The tour in Colby Art Museum this afternoon showed me how artists carried out the idea of origins in different disciplines and expressed them in the form of arts. I was particularly interested in Gary Green’s photograph Prairie Fire #2 near Liberal, Missouri. Recently in my ecological history class, we have been discussing the pre-agriculture societies and early environmental management actions by humans. Slash-and-burn was a widely influential agricultural method that contributed significantly to early ecological history, especially on the American continent. Whether or not the Native Americans intended to burn the forests and plains to manage the environment has long been a controversial question to many scientists and historians.  Continue reading