American Indian Culture and Research Journal

This article offers a critical perspective on representations of American Indians in Environmental Education (EE) curriculum guides and programming. In order to politically and historically contextualize EE’s images of indigenous Americans, I trace the field’s enduring fascination with Indians to its scouting/nature education and environmental movement origins. Drawing on the anthropological concept of imperialist nostalgia, I argue that EE’s portrayals of American Indians depend upon the simultaneous erasure of contemporary Native realities and the glorification of a selectively monolithic Native past. They combine a denial of actual Indian peoples’ coevalness with calls for inventive emulation by non-Indians.