Stephen — Honestly, I’m not as sure the divide is as stark as you make it out to be. From what I have read, the ancestors of today’s native Americans did quite a bit of “exploitation” and environmental change of their own when they arrived. Example: Extinction of large mammals in the Americas, to which many researchers think hunting by humans contributed. More recent historical example: Native Americans systematically burned the land in the San Juan Islands, where I lived, with the purpose of altering the vegetation and wildlife to better suit their style of life. Why wasn’t that, too, exploitation?