reciprocity, respect, & intimacy baby 🌱💚
"The coin of alienation" 1 head of commodification & exploitation of resources the other head of idealization & separation from humans. This colonizing paradigm has wreaked havoc on the natural world we need to re-shape our connection to nature & one another as part of nature to build a future both worth living for & capable of sustaining life.
Rules for harvesting across many indigenous cultures: take no more than what you need (different specifics per tribes & ecosystems), offer gratitude, give back, always leave some behind for others & to make sure they can replenish for next year
Indigenous stewardship strategies: fire for felling trees, creating meadows, & decreasing the intensity of wild fire, pruning, propogating, transplanting, plant selection & sewing seeds, weeding, & digging irrigation channels especially notably done by the Owen's Valley Paiute.
Direct personal relationship with land through being a part of food web is vulnerable & intimate. Gathering food respectfully was seen as both good for the gatherer & good for the plants.
"Observing naturing can be a great pastime but tasting it moves the relationship beyond the platonic. Through the medium of native plants the minerals of the places I love have been knit into my bones." 🥵
My thoughts:
... attachment theory & land relationships? Miwok calling the settlers homeless after seeing the way they treated the land. What would it feel like to have the reciprocity of stewardship & loving relationship with the land imprinted on our nervous systems and an attachment to mother earth that spans generations.
Anti-civ discourse
I am revisiting an argument I had with an anarchist in Humboldt in my mind where I couldn't get them to really define civilization is a way that wasn't Eurocentric. Were Indigenous social systems not civilizations? I think there are ways to be connected to one another & the land that aren't inherently extractive & the MANarchist individualist I just need to run away to the woods where I can be a lone wolf survivor type beat irks me. Tbh I haven't read the anti-civ lit ( & he probs hasn't either lol) so maybe I'm fighting a straw man rn.
Read
July 29, 2024A fascinating mix of ethnography, botany, history, and conservation. This spring/summer I have read a number of books about the history of California and its indigenous people and it's been a wonderful education on the area that I never got in school. This book very much continued in that vein. Anderson presents a very brief history of the native people and the near genocide of them and then jumps into presenting evidence and information on the variety of plants the people across the area relied on and cultivated. She dives deeply into the things they used the plants for and the methods they used to shape the ecology of where they lived over thousands of years. Again, I have come away with an appreciation for the desperate need for controlled burning across the state to encourage healthy ecosystems and prevent the catastrophic fires we have been seeing for decades now (as I write this the town of Paradise is under evacuation orders again only five years after it burned to the ground in the Camp Fire).
Robin Wall Kimmerer's books and writing came to mind reading this. I know her Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants is very popular. I will eventually get around to that one (I have read many of her shorter essays she has written for Emergence Magazine and don't feel like I need to rush on to Sweetgrass), but liked that Anderson is focused on the place where I live and so it felt currently more relevant.
There was some repetitiveness in the book (it's very long) which made sense in the context of the various parts of culture and botany that she discussed, but it also got, well, repetitive. I personally didn't need nearly as much of the content in the middle, but I read it anyway to get the full experience.
The pictures in the book were sort of lackluster. The historical and contemporary photos were great, no notes there. But I would have really appreciated drawings or photographs of the various native plants she discusses. I don't actually know what most of them look like and it would have been helpful to me. And there were a lot of charts that offered either more complete information or a visualization of information from the text that were oddly placed and didn't feel like they were totally necessary. I think they would have been better compiled together in an appendix in the back of the book instead of inserted into the text.
All in all, a really excellent book for people interested in native plants and ecologies and in the people who created and nurtured the land for thousands of years.
Robin Wall Kimmerer's books and writing came to mind reading this. I know her Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants is very popular. I will eventually get around to that one (I have read many of her shorter essays she has written for Emergence Magazine and don't feel like I need to rush on to Sweetgrass), but liked that Anderson is focused on the place where I live and so it felt currently more relevant.
There was some repetitiveness in the book (it's very long) which made sense in the context of the various parts of culture and botany that she discussed, but it also got, well, repetitive. I personally didn't need nearly as much of the content in the middle, but I read it anyway to get the full experience.
The pictures in the book were sort of lackluster. The historical and contemporary photos were great, no notes there. But I would have really appreciated drawings or photographs of the various native plants she discusses. I don't actually know what most of them look like and it would have been helpful to me. And there were a lot of charts that offered either more complete information or a visualization of information from the text that were oddly placed and didn't feel like they were totally necessary. I think they would have been better compiled together in an appendix in the back of the book instead of inserted into the text.
All in all, a really excellent book for people interested in native plants and ecologies and in the people who created and nurtured the land for thousands of years.
August 7, 2024
I live on stolen Sierra Miwok lands just outside of Arnold, California, one of the towns that Anderson lived in while she was studying for her dissertation and researching for this book. I work on the Stanislaus National Forest and spend extensive time in many of the locations mentioned throughout this book, such as Black Springs, Big Meadow, Dorrington, and more. This made listening to this book especially apt and intriguing for me because the ties to place made it all the more special to learn about.
This is another one of those books, similar to Braiding Sweetgrass, that has made me view the natural world in a completely different way. Driving through the forest, I cannot help but try to imagine what it would have looked like a couple hundred years ago before European settlers left their permanent mark on the land. The overgrown understory, the encroachment and shrinkage of montane meadows, the introduction of cattle and aggressive logging are just a few of the more noticeable differences between current day and indigenous land management times that catch my eyes as I'm driving through the forest. I feel as though I have learned more from this book than most of the other books I've read recently, combined and I have both a deeper respect for the local tribes of California as well as my connection to the natural world. Learning more about how detached and disconnected current-day Americans are from the natural world is honestly atrocious and these indigenous land management techniques must be adopted on a larger scale throughout land management agencies in the entire country.
This book was both enlightening and incredibly frustrating to read, in terms of how things have changed. It hurt my soul to read about the extensive use of fire in native land management for the better and how fire has become demonized in the contemporary world. Instead of small, beneficial fires every year, we have a wildfire season and fatal mega-fires occurring, wreaking havoc on gigantic areas of land. These mega-fires would never have occurred if it weren't for aggressive fire suppression by white settlers and now land management agencies who manage the land that indigenous American's used to tend so thoughtfully and lovingly. I strongly believe that every person in the land management industry need to read this book so that we can begin to restore the land, even on a smaller scale.
I also have to give kudos to the narrator of the audiobook for Tending the Wild. The physical book is thick and incredibly dense-- almost textbook-like. The narrator does an incredible job of making this comprehensive review of native land management very engaging.
This is another one of those books, similar to Braiding Sweetgrass, that has made me view the natural world in a completely different way. Driving through the forest, I cannot help but try to imagine what it would have looked like a couple hundred years ago before European settlers left their permanent mark on the land. The overgrown understory, the encroachment and shrinkage of montane meadows, the introduction of cattle and aggressive logging are just a few of the more noticeable differences between current day and indigenous land management times that catch my eyes as I'm driving through the forest. I feel as though I have learned more from this book than most of the other books I've read recently, combined and I have both a deeper respect for the local tribes of California as well as my connection to the natural world. Learning more about how detached and disconnected current-day Americans are from the natural world is honestly atrocious and these indigenous land management techniques must be adopted on a larger scale throughout land management agencies in the entire country.
This book was both enlightening and incredibly frustrating to read, in terms of how things have changed. It hurt my soul to read about the extensive use of fire in native land management for the better and how fire has become demonized in the contemporary world. Instead of small, beneficial fires every year, we have a wildfire season and fatal mega-fires occurring, wreaking havoc on gigantic areas of land. These mega-fires would never have occurred if it weren't for aggressive fire suppression by white settlers and now land management agencies who manage the land that indigenous American's used to tend so thoughtfully and lovingly. I strongly believe that every person in the land management industry need to read this book so that we can begin to restore the land, even on a smaller scale.
I also have to give kudos to the narrator of the audiobook for Tending the Wild. The physical book is thick and incredibly dense-- almost textbook-like. The narrator does an incredible job of making this comprehensive review of native land management very engaging.
September 2, 2020
The book is divided into 3 parts:
1. History of Californian natives
2. Native land management strategies and methods
3. How to incorporate indigenous knowledge, practices, and cultural values into modern society
My takeaways were:
- Californian natives were treated terribly and their populations decimated by three distinct waves of settlers (missionaries, rancheros, and miners).
- The ecosystem of California was radically altered through these three waves, over the the last 300-400 years, as a result of farming, ranching, and mining operations introduced by the Mexicans and Americans in the 18th and 19th century, in ways that decimated local populations of native plants and wild-life, and have threatened the long-term stability of the land and it's capacity to support life in a sustainable way.
- The myth that Native Californians were passive beneficiaries and simple users of California's abundant plant and wildlife is incorrect - indigenous people were actively involved in modifying and shaping their ecosystems, like western settlers were. However, unlike western settlers, they managed the land in a way that supported the populations of flora and fauna, as well as themselves.
- Their land use practices and associated plant and animal knowledge were compiled by generations of natives carefully observing and experimenting with practices such as foraging techniques, use of fire, genetic engineering, and the production of tools, among others.
- Native cultures embodied a relationship to the land that was based on a view that animals, plants, and even inanimate objects like rocks were their direct kin, and as such, could be directly learned from and should be treated with respect just as they would their human relatives. This worldview permeated their culture in the form of myths, music, ceremonies, and rituals, such as saying a prayer of thanks before harvesting a particular rhizomes that would be used to make a basket.
- The Native's relationship can be viewed as a middle way between two extremes that our contemporary society seems to have come to view the land and nature through - as something to be isolated and used without regards to the broader ecosystem it supports, or something to be preserved in an un-touched, "natural" form, as with national parks, where the relationship between people and the land is usually quite limited.
It's interesting to be reading this as a new round of fires are burning across California right now - fires that perhaps could have been prevented if the land management practices used by native californians were still being practiced today on a wide scale. Luckily, it does appear that the National Forest Service and the National Parks Service are recognizing the utility of the original indigenous land use practices, and are starting to work with them. Hopefully we can translate the ethnic knowledge of the original californian people into the language of our modern day world of machines, automation, and capital so that generations can continue to enjoy this beautiful state (and world) indefinitely.
1. History of Californian natives
2. Native land management strategies and methods
3. How to incorporate indigenous knowledge, practices, and cultural values into modern society
My takeaways were:
- Californian natives were treated terribly and their populations decimated by three distinct waves of settlers (missionaries, rancheros, and miners).
- The ecosystem of California was radically altered through these three waves, over the the last 300-400 years, as a result of farming, ranching, and mining operations introduced by the Mexicans and Americans in the 18th and 19th century, in ways that decimated local populations of native plants and wild-life, and have threatened the long-term stability of the land and it's capacity to support life in a sustainable way.
- The myth that Native Californians were passive beneficiaries and simple users of California's abundant plant and wildlife is incorrect - indigenous people were actively involved in modifying and shaping their ecosystems, like western settlers were. However, unlike western settlers, they managed the land in a way that supported the populations of flora and fauna, as well as themselves.
- Their land use practices and associated plant and animal knowledge were compiled by generations of natives carefully observing and experimenting with practices such as foraging techniques, use of fire, genetic engineering, and the production of tools, among others.
- Native cultures embodied a relationship to the land that was based on a view that animals, plants, and even inanimate objects like rocks were their direct kin, and as such, could be directly learned from and should be treated with respect just as they would their human relatives. This worldview permeated their culture in the form of myths, music, ceremonies, and rituals, such as saying a prayer of thanks before harvesting a particular rhizomes that would be used to make a basket.
- The Native's relationship can be viewed as a middle way between two extremes that our contemporary society seems to have come to view the land and nature through - as something to be isolated and used without regards to the broader ecosystem it supports, or something to be preserved in an un-touched, "natural" form, as with national parks, where the relationship between people and the land is usually quite limited.
It's interesting to be reading this as a new round of fires are burning across California right now - fires that perhaps could have been prevented if the land management practices used by native californians were still being practiced today on a wide scale. Luckily, it does appear that the National Forest Service and the National Parks Service are recognizing the utility of the original indigenous land use practices, and are starting to work with them. Hopefully we can translate the ethnic knowledge of the original californian people into the language of our modern day world of machines, automation, and capital so that generations can continue to enjoy this beautiful state (and world) indefinitely.
March 2, 2019
Clearly a labor of academic love, Anderson's paradigm-shifting book may have sparked a quiet revolution among a tiny minority of its readers, but its revelations continue to be overlooked by the majority of biologists and anthropologists, who have too much of their careers and identities invested in the fallacies they were taught in school.
While working independently toward some of Anderson's myriad observations, I glimpsed this book on the shelves of friends time and again, knowing I'd have to tackle it some day. Reading and absorbing it is a project in itself!
My one criticism is that, knowing the close scrutiny her work would receive from academic colleagues, Anderson undermines its impact by relying too much on some Western paradigms that her work clearly invalidates. She mentions once or twice that the Western concept of "resource management" reflects an alienated relationship with natural habitats, yet she uses the term "management" overwhelmingly to describe native practices. And her constant labeling of her subjects as "Californian" - a post-contact Euro-American political entity which is completely irrelevant to the natural contexts and social networks in which natives identified themselves - undermines the universal relevance of her observations.
In a perfect world, Tending the Wild would just be the beginning of a universal re-grounding of our dominant society in its natural context. Studies in ecology and anthropology from across the planet would be compiled and summarized in similar forms. The fallacies of civilized superiority, linear time and the "Anthropocene," hunter-gatherers and the Paleo Diet, the blaming of Pleistocene extinctions on Native Americans, the importance of the "Agricultural Revolution," and human exceptionalism would finally be put to rest. Humans in dominant societies would finally recognize themselves as animals, equal partners in natural ecosystems in which other life forms have much to teach us, no species is wiser or more knowledgeable than the others, and all are humbled by the Great Mysteries.
While working independently toward some of Anderson's myriad observations, I glimpsed this book on the shelves of friends time and again, knowing I'd have to tackle it some day. Reading and absorbing it is a project in itself!
My one criticism is that, knowing the close scrutiny her work would receive from academic colleagues, Anderson undermines its impact by relying too much on some Western paradigms that her work clearly invalidates. She mentions once or twice that the Western concept of "resource management" reflects an alienated relationship with natural habitats, yet she uses the term "management" overwhelmingly to describe native practices. And her constant labeling of her subjects as "Californian" - a post-contact Euro-American political entity which is completely irrelevant to the natural contexts and social networks in which natives identified themselves - undermines the universal relevance of her observations.
In a perfect world, Tending the Wild would just be the beginning of a universal re-grounding of our dominant society in its natural context. Studies in ecology and anthropology from across the planet would be compiled and summarized in similar forms. The fallacies of civilized superiority, linear time and the "Anthropocene," hunter-gatherers and the Paleo Diet, the blaming of Pleistocene extinctions on Native Americans, the importance of the "Agricultural Revolution," and human exceptionalism would finally be put to rest. Humans in dominant societies would finally recognize themselves as animals, equal partners in natural ecosystems in which other life forms have much to teach us, no species is wiser or more knowledgeable than the others, and all are humbled by the Great Mysteries.
April 20, 2022
Is ecological restoration possible without the participation of Indigenous peoples? Kat Anderson argues persuasively that the answer is unequivocally no. Behind the layers of economic and natural resource development that California has been through since the arrival of the Spanish, what generations of settlers, including Americans, may not appreciate is the fact that the land that they have expropriated from Indigenous nations in the name of Progress was first transformed by Indigenous people, such that its restoration into healthier ecological systems requires Indigenous knowledge. Indeed the bulk of the book consists of chapter after chapter demonstrating the ways in which different types of plants, be they trees, shrubs, or grasses were cultivated to meet the needs of the people who tended them for food, utensils, medicine, clothing, and housing. Indeed, many of the plants that thrived under Indigenous care did so because of the cultivating practices that were an integral part of Indigenous peoples' relationship with the land. This is a knowledge tradition--call it science--that Anderson argues is needed today in California if it is to withstand the long-term effects of over-development, species decline, and climate change. While it is not always clear how a sustainable Indigenous economy can coexist with a surplus economy--a transubstantiation of values may be necessary--Anderson asserts that one has to try and that Indigenous people, a vibrant part of California today, needs to be a prominent part of this effort. Ecological restoration may not be possible without Indigenous cultural revitalization. In a sense, California needs to give the land back to Indigenous peoples. The implications of this may, unfortunately, be lost in the Anderson's predilection for a land management discourse based on mainstream ecological concepts, such as stewardship, as opposed to an Indigenous regard for plants as people, living beings that require a respect relationship with humans. Plants are not more than a natural resource, they are also teachers.
November 11, 2025
This is a great resource, especially for the firsthand accounts by Native people who were interviewed by the author. The history woven into the beginning few chapters with accounts by European explorers and settlers was really well done, too.
I did have a few issues with the text. Firstly, the odd organization and repetitiveness in the middle chapters actually had me flipping back to make sure I wasn’t rereading pages on two occasions. It reads like a dissertation that didn’t need to be quite so long.
More importantly, 20 years on now, the tone is dated. I know that I wouldn’t feel comfortable using the term “Indian” in earnest as a white scholar, and at the very least this choice necessitates a comment about language in the prologue. There was often a sepia-toned filter on her discussion of California’s First Nations, as if they are all gone or at least aren’t really “Indian” anymore after being forcibly assimilated and cut off from their traditional relationship with the land. I didn’t like the frequent use of “centuries, perhaps millennia” to describe practices that are clearly millennia old. The plea by Anderson always seemed to come back to asking the reader to take Indigenous ecological knowledge seriously so that we can apply it within colonial land management structures—rather than giving the land back.
That said, this book likely has had such a great impact on non-Native understanding of Indigenous ecological knowledge in America that I take some of its conclusions for granted, namely, that the Western dichotomy of hunter-gatherer vs agriculturist societies is false and especially didn’t apply in pre-contact California. Tending the Wild is an important stepping stone toward the re-Indigenization of California and Turtle Island.
I did have a few issues with the text. Firstly, the odd organization and repetitiveness in the middle chapters actually had me flipping back to make sure I wasn’t rereading pages on two occasions. It reads like a dissertation that didn’t need to be quite so long.
More importantly, 20 years on now, the tone is dated. I know that I wouldn’t feel comfortable using the term “Indian” in earnest as a white scholar, and at the very least this choice necessitates a comment about language in the prologue. There was often a sepia-toned filter on her discussion of California’s First Nations, as if they are all gone or at least aren’t really “Indian” anymore after being forcibly assimilated and cut off from their traditional relationship with the land. I didn’t like the frequent use of “centuries, perhaps millennia” to describe practices that are clearly millennia old. The plea by Anderson always seemed to come back to asking the reader to take Indigenous ecological knowledge seriously so that we can apply it within colonial land management structures—rather than giving the land back.
That said, this book likely has had such a great impact on non-Native understanding of Indigenous ecological knowledge in America that I take some of its conclusions for granted, namely, that the Western dichotomy of hunter-gatherer vs agriculturist societies is false and especially didn’t apply in pre-contact California. Tending the Wild is an important stepping stone toward the re-Indigenization of California and Turtle Island.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews