Living Off the Land: How Local Indians Survived
Presented by Walter Roth
The July chapter meeting (7:30pm at the San Bernardino County Museum, 2024 Orange Tree Lane, Redlands), will feature Walter Roth and a program on Living Off the Land: How Local Indians Survived. Walter tells us, “Indians had a sustainable way of life. They lived here for thousands of years utilizing nothing but what could be found in nature. It took superb skill, keen observation, and an encyclopedic knowledge of everything in their environment. Learn a bit of what it took to survive.” He will share tools, techniques, and native American survival knowledge with both a slide presentation and reproduction artifacts.
Walter would like people to appreciate and respect the incredible skill and knowledge Indian people had. “I also want to contrast their ability to live in harmony with their environment that could be sustained for thousands of years with our exploitive and unsustainable way of life. In addition, I want people to appreciate how much we have altered the environment over the last 200 years.”
This program is one that Walter, a member of the San Gorgonio Wilderness Association (SGWA), will present summer evenings at the Greyback Amphitheater in Barton Flats. Walter bases his presentation on lectures and field trips, UCR Extension courses on native American technologies, visits to museums, archeology coursework and several books on the subject. Walter tells us that the most influential book for this talk is Tending the Wild by M. Kat Anderson.
Walter is a retired elementary school teacher living is Riverside. He’s been a Sierra Club member since 1970 and a volunteer with SGWA for 18 years. He is a certified California Naturalist, and an interpreter at the Barton Flats ranger station.
