Faculty It is about learning what it means to be an ally, how to listen (especially when what I hear is emotionally challenging), and learning to give thanks always.We have to decolonize our minds before we can decolonize Native North America. I googled it and found a powerful, provocative body of work centered around a 2012 essay by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. What good does it do to impose a forest garden somewhere if it isnt a good cultural fit, or if the design process isnt sufficiently inclusive? It doesnt include indigenous people because only colonizers and settlers are considered farmers in America. What is Permaculture Design? Each session runs from 11 am to 1 pm on these days: May 22: Decolonizing Permaculture Overview May 29: Principle 1: Observe and Interact June 5: Principle 2: Catch and Store Energy June 12: Principle 3: Obtain a yield We would do well to reflect on our role as ecosystem designers and designers of ecological culture, and to think of ourselves in our design and organizing work as culture jammers.[i] What then, are some responsibilities here (vis a vis EarthCare, PeopleCare, FutureCare)? Right now it doesnt make a prominent habit of eating white cis-dudes because its busy making a habit of disenfranchising people of color, women, queer peoples and all those others. But as these brittle industrial systems fall apart as a result of climate change or energy shortages, those others can always be redefined to include me or you. Ive studied it to death, and Im still learning. I think we learn that through our relationships with other humans that not everything is meant to be sold. of the critical dialogue around permaculture, including its ties with cultural appropriation and white dominance (Watson 2016). ARTY: You wrote: Indigenous People can look at a landscape and tell if the soil is healthy. The word 'permaculture' was coined by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the 1970s, from " permanent agriculture," but has come to encompass many sorts of systems: "permanent culture.". How should this principle inform the actions of ethical people who benefit from skin and gender privilege in general? When people ask what do some young people need as an ally.this is one of the people I think of. But because we have the extra barrier of food access through money, food no longer is that indicator. But I realized that saying that sentence, especially to a room full of (mostly) white people, has the effect of erasing the lived experience of contemporary indigenous North American people. Im here to learn how to be a good ancestor. We have to remove the empire from our heads before we can remove the empire from any land base. In our fields, there are no fences. Think of decolonization as another form of enlightened self-interest. would love to hear your thoughts on this! Decolonization matters because it is the right thing to do in a moral sense. We have to have reverence and respect for those unknowns. The biggest difference in contemporary agriculture versus indigenous agriculture is the idea of money. And it isnt even accurate to say merely that the economic-political system is flawed, because it seems more accurate to say that it is deeply corrupt. Not to say that racism, sexism, ageism and other -isms dont cause problems, but ultimately it is the control and ownership of money and property that allows people to abuse their other privileges. What I found is there are not a lot of non-white people in the organic community. ARTY: What are the differences between an indigenous perspective of agriculture and a non-indigenous perspective? The only way to truly balance the scales is by actually, physically redistributing wealth. This idea of exploitation puts us in the position that we have to manage everything with the right to commodify things that should never be commodified. We can whisper the names of the beasts: racism, sexism, ageism, xenophobia, misogyny, hate, fear, anger we all experience these things from time to time, and we see the resulting backlash and judgmental attitudes. The course will address the first four permaculture principles through the framework of African land-based wisdom, (Cherokee) earth-based (non-European) language, and the common uses at Earthaven Ecovillage. Then they came for meand there was no one left to speak for me. We offer partial scholarships (50% off) to black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) who otherwise would not be able to afford to attend. If I hadnt been able to hustle up several thousand dollars trimming weed in California last winter (to hire an attorney) I would have lost the Food Not Lawns trademark forever. Once, during a presentation I said, Permaculture allows us to remember how to be indigenous to a place. It was a meme I had seen elsewhere, but I instantly felt skeevy after repeating it and vowed to never say it again. The list below offers tangible suggestions for how to cultivate real friendships and alliances. Please consider your needs and resources to determine what might be a stretch, but not a strain. I come from a background of union activism, art & philosophy, direct-action environmentalism, public school education, and building trades. Third, Trauger's suggestions for food-sovereign gov-ernment could have been developed better, including a more careful and strategic reflection about scale. We dont kill the natural systems in order to ensure that we survive, which is what food safety does. The conversation usually goes something like this: Settler/landowner: What can I do to help the poor?, Me: Gift me a piece of land, and I will turn it into a seed sanctuary, food forest, and permaculture paradise that will feed and benefit the community for generations.. Through this process of the design and management of ecosystems, we can regenerate ecological health by weaving patterns of beneficial relationships in ecosystems. These are things we cant see unless you have a microscope and unless you know what a carbon atom looks like. Thats the only way were going to ensure that we are within the cycle of whatever natural systems were a part of. Native people continue to live and many continue to tend their council fires, which have been maintained for hundreds of continuous years. Faculty and SOIL Co-Founder I dont understand the other side. How does indigenous farming develop relationships and nurture life? ARTY: Ive always felt like one of the big problems with agriculture is that it needs more biology, it needs more life, not less. Whether we turn our observational gaze to food systems, energy systems or economic and political systems, they are all overdue for a radical ecological revision. My own history is of extreme poverty, marginalization, and struggle. They know how to see the health of the soil without needing a microscope. Allan Savory, the founder of holistic livestock management, was criticized by scientists because initially he didnt use scientific metrics to measure his success, but instead he used the overall improved health and biodiversity of the landscape. Think about the friends you currently cherish. If you have access to land use, permaculture allows you to design perennial systems of regenerative food production that are much more resilient than annual-based agricultural systems of food production. Permaculture gives us the ability to design resilient homesteads, farms, villages, towns and economies so that we have the ability to weather the storms that come our way, whether they are economic or ecological in nature. Faculty Rather than being burdened with that task, the idea that we respect the unknown helps people deal with it. ARTY: The late Joseph Campbell, professor and author of books on mythology, said that Indigenous Peoples refer to the natural world and all in it as thou, as sacred. I studied food safety law when I got my LLM [Master of Laws Degree]. It informs how I think about what part I can play to heal historical traumas. 5/7/22 - Our Permaculture Community Comes Together - A Reflection on Weekend One of the PDC. I tell you to make the point that not everybody has access to the jobs, schools, homes, families, land, and respect that is a given in many of your lives. My mom, of Cree/Scottish heritage, who was beaten as a child and had me when she was 19, worked full-time-plus, at minimum wage, in a wide range of jobs. We are probably the youngest species on our planet and in our environments; the trees and the plants and the animals are much older. Questions of what happens to present settler peoples is secondary to the act of returning Native land to Native peoples. I help to facilitate and teach Permaculture Design Certification courses (PDCs) here in Maine and sometimes in Boston, partnering with the Resilience Hub. It is offered so that we may think critically and philosophically about sustainability and our role in our culture as designers of novel ecosystems. Decolonizing Permaculture Permaculture = Relationship by Stella Strega Scoz & Jose' Lorenzo Zamora Living Naturally: A Black Woman Practicing Permaculture by Kirtrina Baxter People of Color Statement from the NAPC by POC Caucus, NAPC 2014 Permaculture and the Patrix by Andrew Langford The Pueblo of Jemez said that the Caldera has always been sacred to the Jemez people, and they have always had continuous access. The two-week curriculum has been offered by thousands of teachers in every part of the world and has been adapted to the specific and particular contexts of small farmers everywhere. Decolonizing . We need to be aware of white fragility if we start feeling defensive during racially charged conversations. As a community steeped in the ecological design model known as Permaculture, Earthaven is taking a good long look at the ways in which the Earth Care, People Care, Fair Share movement has fallen short on the inclusion of black and brown voices, on addressing systemic injustices, on acknowledging where most land-based wisdom has originated. The author describes the devastating effects of such research on indigenous peoples and articulates a new Indigenous Research Agenda which aims to replace former Western academic . You need to become embraced in that system in order to create not only a healthy food system, but also healthy people, a healthy environment, and a happy mental state. May 22: Decolonizing Permaculture Overview, May 29: Principle 1: Observe and Interact, June 5: Principle 2: Catch and Store Energy, June 19: Principle 4: Apply self-regulation and feedback. Maybe human extinction is whats best for the Earth, maybe not. When we talk about decolonizing regenerative agriculture, we are looking at that initial definition. And because of this they have a stake in the continuity of the colonial project. Lee Warren Learning Adventures with Earthaven Ecovillage, Saturdays, May 22 June 19 11am 1pm Eastern Time. There are a lot more specialized skills in the individual land plot scenario. When I say agroecology is an interpretation, its because agroecology practices are practices without the people. Producers That Are Decolonizing Agriculture. I thought it was fascinating, the idea that you pretty much kill everything so that nothing living goes inside your body as a preventative to making you sick. When youre trying to move an entire community of white people and as a non-white person, it is really, really hard and tiring. Pomo people do different things than Navajo people. And a true friend gives all of this back to you, and so much more. When we write about decolonization, we are not offering it as a metaphor; it is not an approximation of other experiences of oppression. Such a project is nothing more than another form of imposition upon the locals by another foreign interest. When we plant corn, we dont plant just for us, we plant for the environment around us too. It leaves room at the table for processes to happen because if we knew everything and if we could mimic nature, theres no imagination thats needed, theres no room for surprises, and theres no room for some of the beauty that happens by happenstance. Fair Shares, anyone? I submit that the framework of decolonization would also save permaculture from being one more happy-faced, green, eco-groovy front for the project of genocide. Document access and instructions can be found here. Now imagine what I could have done had I been connected to the right opportunities at a younger age. Friendships are the building blocks of community. 9/29/21 - Dirt Time! Decolonizing Permaculture: Bridging the gap between privilege and oppression by Heather Jo Flores A low-income community in Indiana, coming together to build a shared garden in somebody's front yard. Thats exactly how I see indigenous food systems. In an ideal process here in North America, determining the future of settler people would be a separate process of negotiation between the newly repatriated indigenous governance structure and the settler peoples. During events like the regional Convergence, we might make an offering at the beginning to acknowledge who the indigenous peoples are who live/d on the land we are now occupying. An example of a novel ecosystem with forest garden polycultures and a diversity of plants and flowers. Recruitment is disingenuous. Permaculture is a fantastic curriculum and a beautiful pedagogy a wonderful system of knowledge that has been distilled down from a much larger traditional ecological body of knowledge originating all around the world and I think many of us within the movement acknowledge that. ARTY: I heard you tell the story of assisting your grandfather filling out an organic certification application and to the question of what inputs do you use, he said prayers, love, river water.. These are systems that have been perfected because of relationships with other living beings, plants, animals, the land and everything that surrounds it; those relationships take time. Decolonization allows for a framework of relevance as long as we have the courage to heal our White Fragility[ix] and face the realities of a white supremacist economic-political system. This concept is complicated by the fact that the ancestors of some settlers of color have been brought here against their will, in the slave trade or as indentured servants. Before that, they were considered hunters and gatherers, which has its own connotations. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognizing you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful. A-DAE: At the heart of the concept regeneration is wanting to renew and correct some of the missteps that have taken us to the point of environmental damage and degradation. We need to be relevant. Friends are loyal, honest, and sincere. One of the design methods used in permaculture that takes place early on in a site design is Zone and Sector Analysis. Amakiasu has been an educator for over 30 years. That means that when people are talking about correcting agriculture to a time when it was better, were going back to that definition of when settlers came to America and started agriculture. Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature. We can probably shoot for mimicking nature, but the idea that we could actually achieve it is a fallacy to me. Are you telling us that the Jemez people have been going over this fence? And the Jemez governors response was, I thought that fence was to keep the elk in not to keep the Indians out.. The idea of the picket fence fascinated me. Special thanks also to gkisedtanamoogk (Wampanoag nation), Canupa Gluha Mani (Lakota nation), and Ana Oian Amets (Aquitainian proto-Basque ancestral recovery) for the same. By this definition, just about every landowner in the permaculture community is a settler/colonizer. ARTY: How would you define regenerative agriculture? Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak outBecause I was not a Trade Unionist. Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences! Im not tooting my own horn here, only illuminating my own body of work as an example of how effective a person can be, even if they didnt start out with much. How can we tend our own council fires in service to the community? Because (and this is especially true when dealing with the permaculture community) I have consistently locked horns with the beasts enumerated above. While I get excited about the National Agroforestry Center looking into Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) with the interest of transitioning tillage-based agriculture to perennial agricultural systems, I cant help but notice the potential for inadvertent colonial appropriation. Decolonizing Permaculture - A Letter From Starhawk Please give generously to support a more resilient and regenerative world. In an indigenous community if you had a person who hunted, if you had a person who could plant a seed, if you had a person who knew how to gather, then you had access to food. Judge me if you must, but I did what I had to do to survive. Sometimes its public benefit; sometimes its through actual cash economy transactions. In historical terms, science has been used to dispossess a lot of Indigenous Peoples of land. It made the unequal Britain we see today, Why we should abandon the concept of the climaterefugee, When decolonization meets post-capitalism: the third annual post-capitalism conference, From a Dystopian Present to a Gaian Future, Overcoming Colonial Thinking to Connect With Life, Degrowth, Decolonization and Modern Monetary Theory, Political polarization is pushing evangelicals to a historic breaking point, Why You Dont Hear Trump or Farage Talking About the Tech Revolution, What Could Possibly Go Right? Those stories are just as important as the practices or the l hoe that I pick up. My response to that? But it is very much the opposite of what agricultural systems are today, which tries to kill everything except the plant that you want to grow. It will get those resources and eat you along with them, if need be. Why didnt I just market my seeds, produce, and skills as a professional, and make ends meet that way? If responsibility falls to the intervenor, how does that affect contemporary land ownership for those who can afford it? In collective resources management, a variety of skills are needed because youre not only dealing with people, but youre also dealing with relationships and how to balance those relationships. He helps facilitate PDCs with Lisa Fernandes of The Resilience Hub. We are a very young society and nation. Shes been living in rural, land-based community since 1995 and at Earthaven Ecovillage since 2000. Center for Communication and Civic Engagement, Culture Jamming and Meme-based Communication. https://depts.washington.edu/ccce/polcommcampaigns/CultureJamming.htm, [ii] Rafter Sass Ferguson, Critical Questions, Early Answers, Permaculture Activist 93 (Autumn 2014): http://liberationecology.org/critical-questions-early-answers/, Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility, The International Journal of Critical Pedagogy 3, no. 9/15/20 - Turning Fire Into Water: Permaculture Approaches to Fire Ecology, Preparedness . And while that seems progressive or cosmopolitan, are there instances where design principles or techniques associated with permaculture were misappropriated from indigenous peoples without their permission? Decolonizing Permaculture. Another proposal is that we should seek genuine and longstanding relationships with existing First Nations. If resource extraction or industrial infrastructure needs to happen, none of us are immune to being displaced. They said you need to put fences around your fields so you can keep out all the animals that are going to eat your crops. Well also discuss how to use these principles to transform ourselves, our values, our behaviors, our projects, and our society by interpreting them through a decolonized lens. Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website. They are not extinct. And as you describe, the thrust is to kill off the pests, kill off the weeds, destroy and kill and create the monocrop. The shorthand is that Takers are people of industrialized growth-based societies and Leavers are people of tribal, small-scale, village-based or nomadic societies. Marina Nobre: Reforestation is more than plantingtrees. In contemporary agriculture, there are individualized, commodified resources like land, you can buy water, at one point in our history you could even buy somebodys body and health. See the link below for her article and invitation to. It started long before that event happened in our country, and regenerative agriculture needs to challenge that narrative that has led us astray thus far. And so when somebody with money, land, and privilege seems eager to help the oppressed, I will bring it up. My lineage of earth skills teachers includes Mike Douglas and Mal Stevens of the Maine Primitive Skills School. Decolonizing Permaculture . When we talk about decolonizing regenerative agriculture, we are looking at that initial definition. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this issue. On the surface, permaculture is often about designing eco-groovy, perennially edible landscapes, gardens and farms. In 200 pages she presents a cogent critique not only of anthropology, but of the cultural evolution of the entire Western concept of research. Perhaps this article already has you feeling triggered, frustrated, defensive? More importantly, though, permaculture gives us the ability to heal and regenerate ecosystems through right relationship to all the other beings around us: plants, animals (including humans), wind, water, rocks, soils and so on. There are many reports that say carbon sequestration is happening in indigenous stewarded lands. My grandpas response was: Were farmers. Scientific inquiry and the scientific field is fairly young compared to the natural systems that were trying to mimic. It is an ethically bounded framework of ecological design that can be used to design everything from landscapes and farms to business enterprises and other cultural projects, on nearly any scale. Life is not just an idea that lives in the head, or a feeling that lives in the heart. [v] Ideally this process should be done without strings attached. Clearly were doing important work with permaculture, so I want to separate the baby from the bathwater. : Episode 95 Geneen Marie Haugen. Each session runs from 11 am to 1 pm on these days: This is an introductory level workshop. Disclaimer: The problem with this type of list is that it asks the privileged reader to discover a sense of empathy based on altruistic inclination: I am asking you to forego the privilege that seems to benefit you, and to give up some of your power and position, in order to build a more just society for everyone else. If its under your house and the machine needs it, it cares not who you are. The World Needs an Anti-Harassment Movement: So Does Permaculture. We have to embrace the bacteria and the microbiome that make our community because thats the only way our bodies adjust to our environment. When we farm, were thinking about natural cycles, and how do we become more embedded into those natural systems. You name it: housecleaning, selling jewelry, and, of course, growing and trimming marijuana (which is what probably eighty percent of West Coast activists and artists have done to sustain themselves for decades.). Something to think about. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak outBecause I was not a Jew. They honor the wisdom of our ancestors to stimulate the health of humans and the planet, and their innovative economic model ensures economic stimulation for even the smallest farmers. I do believe that most people wake up in the morning wanting to be good people and to do good work in the world, regardless of their race, class, gender, age, or what they eat for breakfast.