I am designing an elective on environmentalism in social work; there are numerous directions that the course could take. In the social work literature, an emerging theme is the depiction of Indigenous peoples as the original environmentalists, best situated to mentor the profession. However, I argue that this bypasses the ways that ideologies of nature operate in political spaces. Indigenous social movements around land and resources face resistance and we must engage with interdisciplinary critiques of the dangers of simplistic conceptualizations of the environment to see the intense political struggles taking place.