She is now focusing on her writing and on EarthShine, a business that exposes children and teens to the wonders of the natural world. It leaves the common farmer and the common Indigenous person outside of understanding, and thats a problem. We now approach a closely related topic that, while important, is big enough that it warrants a separate article. I dont understand the other side. Decolonizing seeds and the feminine side of things a conversation Science rather than trying to count carbon, should work to explain to the Western scientific world why these stewarded places are so important and why these practices should be continued. 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. The tragedy is that such thinking offers permaculturist white people the opportunity to replace those indigenes and complete the project of settler colonialism, without those permies realizing that theyre doing so. Decoloniziation For Beginners: Inner And Outer Vision We understand that BIPOC experience more financial and institutional barriers to participation, and this is one way we are able to create more access. For me, it is a process of learning how I passively benefit from my racial and gender privilege. 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. A-DAE: Yes. By the time I dropped out in 10th grade at the age of 15, I had attended 19 different schools and lived in at least 30 different houses. How can we expect to be designers of ecological culture if we dont have a clear understanding of our past? I became aware of the topic of decolonization a year ago. someone with experience in conveying and working with these kinds of topics. Many of these other disciplines take practices of Indigenous People, but dont include the people or dont include their stories. Marina Nobre: Reforestation is more than plantingtrees. Each session runs from 11 am to 1 pm on these days: This is an introductory level workshop. Full Profile Page. This machine is ecocidal because it destroys mountaintops and water wells with fracking and coal mining. 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.. Exploring the Intersection of Permaculture and Decolonization. Decolonizing permaculture June 2, 2022 Public domain The dreamcatcher is one of the most widely appropriated symbols. I reached out to my close friends and eventually we found an article titled Decolonization is not a metaphor.[iii]. Im asking people to stop and say, Look at how we think about agriculture in America and think about whether it included Indigenous People. The answer is it doesnt. Remember the permaculture principles: Respond to feedback; Designer limits the yield; Problems are solutions; Mistakes are tools for learning. The course will address the first four permaculture principles through the framework of African land-based wisdom. Amakiasu has been an educator for over 30 years. Decolonizing Permaculture Workshop Description. For instance, my grandpa would take me to the field and tell a story about the last time he saw conditions like this and what his grandparents did. 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)? Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak outBecause I was not a Jew. I serve the larger Northeast regional network by being an active participant on the board of PINE, the Permaculture Institute of the Northeast. I most often hear the term decolonization used in discussions about race, class, and privilege. Producers That Are Decolonizing Agriculture. Wouldnt you do just about anything for them? Dont use the ethics and principles for excuses to avoid difficult conversationsuse them as tools for navigation. Copyright 2023 Permaculture Women's Guild & Heather Jo Flores. [xi] Daniel Quinn, Ishmael (Bantam/Turner, 1992) and Beyond Civilization (Harmony, 1999). All participants are welcome. Perhaps this article already has you feeling triggered, frustrated, defensive? We have really strong seeds. Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website. So, this idea that Indigenous People would be welcomed in the organic community was one that I was really hopeful for. Indigenous Land Acknowledgement | Earth Activist Training How do Native voices become authentically included in the regenerative agriculture conversation? It seems the observation of the tension in considering these questions of land ownership/stewardship in light of this historical and contemporary inheritance is important. When I was a little girl in second grade, we were asked to draw a picture of our house. 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.. So saying something like Permaculture allows us to remember how to be indigenous to a place makes a metaphor of indigeneity and thereby erases the lived experience of real peoples who are actually indigenous to Native America and who still resist the campaigns of genocide and expropriation of land and resources that continue to this day. Shes been living in rural, land-based community since 1995 and at Earthaven Ecovillage since 2000. This critique is offered to make the evolution of our movement cleaner and more respectful of indigenous cultures, and to find a way to balance Leaver and Taker[xi] cultures, maybe even to unify them. Agriculture is usually the point in our American historical narrative where Indigenous People are separated from the rest of civilization. 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. Special thanks also to gkisedtanamoogk (Wampanoag nation), Canupa Gluha Mani (Lakota nation), and Ana Oian Amets (Aquitainian proto-Basque ancestral recovery) for the same. How should this principle inform the actions of ethical people who benefit from skin and gender privilege in general? Working at the permaculture edge and to provide information useful to people working on the ground. This lack of discernment is a blind spot. We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website. People with more privilege have more control over their own lives and, as such, have better opportunities to manifest what they see as their true purpose, without the burdens (and time consumption) associated with struggling to survive on a daily basis. [x] In this case, settler peoples are studying and applying indigenous forms of land management, which can be positive as long as the tools and techniques are willingly shared by the indigenous peoples and not brashly stolen, like they have been so many other times throughout history. As I ruminated on the difference between recruitment, green missionary work, and relevance, I also started to ask how I could use my privilege and agency (as a white cis-male) to be an ally to marginalized Native communities. The industrial machine is genocidal because it kills off whole nations and peoples. In our fields, there are no fences. In an American or contemporary agricultural system, the way to access those things is through money or some form of money. And because of this they have a stake in the continuity of the colonial project. In that sense, I think there is some awareness that there needs to be more inclusion of non-white people in the organic community. ARTY: Relationships in indigenous ways are central. Full Profile Page. I am here to learn how to be of better service to all people. A-DAE: Absolutely. Resilience is a program of Post Carbon Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping the world transition away from fossil fuels and build sustainable, resilient communities. Nothing is separate from the other. decolonization Archives - Santa Cruz Permaculture I was like: What is this? Permaculture on the edge: building an anti/despite/post-capitalist How did fences disrupt indigenous food sheds in New Mexico and other places? Full Profile Page. Indigenous People need room to tell those stories. Permaculture allows us to design productive loops of synergies between our technologically built environments and the surrounding ecologies within which we live. Our intention is to invite proponents of western ecological agriculture (e.g., regenerative ag / permaculture) to go deeper and encourage their peers to go deeperto not just 'take' practices from Indigenous cultures without their context, but to also encompass the deeper Indigenous worldviews inspiring a consciousness shift that hopefully will Friendships require vulnerability, compassion, patience, and most of all, effort. 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.). 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. It gives the ethic of People Care teeth. How do we remember that we are all indigenous to this planet, our Earth Mother, our Gaia? 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. 9/29/21 - Dirt Time! Questions of what happens to present settler peoples is secondary to the act of returning Native land to Native peoples. It requires different skill sets when youre managing collective resources versus individualized land plots. 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. 9/15/20 - Turning Fire Into Water: Fire Preparedness through Forest and Watershed Restoration. Full disclosure: I did not buy this one, or a photograph thereof, from an indigenous person. Decolonizing Permaculture - A Letter From Starhawk Please give generously to support a more resilient and regenerative world. By choosing a higher price point, you are helping make the program more accessible to others for whom the low-end may be cost-prohibitive. This workshop has five two-hour sessions. Nobody should feel like a slave. We cant sell everything. Its a very broad term. In Edible Forest Gardens, Dave Jacke talked about the generative or degenerative potential that disturbance plays in ecosystem dynamics. Decolonizing Permaculture . Understanding our place in the universe requires us to actually look at those time frames. Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature. When we talk about decolonizing regenerative agriculture, we are looking at that initial definition. ARTY: When Europeans came to North America they erected fences. So an injury to one is an injury to all should be understood in light of Neimollers poem First they came for the Socialists: First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak outBecause I was not a Socialist. Indigenous people, in general, dont use pesticides. A-DAE: Thats a loaded question because the whole idea of agriculture puts a contemporary spin on the conversation. ARTY: Ive always felt like one of the big problems with agriculture is that it needs more biology, it needs more life, not less. 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. Lee is a sustainability professional with twenty five years of experience envisioning, designing, and living innovative solutions to organic food systems, intentional community, and sustainability education. Fair Shares, anyone? Wilderness Skills - Santa Cruz Permaculture Whether considering energy systems of production and distribution or agricultural systems of production and distribution, when we examine them critically we can see that these systems are brittle and capable of breakdowns at many pinch points. Some open questions I still have revolve around issues of permaculture and its relationship to colonization. How can we tend our own council fires in service to the community? I have had a handful of discussions about decolonization in terms of giving land back to indigenous populations. This article was originally printed in Permaculture Design Magazine (formerly Permaculture Activist) issue #98, Winter 2015. 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. How do you organize and convince White, Black and Yellow people into giving their land back to the Red Nations from which all this land was stolen? 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. There are a lot of transactions that limit the access that a person has to food. I have tried to work on group certification for tribal communities, but again these are systems that are massive, and it takes way more than me to make really lasting change. Its almost like the idea of wilderness being healthy if nobodys in it. Indigenous People have created the idea of the unknown and the sacred and reverence for where we are as the youngest entity in this place. This matters because an injury to one is an injury to all. She served as garden educator and camp director at the Truly Living Well Center for Urban Agriculture for eight years. We offer partial scholarships (50% off) to black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) who otherwise would not be able to afford to attend. Before that, they were considered hunters and gatherers, which has its own connotations. All of these yearsorganizing Food Not Lawns, writing the book, growing and sharing seeds, traveling and collecting species and storiesall of that has been funded by me doing a lot of crazy shit for money. And a true friend gives all of this back to you, and so much more. Lillian Jackson created a an inclusive safe space at the Faculty Let's Talk People Care: Decolonizing Permaculture - Medium My term is coming to an end, and I hope they replace me with another indigenous person, but thats a political process, which is pretty crazy presently. My economic forms of production include designing, teaching, gardening and construction trades (carpentry, painting). Saturdays, May 22 - June 19 11am - 1pm EST Online. For example, she An example of a novel ecosystem with forest garden polycultures and a diversity of plants and flowers. It needs to rip through the Permaculture Community worldwide. To me, it boils down to two things: A view of oneself as somehow superior in knowledge and ability to others, and a lack of the sincere trust that one needs in order to build authentic relationships. Shes been living in rural, land-based community since 1995 and at Earthaven Ecovillage since 2000. It is this facet of decolonization which strikes fear into the hearts of most settler peoples because it offers no firm guarantee of a settler futurity. I recognize that these issues need to be studied and dealt with through an intersectional lens. If you identify as BIPOC and would like to receive a full or partial scholarship, please contact us at info@schoolofintegratedliving.org. See inside The Nook at Gateway Neighborhood, The Butterfly House in the Hut Hamlet Neighborhood, and The Hummingbird Apartment at Village Terraces Cohousing. And imagine what I could do now if I had a piece of my own land instead of 80 grand in student debt. Our award-winning radio and podcast series highlighting diverse voices of grassroots leaders. [v] Ideally this process should be done without strings attached. He suggests that the response to this weakness should not be one of recruitment or tokenism, but rather requires some deeper reflection on how we can be relevant to communities of color. Native people continue to live and many continue to tend their council fires, which have been maintained for hundreds of continuous years. Resources, News and Articles - Santa Cruz Permaculture 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. When we talk about decolonizing regenerative agriculture, we are looking at that initial definition. The indigenous universal connection is the idea that you absolutely need to be part of the natural cycles around you, whether theyre negative or positive. In the sense of some kinds of strict land management and home economics, its kind of true. They need that whole spectrum, the full body, the full room and the time to tell those stories along with their practices, which currently is hard to find in any of these multiple disciplines, whether it be agroecology, permaculture, or traditional ecological knowledge. It is a process of unlearning racist and white supremacist ideas and behaviors, some of which I wasnt consciously aware were in my head. 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. 9/15/20 - Turning Fire Into Water: Permaculture Approaches to Fire Ecology, Preparedness . Because some people have more financial means than others, we have created a sliding scale fee system to accommodate a range of economic realities. Its a tall order, but I hope that you will embrace the challenge. Introduction to Permaculture | OUR Ecovillage 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. Perhaps it is the willingness to play the superior that is the root of the problem? I dont have any firm answers, but I know that asking these difficult questions causes an uneasy and unsettling feeling. The biggest difference in contemporary agriculture versus indigenous agriculture is the idea of money. (Think of Rainbow family, New Age Plastic Shamans, and pretindians. In my work regionally in the Northeast Permaculture network, one proposal that has emerged is that we consciously refrain from self-applying the term indigenous if we are not actually indigenous to Native North or South America. 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. Arent these all of the same qualities we want for our permaculture community at large? What is my experience with this topic? Ancestral Organics in Colombia is committed to the magic of nature, consciously-grown food, and regenerative farming. Its important to keep in mind that food is an indicator of the health of a society. ARTY: In your writings and talks, you seem to challenge the idea of mimicking nature, which many people in the regenerative agriculture movement use as a guiding principle. By this definition, just about every landowner in the permaculture community is a settler/colonizer. How do we incorporate righting this egregious, unresolved, and ongoing historical crime into our culture jamming work? As a quick thumbnail sketch, permaculture is an ecological approach to the design of whole systems. Collective resources require collective and community management. We take the cues from the natural systems, whether that be deer, whether that be insects, whether it be water shortages. 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. Decolonization is about correcting past crimes committed by (mostly) European settlers by returning stolen land. I come from a background of union activism, art & philosophy, direct-action environmentalism, public school education, and building trades. 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.". We need to give thanks always. When we farm, were thinking about natural cycles, and how do we become more embedded into those natural systems. 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. The Navajo people do different things than Kiowa people. A-DAE: One of the things that comes to mind is food safety. 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. I dont have any answers, but I do care deeply about being a good neighbor and a good ancestor to my descendants. We have to embrace the bacteria and the microbiome that make our community because thats the only way our bodies adjust to our environment. This website uses Google Analytics and Meta (Facebook) Pixel to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages. So, I sit on the board and it helps that Im a brown face in a very white community. Decolonizing Permaculture: Bridging the gap between privilege and There are processes in the trees that grow, in the animals that migrate that we just will not know. Self-righteousness is certainly not a principle of permaculture, and yet we divide ourselves so easily, bickering over the details and competing for resources. Decolonizing Permaculture - Resilience 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. (Think solidarity, being an ally, healing white fragility). In historical terms, science has been used to dispossess a lot of Indigenous Peoples of land. Those stories are the guideposts that need to be laid out before we even start digging into the soil. Though there isnt enough space to properly tackle the subject in this article, it still warrants a brief mention here. Please consider your needs and resources to determine what might be a stretch, but not a strain. My response to that? A-DAE: One of the reasons I entered into the organic community was because organic uses less chemicals to create a food system, and the use of those things by industrial agriculture really worried me. Permaculture is a process of understanding, analyzing and designing systems. Im living out a version of the American Dream with an eco-groovy veneer here on my one-acre permaculture demonstration site where we manage small scale agroforestry systems with poultry as integrated livestock. The Pueblo of Jemez said that the Caldera has always been sacred to the Jemez people, and they have always had continuous access. When we plant corn, we dont plant just for us, we plant for the environment around us too. Isnt nature our best teacher? When that happens, people are disconnected from society and from the collective resources that go into making food. I dont tell you all of this to make you feel bad or to pity me. Rather than being burdened with that task, the idea that we respect the unknown helps people deal with it. For me, it is a process of working through my grief over the crimes my ancestors may very well have committed. We need to be aware of white fragility if we start feeling defensive during racially charged conversations. Third, Trauger's suggestions for food-sovereign gov-ernment could have been developed better, including a more careful and strategic reflection about scale. 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. Because (and this is especially true when dealing with the permaculture community) I have consistently locked horns with the beasts enumerated above. How can it be a misappropriated concept? Whenever I get questions about agriculture, I always get a little squirmy because I realize most people are coming from the perspective of the American historical narrative where Indigenous People are excluded. To me, again, thats a fallacy. The conversation about decolonizing agriculture is about examining the agricultural system and concepts that allow for those injustices to happen. Decolonizing Permaculture Whitewashed Hope: A Message from Indigenous Leaders and Organizations on Regenerative Agriculture and Permaculture "Whitewashed Hope" is an open-source document intended for sharing. We have to have reverence and respect for those unknowns. EarthShine also includes her Eco-Hood Design-and-Build Project along with Soulstice, which introduces young folks to careers theyve never heard of. Now imagine what I could have done had I been connected to the right opportunities at a younger age. Its much more nuanced than these terms that are in vogue or not in vogue depending on the time and audience. When youre trying to move an entire community of white people and as a non-white person, it is really, really hard and tiring. People with more privilege than me have blown me off, forgotten to pay me, plagiarized my work, used my name to sell a PDC without hiring me to teach it, and even, as in the case with RealFarmacy and their smarmy Grow Food, Not Lawns Facebook page, tried to steal my trademark through the US Patent & Trademark Office. Id like to think we can err on the side of survival, however temporary it may be in the big picture. I googled it and found a powerful, provocative body of work centered around a 2012 essay by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. Another way to obtain all the basics of ecological design and the permaculture movement for those who can not make a full two-week course! 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.