Modernizing the Savage: Colonization and Perceptions of Landscape and Lifescape

The processes of colonization and landscape reconfiguration are often discussed as related, but separate, issues. In this paper we demonstrate that these issues are linked and are important in understanding the relationship between land use, culture, ideology and society. An important part of the colonization project is the perception of land as barren, infertile and/or unsafe (evidenced in the connotations of land descriptions such as desert, bog, wilderness) and the people on it as non‐existent and/or savage. Thus heroic, military incursion would be necessary for initial settlement. Case studies of the Midwestern United States, Patagonia in Argentina, and Palestine demonstrate how the colonization project has led to the transformation of the landscape and the oppression (and often removal) of the indigenous population. In all three places the land was defined by the encroaching regimes as empty, barren and dangerous. That definition justified military‐style incursions and massive land transformation projects, such as draining wetlands and large‐scale irrigation of deserts, in the name of modernization to make the land more habitable. In all three areas there was relatively equitable land distribution initially, waves of migration in and out of the area, and export‐based agricultural production. Findings from historical analysis and field research demonstrate how social capital is built around perceptions of the landscape for colonizers and colonized. For colonizers, by interpreting the land as harsh and the natives as savage they developed a unification of purpose in achieving a dominion over both. For the colonized, in this case Palestinians, American Plains Indians, and Mapuche Indians, the recognition of a greater integration with nature is serving as a unifying element in their struggle for indigenous rights.