Really great point as well. Atun Shei covered something similar in his video on The New World. https://youtu.be/ziV5DBf0oyY?t=659

the algonquin were still homo sapiens as admirable as their lifestyle might seem to us modern people they were the uncontested masters of their ecosystem. Every human manipulates nature to provide for themselves, they weren't symbiotic with nature they were separate from it and to suggest otherwise veers dangerously close to the bigotry of the noble savage trope. And do the english really deserve their portrayal here as the desecrators of nature? Only retrospectively their role in the story is the proverbial railroad coming to town; and the movie doesn't just portray the english for who they were it also reckons with what their colony would eventually become - namely america. But let's forget the past 400 years for a second; didn't the english have a close relationship with nature too even if it was a bit more abusive? Sure sometimes they did frivolous things like dig for gold or cultivate tobacco, but to feed themselves in the short term they hunted, fished, and farmed just like the algonquin did. And yeah of course there were massive cultural differences, but at the end of the day these are both pre-industrial agricultural societies much more alike than the movie gives them credit for. the new world just oozes with the sense of melancholy about humanity uncoupling from nature even the title "the new world" implies that there's sort of a thematic old world where we lived in harmony with the earth and i think pining for that connection with nature is frankly a pretty privileged angst to have. I mean if our culture wasn't so pampered and entitled then we wouldn't dare to presume that that living in harmony with nature was simple or innately fulfilling, and i mean the great thing about the modern world, one of the great things is that you can connect with nature anytime you want it's called camping you numb nuts! Oh i'm sorry is your objectively amazing modern life getting you down? Then go hike the appalachian trail or something jesus

Oh of my favorite take-downs of the wokified noble savage. We infantilize and dehumanize Native peoples when we act like whiteness caused our angsty impurity. It ties a privileged lament with "progress" and in a backwards way treats other groups as savage in order to fetishize them or for the sake of simplistic self-pity.

Native Americans did amazing things, including some stuff that we treat as corrupting influences of the West. Not only did South America have empires and mass infrastructure and trade routes, but the north had similar achievements. The Mound Builders built such impressive earthwork structures that they fascinated colonists who until little more than a century ago they swore they had to be built by any number of cultures secretly arriving in the new world first. The ancient city of Cahokia is amazing and a good example of how societies having massive differences speaks to material conditions and not a dichotomy of being in harmony or not with nature. When they needed roads they built roads, when they needed to be mobile they were nomadic, when they could rely on a consistent river and food source they did so, when not possible then they diversified and went hunting and gathering.

https://www.history.com/.image/ar_1:1%2Cc_fill%2Ccs_srgb%2Cfl_progressive%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_1200/MTY4NTgyMjQ2Mzk4MTc0OTk4/cahokia_mounds_isemingerpainting300dpi-20x13.jpg