With our recent readings and films in “The History of the American Wilderness” we have seen the way that over time Americans have become more and more dedicated to what Aldo Leopold calls the “land ethic” — the idea that animals, plants, and even rocks have rights as well as human beings. Ernest Thompson Seton, for example, learned that lesson after killing Lobo. In our current film, Avatar, Nyetiri attempts to teach that lesson to Jake Sully.
Last spring when I was in Svalbard, deep in the Arctic, a polar bear was shot and killed. A few decades ago that event would not have made the news, and even today the the world press portrayed the bear as a vicious killer. But while in Longyearbyen (the capital of Svalbard), I heard a very different story. I posted this particular Fireside Talk on my blog under the title: “A Polar Bear’s Death: Human Rights and Animal Rights in the Norwegian Arctic.”
As you read the post, including my interview with Daniel Börjesson, a Swedish outdoorsman-adventurer, consider the ways that this episode and Börjesson’s “take” on it fit in with patterns we have seen in American culture and politics in wilderness history. Here’s the link to that post:
Click here to see the full talk:
https://www.americanrealities.com/home-page/a-polar-bears-death-longyearbyen-march-19-2015