History seen through a Native Plant, Animal, & Peoples’ Lens
time-immemorial
Colorado’s history begins with stories of the distant past applying Time Immemorial and ethnobotany pathways. We end with a study of the Future because there will be a future: 1) we will solve the challenge of homo sapiens potential self-Extinction and 2) trace how the melding of cultures, that was once thought to be America and Canada’s goal, has been replaced in today’s celebration of cultural diversity achieved, women’s rights guaranteed, and the need for biodiversity preserved. (E.O. Wilson above).
In 2024 the scientific world was stunned by reports of materials brought back from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu; it is a mud ball created before our Sun’s fire burned 4,600,000,000 years ago. It contains water-formed amino acids, phosphates, uracil and thymine, the building blocks of life. The West’s history begins with 2 topics: Homo Sapiens in the Americas and the Search to Live Fully Realized Lives, start to end. That “start” occurred in the Americas with immigrating Indigenous Peoples 15,000 years ago … all of us with African Eve as a shared grandmotherxX, now thought to have lived but 30,000 years ago when the world-wide human population was less than 10,000. We are all brothers and sisters (West Africa pygmies, Artic Eskimos and Sami, South African Hottentots, Incas, Norse Vikings, etc.). We are all Eve’s descendants (mitochondrial DNA attesting), now numbering 8,200,000,000 (growing at 100,000,000/year). Extinctions of Pacific Rim Native Animals, Plants (900 species in Cascadia, 4,000 in Rocky Mountains) or people are perhaps inevitable after 100,000,000s of years, but do not needlessly have to occur tomorrow, as are occurring with today’s human careless treatment of the Earth. Ethnobotanicals are what make all our histories unique, there would be no human history of life without the food, shelter, and medicines provided by native flora … and fauna. The West’s native plant and animal species and native cultures are disappearing. Man-made Extinction events need not occur!
The West could, indeed, offer the Beacons of Light for human behaviors that must evolve. The list of the first U.S. and Canadian entities allowing women the right to vote reads: Wyoming (1869), Colorado (1893), Idaho (1896), Washington (1910), California (1911), Oregon (1912), Arizona (1912 … not part of Rocky Mountains), Montana (1914), Alberta (1916), British Columbia (1917) … long before any in the East. Our histories tell us how our ancestors achieved this. The West forced the hands of our two countries … to do the right thing. We could do it again.
Wyoming was the first to give women the right to vote, Idaho the third:
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/woman-suffrage/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasas-osiris-rex-asteroid-sample-is-already-rewriting-solar-system-history
Idaho Indigenous Peoples* depended on native plants and animals (flora and fauna):
https://idahonativeplants.org/
https://grownative.org/native-plant-database/
https://indigenousvalues.org/contributions/native-american-foods-medicines/
In 2015 what state (2nd, behind Montana) mandated Native Indigenous Time Immemorial Pathways-like history content be included in their mandated State History courses?
*Coeur D’Alene, Kalispel, Kootenai, Nez Perce, Paiute, Palouse, Salish and Shoshone
History seen through a Native Plant, Animal, & Peoples’ Lens
State of Colorado History
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