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The False Dream of Cottagecore | How the problematic romanticization of Western rural life reveals our discontent with the modern world (beneaththepavement.substack.com)

submitted 8 months ago by stabby_cicada to c/solarpunk

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[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 28 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I often fantasize about what life would have been like as a pre-colonialist indigenous person. Living in a way that honoured nature instead of controlling it.

This is a huge myth. Anytime natives got access to new technology, they went on a rampage with it (just like everyone else). Horses and rifles being the best examples. Humans are humans and everyone does equally dumb human shit.

Your dream is a mostly standard pre-agrarian fantasy, only you've projected it onto a cultural group. But pre-agrarian lifestyles were harsher than you can possibly imagine. Having that kind of balance with nature mean nature is going to kill you more often than not.

[–] confusedpuppy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 8 months ago

I've had the opportunity to live in Australia and had a chance to learn of the indigenous people there. Their stories and history. I made an effort to learn a bit more about how life was like before colonialists. Or at least what we were able to learn about life before colonialism as a lot of that information is filtered through colonialist eyes.

When I returned home to Canada, I was able to unpack all that I learned from the treatment of Australian indigenous people and apply that perspective to the Canadian Indigenous people. Honouring the land doesn't simply mean how we treat our food or living sustainably. It includes the nature bound history and stories that communities have created and shared as it moved forward in history. A story of a volcano that was so destructive could live on for many human generations to come as it becomes a crucial story of the peoples that lived in that area. Breaking away from modern perspectives on human histories is difficult because there's so much nuance that never gets recorded.

I don't know how fair it is to compare pre-colonialist indigenous people's behaviour to post colonialism. There are a lot of factors and skewed perspectives that need to be understood before I could talk more on that. From what I have learned, I also don't think it's fair to judge indigenous people's behaviours to new technologies that was introduced after the arrival of Europeans. I feel it's somewhere on the level of blaming children for the problems of today when it's always been the adults who exploited and crafted everything there is today. I don't believe the indigenous people's ignorance to their own genocide should be their blame. This is just my perspective on things and I still have lots to learn regarding indigenous people and their history. I can always be wrong.

I also feel you quoted me unfairly. Later in that same paragraph I try to express that pre-colonialist life would not be easy, that it would be short and harsher and full of it's own unique challenges. I'd prefer a short and intense life with daily struggles compared to a long, drawn out existence maintaining complex machines and worrying about the future. But that's just me.