I have seen similar comments before and I am always puzzled by what the author of the comment might have meant. Is it possible the author felt that societies who only returned to the land that which they had taken from the land should have been more environmentally friendly? Does that make sense?
To those who feel it does make sense I ask if they expect modern man to exceed the Indians as the superior custodians of the land. The Native American Indian had no plastic or paper to dispose of. They created no chemicals. I would assert that all the waste created by an American Indian tribe in one year would take less than one additional year to have been returned to the earth from which it came. Have Archaeologists retrieved any yellow pages, metal cans, six-pack containers, or packing foam from an ancient Indian garbage mound?
One clear way in which modern man could improve on the Indians treatment of the land would be if he were to remove himself from the planet.
After you!