Natives/Imperialism

10 11
12 13
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Group three probes the underlying issues concealed within the popular "native plant" movement, difficult and embarrassing issues that these elements of landscape architecture ignore or suppress in their zeal to achieve ecological salvation. When practitioners seek to restore the landscape to its pre-European condition they forget to remove themselves and their culture from the landscape. These are the true "invasive exotics" against which even kudzu appears restrained in comparison.

10 plays upon the ambiguity of the word "native" as well as the popular exhortation to "use natives" as if this act were some new and unheard of idea.

11, though camp, alludes to the imperial zealotry with which the native dogma is crusaded in certain circles, presenting, like the Hollywood epic, a distraction from the "real" issues.

12 evokes the memory of the indigenous peoples (natives) brutally "removed" by the same institutions that seek to restore only the native vegetation, while ignoring the native peoples who remain marginalized and disempowered.

13 sums up the profession of landscape architecture as re inscribing the European conquest in its hostile occupations of, and on the land.