ABSTRACT
In The Hidden Wound, published in 1989, environmentalist Wendell Berry writes that "the psychic wound of racism has resulted inevitably in wounds in the land, the country itself." By the late nineteenth century, following the move to eliminate Native Americans and their food supplies, Indians were moved to reservations. National Parks and wilderness areas were set aside for the benefit of white American tourists. John Muir continually contrasted Indians with wilderness, writing of them as polar opposites of the pristine lands in which he found them. African American environmentalist Carl Anthony points out that Muir's encounters in the pristine wilderness of Canada and the Cotton South were actually made possible by the "occupied wilderness" of the Civil War and Native American battles. Although both Indians and Blacks were regarded as savage, Africans and Indians were constructed differently and treated differently. Like Indians, Blacks resisted their enslavement and degradation.
