Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. As we are seeing, in real time, with the flourishing of the far right in the West. Thank you for the opportunity to contextualize my argument for you in my post above. Wish you the best on your personal journey to better understand our world.

Many of every other nation, race, culture and creed do too.

Not in the way that Indigineous cultures actively do today. See the sources listed by fossilesque above. Indigineous peoples often find themselves in a position where they have to protect the environment from Western corporate interests (which are an extension of Western culture).

No, there is value in sperating out the West here. Let’s refer to the past 500 years of human history. You can claim that my approach is binary ie. western by seperating them out as an entity but the reality is it was their binary view of the world (ie. white people being superior) that has led us to this point. They developed the economic and technologic leverage to make that binary our lived reality. Ignoring that would be naive at best, disingenuous at worst.

It was less than 100 years ago that the average Westerner felt that white countries / cultures were moral, sophisticated, trustworthy and non-white counterparts were immoral, simple, suspicious. The noble savage is a rare stereotype that went off the beaten path, but it was still an example of yet another binary (they’re simple, we’re sophisticated) Western stereotype / worldview.

Coming back to the present day, was it not the Canadian government that signed a memorandum of understanding to build an oil pipeline to its west coast without consulting the Indigineous community there? I recall multiple Indigineous leaders stating they would take the government to court. That sounds to me like the Indigineous community in Canada (as one example) takes environmental sustainability more seriously.

Many indigineous peoples uphold sustainability as crucial to their culture.

It is actually a common logical failing of Western thinking to assume that everyone sees the world and interacts with it the same way (like them). An unfortunate legacy of Eurocentrism during the colonial era.

The noble savage archetype itself came from Western schools of thought, and though it’s now accepted as overly reductive, that doesn’t mean that many Indigineous cultures do not live lives closer to nature and therefore put more thought into their ecological impact.

Indigineous cultures are layered and sophisticated. Some argue that principles of egalitarianism and self governance were introduced to englightenment thinkers through contact with Indigineous peoples in the Americas. Unfortunately a Eurocentric world view meant that crediting non European cultures for anything over most of the past 500 years has been discouraged.

There was perhaps a naivete around social progress then because economic needs were better met across the board (not for everyone, but on average). The presumption was that the progress would be linear. I was young then so I didn’t know that economic hardship could undo social hardship with a snap of the fingers.

Interesting that googling would take precedence over UNESCO or Guinness in a science community of all places. Guinness particularly is known to have rigorous quality standards.

I’m going to trust actual organizations with institutional standards over a Google search. That’s just me though. Other readers can draw their own conclusions.

1. al-Qarawiyyin was started as a mosque-madrasa complex.

2. Science and spirituality were intricately entwined during this era. As an example, Dharmic concepts of sunya led to the conceptualization of zero and its use in mathematical operations which is foundational to many subsequent scientific advancements and necessary to our communication through this platform.

3. Part of what sets al-Qarawiyyin apart is that it offered degrees or certificates of scholarly achievement before other institutions.

4. This is why UNESCO’s World Heritage description of the Fez Medina explicitly calls al‑Qarawiyyin “the oldest university in the world,” and Guinness lists it as the “oldest existing, continually operating higher‑learning institution”.