Valuing intangible things ≠ whinging when those intangibles are no longer adaptive to circumstances.
Before our arrival, there was war between Native nations, cultural change due to trade and new inventions, and so on.
Unless people believe that Natives didn't have new ideas, this is clearly so. And Native history shows change!
To imagine that 500 years later, no music, language, culture, technology would have changed, is a massive disservice to both the intellect and capabilities of those peoples.
Yet we enable things such as unrestrained hunting, and even whale hunting, for cultural reasons.
As if a healthy Native nation wouldn't stop hunting endangered species! Come on!
So yes, static "this is the way it was" is a load of hurtful outcomes.
For all we know, Natives might have invented our tech by now, had we not intervened.
Basically, people need to stop moving around and hunting to live, which means crops and domesticated food/work animals. And large cities for a strong industrial base.
There were few places where all that came together. Maybe the Incans? But they also has waterways and slaves.
But I agree, the timing was short.
The North American megafauna didn’t disappear all by themselves. More recently, the Maori certainly made some species go extinct in New Zealand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_Zealand_species_ex...
If you’re going to recognize that natives/first nations/etc. have agency then we have to accept the good and the bad instead of infantilizing them according to some fantasy ideal.
We have hunting quotas, and attempt to mitigate over fishing, and so on. Yes, we aren't perfect, but we try.
My point was, if a contempary Native nation existed, had modern agriculture methods, and was able to subsist without hunting? I suspect they would self regulate as we do.