Reply to Oswald et al.: scale in studies of pre-colonial forests

We thank Oswald et al. for their thoughtful response to our recently published work (Armstrong et al. 2023) and appreciate the time they took to evaluate the research. The authors express concern that we misrepresented the scale of their study and undermined their good-faith scholarship, arguing their contribution erases Indigenous presence. In their Letter to the Editors, the authors summarize their multidisciplinary study aimed at investigating the signatures of Indigenous and climate-mediated fire over 10,000+ years in southern New England. We hope that the following helps to clarify our understanding of their original paper (Oswald et al. 2020a) and our characterization of it.

We acknowledge that our reference characterization of Oswald et al. (2020a) – in the context of the systematic downplaying of Indigenous Peoples’ land-use and occupation – could undermine their good-faith contribution. This was not our intention. Research by settler scholars in settler nations, regardless of intent, can have racial and unchecked biases. Research about Indigenous Peoples that is not co-designed or led by Indigenous peoples from region(s) of study can perpetuate stereotypes in unscientific and palpable ways (Ríos et al. 2020). Oswald et al. authored an article that, despite intentions, perpetuates a pattern within scientific research concerning Indigenous Peoples that disregards Indigenous data sovereignty, perpetuates extractive practices and could contribute to harm (Jennings et al. 2023).

Indigenous land-use and occupation threaten settler-state territorial integrity and sovereignty (Gover 2015). For over a century, Indigenous land-use in North America was, and continues to be, actively downplayed (Panich and Schneider 2019; Turner 2020). Originally, this was purposefully done to facilitate, and justify conquest and colonization. For example, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 set the parameters by which British subjects could conquer and occupy Indigenous lands in eastern North America which was predicated entirely on whether land was ‘used’ (and not merely occupied) by Indigenous Peoples – this act and narrative of terra nullius continues to be perpetuated in scientific, regulatory and legal contexts today.

Our main issue is that, and as numerous others have pointed out (Abrams and Nowacki 2020; Leonard et al. 2020; Roos 2020), Oswald et al.’s inferences showing ‘limited impact’ from Indigenous Peoples in southern New England are not supported by their data. Roos (2020) has pointed out several scalar and interpretive issues with Oswald et al. (2020a) research (but see Oswald et al. 2020b), including that many of their coring sites have no archaeological evidence and that the averaging of charcoal, pollen and archaeological records across the entirety of southern New England would not likely show localized management unless Indigenous fire management was heavily synchronized through space and time. Roos points out inherent shortcomings in Oswald’s main hypothesis – that evidence of climate driven fires precludes evidence for human management – what Roos refers to as ‘an outmoded dualism that assumes fire is exclusively “natural” or “cultural”’. Abrams and Nowacki (2020) further reject Oswald’s findings, citing limitations in their paleoecological methods, that they ‘disregard the basic ecological and physiological’ aspects of the plant species they studied, and that they failed to consider that cultural burning in the region ‘often produce insufficient charcoal to register in the sediment record’ (see also Lepofsky et al. 2003).

Leonard et al. (2020) also criticized Oswald and team’s research for lacking sufficient historical and cultural data to reject fire management as a pre-colonial tool used by Indigenous Peoples in upland forests. While some historical and ethnographic accounts refer to parkland-like open canopy ecosystems, other sources indicate more punctuated and small-scale burning, such as clearing understory brush, signals which are not likely to show up in the paleoecological record. In such cases, the goal of Indigenous management would not have been regional-scale landscape change (what Oswald was looking for).

In short, the absence of data is not data of absence – that Oswald did not ‘see’ big and obvious stratigraphic impacts like those caused by climate impacts or European land-use does not mean pre-colonial Indigenous Peoples did not impact their land-base. We believe that Oswald’s interpretations could be rooted in their cultural understandings – historically causal epistemologies about Indigenous Peoples that have been left unchecked (Ríos et al. 2020; Trisos et al. 2021; Jennings et al. 2023). That they infer Indigenous Peoples had limited impact in landscapes outside of immediate habitation sites conforms with enduring and systemic narratives of terra nullius. Such inferences are not only misleading but are also harmful (Leonard et al. 2020). The legacy of ‘limited-impact’ land-use ideologies has, knowingly or not, routinely undermined Indigenous sovereignty and rights to self-determination (Newcomb 2008).

All scholars working in this space should be considering how they potentially perpetuate colonial, racist and other hegemonic structures. Thus, in our original paper, when we stated that much scholarship, including our own, is racist, we did this because we believe strongly that the research community must be vigilant in considering underlying biases about historical Indigenous land-use, and how this can influence what the community takes to incorporate as meaningful data. We should all be considering anti-racist, Indigenist, anti-colonial and decolonial methods that prioritize data governance and management, so that we may fully grapple with our own biases, which in turn would lead to more critical and robust scientific interpretations (Smith 2012; Jennings et al. 2023).

We agree with Oswald’s reply, that a careful scrutiny of historical and paleoecological data is critical for contemporary management strategies, and that broad regional synopses (Cronon 1983) are not always useful for highly localized restoration efforts. Oswald and colleagues’ original paper (and their Letter to the Editor) suggests that historical Indigenous management practices are overemphasized in contemporary conservation policy and management. Although some western scientists have, in recent years, sought to incorporate Indigenous knowledge and practices into restoration and management, this has rarely translated into practice (Christianson et al. 2022). Conservation biologists are only beginning to work with Indigenous Peoples and deep-time historical-ecological datasets, and such work has been challenging – for example, documenting Indigenous land-use is more straight forward than verifying the lack of it (Lepofsky et al. 2003; Beller et al. 2020).

We agree that broad stroke western implementations of ‘Indigenous management’ deserve critique, this is a longstanding issue in ethnoecology and historical ecology. Indeed, we think that contemporary practices of burning, logging and herbicide treatments problematized in Oswald et al.’s Letter are themselves western replications based on western colonial gazes of what Indigenous management should look like. The current failure of burning and herbicide treatments criticized in Oswald’s letter likely omitted aspects of Indigenous management that centralize social institutions, governance structures, etc. (Berkes 2018; Wickham et al. 2022) and may be a key contributor to those management frustrations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).