Native lands have provided a wide variety of resources for Native peoples for thousands of years. Forests, grasslands, streams, coastal zones, and more have provided, and for many groups still provide, substantial amounts of food, fiber (e.g., wood and clay), fish, medicines, and culturally important materials. Native traditions are also very closely tied to natural events and resources, including migrating birds and fowl, land animals, fish, and medicinal plants, thereby creating an important cultural link to the land. Indeed, subsistence economies were the predominant form of community organization in North America prior to the colonization of the continent by Europeans. It is clear from oral traditions of Native peoples themselves throughout the continent, and from the accounts of the first Europeans who contacted them, that subsistence economies were able to sustain communities in lives of comfort, relative stability, and abundance, with sophisticated artistic and intellectual traditions.

With the spread of the market economy across the US, especially during the 20^th century, subsistence economies began to disappear as the resources necessary to support them were taken over by commercial interests. The values that have supported subsistence economies have persisted, however, and this is a major feature that distinguishes Native peoples from other present day rural residents. The ethics embodied in these subsistence systems continue to form the core set of values in many modern Native communities, even as these communities are integrated, in varying degrees, into mainstream market systems. These values are incorporated into, and reinforced by spiritual teachings, moral principles, and community and family relationships. To the extent that these values continue to shape contemporary attitudes and relationships of Native peoples, they form a crucial part of the treasury of values on which the Nation could draw in addressing global climate change.

During the Native Peoples/Native Homelands workshop, Native peoples from the Arctic and sub-Arctic presented substantial evidence that their communities are immediately jeopardized by changes in global climate. In Alaska, rapid warming, and the environmental consequences it brings, started about 30 years ago, and the lives of Native peoples there are already being seriously affected. Changes in climate, coupled with other human influences, are now becoming more and more rapid in other regions as well, with projections of much more rapid change in the future. These changes are likely to bring much larger changes in land cover and wildlife than have occurred in the past. As the world warms, as precipitation patterns shift, as sea level changes, as mountain glaciers and sea ice melt, just as in Alaska, ecosystems elsewhere are likely to change in complex and often unexpected ways, affecting the resources that can be drawn from them.

Caleb Pungoyiwi is a Yupik Eskimo who moves back and forth between Alaska and Siberia in pursuit of walrus and other sea mammals. In recent years, the Yupiks have noticed that the walrus are thinner, their blubber less nutritious, and the oil from walrus fat does not burn as brightly in their lamps as in times of old. At the same time, they have noticed that there are fewer and weaker seals. The Yupik hunters have had to go farther and farther from shore to reach the ice pack to find the newborn seals that are being fed fish from nearby waters by their parents. Concurrently, scientists have observed that the sea ice over much of the Arctic is thinner and melting back, with the changes encompassing a broader area than even that observed by the Yupiks.

Both the Yupiks and the scientists have come to understand the intertwined chain of events that is occurring and that began with warming. The retreat of the sea ice due to large-scale warming has reduced the platform that seals and walrus have used to rest between searches for fish and mussels; weakened and less productive, they provide less sustenance for both the Yupiks and the whales. The Yupiks have also observed some killer whales eating sea otters, an unusual shift in the whales' diet apparently brought on by the reduced number of seals. The loss of sea otters is important because sea otters control the number of sea urchins. With fewer sea otters, there are more urchins and therefore less kelp (which the urchins eat). And with less kelp, there is reduced habitat for fish; it is fish that would normally be the major food source for the whales as well as the Yupiks, the Inupiats, and other Northern peoples. As another part of this ecological continuum, the sea ice quiets ocean waters during winter storms, helping protect young fish; it also accumulates nutrients that, when the ice melts, create a springtime algal bloom on which the fish feed at a critical stage in their development. What has occurred can seem like only a little warming in a very cold place, but as the Native traditions make clear, everything is woven together -- disruption in one place affects everything else.

Also in the Great Plains, warmer winter conditions are already favoring certain types of grasses, thereby changing the mix of vegetation types. The distributions, timing of migrations, and abundances of waterfowl and other birds are also changing. These changes have been and will be affected not only by temperature and precipitation changes, but also by changes in the timing of the ripening of plants and crops, and other ecosystem factors on which Native peoples depend. How much longer these types of changes can go on without a serious disruption of the services and diversity provided by the various ecosystems that support subsistence economies is not known, although there are signs that some systems are already being seriously stressed.

For centuries, the Anishinaabeg (Ojibway or Chippewa) who live around Lake Superior and along the upper Mississippi River have depended upon the natural resources of the forests, lakes, and rivers of the region (Vennum, 1988). Many of the reservation locations were selected to ensure access to culturally significant resources, such as maple sugar bushes and wild rice beds, whose locations were thought to be fixed. As drier summer conditions cause the western prairies to shift eastward toward the western Great Lakes, the extents of maple, birch, and wild rice habitats in the US are likely to be significantly reduced. Because Ojibway communities cannot, as a whole, move as the ecosystems that are their homes shift, climate change is likely to reduce the resources needed to sustain their traditional culture and impact their economic productivity and the value of established treaty rights unless adjustments are made.

The most important differences between market economies and the subsistence economies of Native peoples involve concepts of surplus, accumulation, ownership, private property, individuality, and community. Participation in a sustainable subsistence economy demands knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and expectations that differ significantly from those at work in market economies. The basic premises that have emerged and still generally prevail include recognition that:

• Sustainable subsistence activities require traditional ecological knowledge gathered over generations.
• Subsistence communities are fairly, though not completely, closed economic systems. For day-to-day necessities (including food), people rely primarily on goods and services produced within their own community. Other goods might be acquired from external sources through trading or, in earlier times, raiding.
• Most subsistence communities use a variety of food sources and methods of food production, including hunting, fishing, gathering, and agriculture.
• Success in food production varies from individual to individual within each community, and varies for each individual over time.
• Food preservation technologies are often limited primarily to drying and smoking-technologies that do not support the storage of large amounts of foodstuffs over several years.
• Food is sought in the amounts needed to sustain the community, with perhaps a small surplus for trading. Hoarding of food makes very little sense because it generally cannot be preserved, and so is actively discouraged.
• Subsistence communities are small enough so that everyone within an individual community knows and acknowledges their relationships with everyone else. Kinship ties, in particular, are widely recognized.
• Family relationships carry with them obligations of mutual support and sharing of resources. Use of resources by the current generation must take into account the needs of future generations. An individual might gather, harvest, or hunt enough for household and family use, but must leave enough to ensure regeneration of renewable resources.

Relying on a closed system involving primarily local resources rather than on a global network, that provides food and goods from many ecosystems around the world, introduces much greater elements of risk of shortage or lack of food or other goods. Being part of a community provides one means of limiting risk, because each household has more or less equal opportunities to share in the community's resources. Under such circumstances, special provisions are often made for individuals such as the elderly and the sick who might be unable to contribute regularly to the community's present food supply. Prosperity, in this economic system, is measured not entirely in terms of accumulated possessions -- food, fields, and horses -- but in terms of personal relationships. Having a large and healthy family, respectful and aware of their obligations, provides great security by spreading the responsibilities for care and support among family members.

Generosity, in this economy, is a highly prized virtue. Among many Native peoples, there were historically -- and continue to be -- regular, institutionalized opportunities to show generosity, by giving food and material gifts to members of the community. During dances and special celebrations, Pueblo families open their homes to invited guests and community members for home-cooked feasts, and give away baskets of food and cloth to honor family members participating in ceremonies. Northern Plains' tribes hold giveaways in honor of particular individuals -- the honoree is celebrated, not by receiving presents, but by having gifts given to others by the family in his or her name. Families sometimes save for a year or more in order to provide appropriate honor to a family member.

The avoidance of over-specialization or over-dependence on a single source of food helps traditional subsistence economies avoid the risk of lacking food. In the past, woodlands tribes, for example, raised corn, beans, and squash, while also gathering wild rice, berries, acorns and nuts, wild turnips and onions, and other edible and medicinal roots and plants. These tribes also fished, and hunted large and small animals and waterfowl. Pueblo communities developed extensive systems of agriculture, but were also active hunters. Inuit communities still rely on caribou, whaling, fishing, and gathering of plants and berries for balance in their diets. For each of these economic systems, the likelihood of all sources of food failing at the same time in a relatively quiet climatic period is much less than the likelihood of one source declining for a particular period.

Different strategies have been used in the past to maintain subsistence lifestyles as climate changes impacted various regions because the changes have often been slow enough to allow adjustment or for local environments to be managed. Native peoples were not passive inhabitants of their homelands, simply fitting into niches conveniently provided by a supportive environment. Historically, Native peoples actively worked to manage their environments in ways that led to desired and productive results. Tribes used a variety of technologies and culturally based choices to improve opportunities for obtaining resources from their environments. Looking at some of the examples of historical activities could suggest options for actions under climate changes of today and those projected for the future.

The Paiutes, Hopi, Apaches, and Tohono O'odham, all lived in desert environments, but employed significantly different methods of land use.

Many of these techniques are no longer available or are not likely to be adequate, however, to sustain subsistence economies in the event of the large changes in climate that are projected.

When changes were rapid and Native peoples were faced with inadequate resources, at least two approaches were used to adapt.

• Historically, many tribal communities could rely on migration to adapt to a loss of a resource in any particular area. However, the establishment of reservations has limited the option of entire tribes moving to more hospitable locations to seek water, cropland, forests, or cooler temperatures. While individuals can pursue that option, it is not an option that is available to most tribes because they are tied to where they are by land ownership and governance issues.
• A second approach is to incorporate new technologies. The willingness to absorb new technologies, new materials, and new ways of doing things forms a common theme in the histories of many Native peoples. For the future, adopting new technologies is likely to be the only means for dealing with the disruptions to the traditional subsistence economies.
• As the Lakota (western Sioux) moved from forests around the Great Lakes to the Great Plains, they found the most suitable agricultural lands already occupied by residents of large and stable villages. Within two generations, however, they adopted the complex technologies of horsemanship and the gun. This rapid adaptation provided the Lakota with both military and economic advantages, and provided the material foundation for a prosperous and vital culture.
• Cloth (and the complexities of sewing woven textiles) replaced hides. Glass beads from Bohemia replaced porcupine quills. Aniline dyes replaced vegetable colorings. Steel knives replaced stone or bone implements. Cotton thread replaced sinew.