(epic music) - Well, I think one of the things that Thomas Cole leaves out of his paintings not only is the indigenous people, but the fact that the indigenous people weren't here anymore.

So colonization first happened in this area all the way back in 1609 when Henry Hudson came sailing down the river that now bears his name.

And from that moment on, with the inception of the beaver wars and the fur trade and all of that, indigenous people were just continuously moved out of the area.

- Environmental conversations need to begin by addressing inequality because environmental problems are not spread evenly amongst peoples.

Environmental problems are significantly about inequality and about race, which is a colonial idea.

A lot of environmental problems that perhaps Thomas Cole would react to requires us to talk about systems of harm like industry, but also systems of harm like colonization, which is the idea that a powerful group of people can take over a land and use the people and use the land for their resources.

- The Indian Removal Act, I think, is one of the worst policies in our nation's history and certainly extremely damaging to New York State.

Generally, the Indian Removal Act was an attempt by the federal government to move the indigenous people from like eastern part of the country to the western part of the country, so west of the Mississippi River.

And this was done, basically, because the government wanted the lands.

Thinking of land and nature as kind of a limitless resource, not taking into account at all the strong ties that indigenous people had to their lands.

And it showed a real misunderstanding or intentional misunderstanding of native culture to think that it would just be easy to move people to completely different lands.

It's really a dark policy, a dark time in our nation's history.

In New York it plays out the second Buffalo Creek Treaty of 1838, which was an attempt by the Ogden Land Company to basically take or purchase the Haudenosaunee lands and move them west of the Mississippi.

It was an invalid treaty to begin with because the federal government never ratified it.

So it was essentially a treaty between a private entity and the Haudenosaunee, which is not allowable by law.

Also, the Haudenosaunee were lied to and taken advantage of throughout this and told that they would be receiving money and lands that they never would receive.

Long story short is many Haudenosaunee people were displaced as a result of this.

- They say you had the Lenape people, whose area is from a little bit south of Albany and Hudson and into New York City and that area is the area we call Lenapehoking, which is land of the Lenape.

And of course it took up parts of Pennsylvania and Delaware as well, but they had their own Trail of Tears in being removed from the land that they called home.

So their removal happened in the late 1700s, early 1800s, and they were moved across the country to like Indiana, Ohio.

And today they have two reservations in the state of Oklahoma and there's also some in Canada as well.

You also had the Mohican people, who were north Hudson, north Albany, Lake Champlain area and then western Massachusetts who were also forced, to first of all, western parts of New York, but then also they went into Ohio, Indiana and then later Wisconsin.

And so that's where they're at today.

You had Haudenosaunee tribes, who were also removed from the area, they were primarily on the western side of the river, the Hudson River, but they were also removed.

And all this removal happened almost immediately after the American Revolution.

And many of these tribes, with the exception of some of the Haudenosaunee tribes, fought on the side of the Patriots.

So fought for freedom for the United States.

My ancestors included, I'm Oneida and I am Mohican and both of those tribes fought on side of the Patriots and then right afterwards were removed from the land.

So there weren't many tribes in the northeastern part of the United States at all, whether it was in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, all of those tribes, the states that now make up New England, they were almost virtually gone by the time Cole would've been around and definitely by the time of the Civil War, starting in 1860.

- In Thomas Cole's "Essay on American Scenery," which he wrote in 1836, he writes, "It is a subject that to every American ought to be of surpassing interest, he is in the midst of American scenery.

It is his own land, it's beauty, it's magnificence, it's sublimity, all are his, and how undeserving of such a birthright, if he can turn towards it an unobserving eye and unaffected heart."

But then later he says, very specifically, "A very few generations have passed away since this vast tract of American continent, now the United States, rested in the shadow of primeval forests, whose gloom was peopled by savage beasts, and scarcely less savage men or lay in those wide grassy plains.

And although an enlightened and increasing people have broken in upon the solitude and with activity and power brought changes that seem magical, yet the most distinctive and perhaps the most impressive characteristic of American scenery is its wildness."

(epic music) - Sponsored in part by Albany Medical Health Systems and by Robert and Doris Fischer Malesardi.

(poignant music)