Conservation alleged

It is widely pronounced by conservation organization that natives peoples were guardians of nature and practiced conservation and sustainable development.

How can you buy or sell the Sky?  The land?  The idea is strange to us...  Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.  Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect.  All are holy in the memory and experience of my people...  Will you teach your children what we have taught our children?  That the earth is our mother.  What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of earth.  This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.  All things are connected like the blood that unites us all.  Man does not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.  Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

According to  Earth in the Balance , a book written by Vice President Albert Gore, the above was said in 1854 by Chief Seattle to the governor of Washington territory after the governor offered to buy his land on behalf of the United States government.  But the entire speech is a work of fiction written by screenwriter Ted Perry in 1971 for an ABC television drama.  In addition, parts of this fictional speech have been used by the Sierra Club and other conservation organizations to demonstrate how we can sustain the land if we only follow the wisdom earlier native stewards.

Daryl Posey, a cultural anthropologist states:
 

any evidence of ecologically unsound activities by indigenous and traditional peoples undermines their basic right to land, resources, and cultural practice.

This statement is highly ethnocentric for it presumes that we should assist native peoples only if they live up to our cultural standards and values.  It denies the fact that they have a prior and inalienable right to the lands in which they have historically lived.