Ingenious, Indigenous Solutions to Modern Problems

Jacob Kordeleski
Indigenous Peoples’ Day is an alternative to Columbus Day and is celebrated by a growing number of institutions throughout the United States. The re-branding does not seek to diminish the significant role Columbus played in the history of the Americas, but rather to recognize and honor the various peoples that were “discovered” in the New World.

October 12 is Indigenous Peoples’ Day. It comes rightly amidst a series of significant events involving our nation’s many indigenous communities. In July, the Cleveland Indians formally resolved to become the Cleveland Guardians, triggering celebration, controversy, and a public conversation involving seemingly every Ohio sports fan. August saw the premiere of the first-ever television program produced and cast entirely by American Indians. Lastly, and perhaps most amazing of all, just two weeks ago scientists announced the discovery of footprints pushing back the known habitation of North America nearly 10,000 years.

As such, this October we are well-situated to reflect on ourselves, our society, and the indigenous history of our nation. Rather than advocate for Indigenous Peoples’ Day or discuss various issues, I want to take this opportunity to highlight much of the underappreciated genius found throughout our world’s indigenous communities. Here are three ways indigenous cultures do (or did) it better than our modern methods:

1 – Fighting Fire with Fire
Many have heard of the devastating forest fires of the Western U.S., seen photos of red skies filled with smoke and cinder, or even known someone who lost their home to a wildfire. Forest fires were not always the frightening wildfires of today but rather frequent, controlled purges of dangerous woodland.

Controlled burns were heavily used by many native communities before a century-long ban by the U.S. Forest Service in the early 1900s. Combined with their shrewd logging, these efforts allowed indigenous Americans to transform wildfires into a more frequent but far less deadly problem for millennia. Foresters have recently come around, stating that cultural burns drastically reduce “fuel load,” the critical sum of burnable materials in our at-risk forests.




More on indigenous fire management:

2 – Stewards of Biodiversity
Despite making up only about 5% of the population, indigenous communities shelter an astounding 80% of the world’s biodiversity. They achieve this by living minimally in their natural habitat. By sacrificing some comforts that we are familiar with such as lawns, land, and highways, indigenous groups typically create the most sustainable living environments on the planet. While the United States will never be an ultra-diverse rainforest, perhaps we can find ways to reintegrate the natural world into our cities once again.




The Sapara of Ecuador, in their Yasuni National Park, co-exist with an estimated 1500 species of mammals, birds, fish, and frogs.

More on biodiversity in indigenous land:
3 – Feeding the World with Permaculture, Not Agriculture
When it comes to feeding our planet, no one disagrees that modern machinery and farming methods allow just one laborer unparalleled efficiency and the ability to produce thousands of pounds of food. However, modern farming requires huge amounts of energy and fertilizer (a top-three producer of greenhouse gases in the United States). It also promotes “monoculture,” an unhealthy reliance on one species – such as BT Zea mays, or sweetcorn – with the potential to fail.

Indigenous communities, and formerly most of the world before industrialization, instead practice what many biologists have called “permaculture.” Agriculture dedicates huge spaces to annual crops and prioritizes delivering food worldwide for profit. Permaculture cultivates a small but regenerative food forest, embeds a source of food in the local community, and creates more resilient crop species. For example, the Kenyah Dayak of Borneo have managed to sustain over a hundred species of trees, many food-bearing, in a single hectare of land.



Three Keyah Dayak survey a forest in Borneo.

More on indigenous food and Forest management:
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