Nietschmann, Bernard Quinn (1941–2000)

Bernard q. nietschmann was a pioneering environmental scholar and indigenous rights activist. Throughout a professional career that spanned three decades, Nietschmann demonstrated that cultural and biological diversity are inextricably linked, but that the future of both was under threat from global markets and state-centered geopolitics.

Born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1941, Nietschmann received a doctorate in geography under the guidance of William Denevan at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1970. After teaching at the University of Michigan for seven years, Nietschmann moved to the University of California at Berkeley in 1977 and remained there until his death from esophageal cancer in 2000.

The publication of Nietschmann's 1973 book Between Land and Water: The Subsistence Ecology of the Miskito Indians, Eastern Nicaragua, and his follow-up marine ...