I most often hear the term decolonization used in discussions about race, class, and privilege. When I was a little girl in second grade, we were asked to draw a picture of our house. Indigenous Land Acknowledgement | Earth Activist Training Jesse Watson is a permaculture designer, teacher and builder living and working in Midcoast Maine, occupied Penobscot territory. We all have indigenous ancestors, and they were once colonized too. The interactions between climate change, energy peak and economic contraction mean that the stakes are very high. A-DAE: One of the major components I hear consistently in regenerative agriculture is this idea of carbon sequestration. Tyson is a two-hearted and two-spirited person descended from the local indigenous matriarchy called the (A-ni-gi-lo-hi) based here in their aboriginal territory most commonly known as the Great Smoky Mountainsides. We should listen with humility when we are challenged over our privilege or unexamined racism. If its under your house and the machine needs it, it cares not who you are. 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. Decolonization is about upholding longstanding treaties, adherence to international law, and the return of genuine sovereignty and the administration of land use to First Nations peoples. This framework would help us discern between solidarity projects and green-missionary projects, both here and abroad. He operates Midcoast Permaculture Design (midcoastpermaculture.com), serving residential and farm clients. Decolonizing Permaculture Workshop Series - YouTube Decolonization matters because it is the right thing to do in a moral sense. I dont have time to deal with people criticizing me. Can you talk more about reverence versus exploitation? Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples 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. Stories are from readers, activists, designers, teachers, and community organisers across America and around the world to reveal the newest discoveries in ecological systems. In our fields, there are no fences. You need to adjust to them. 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 I dont understand the other side. Call me a socialist, but isnt socialism at its heart just a community coming together? We need small, steady change built upon strong, healthy connections. We seek to learn from it, adapt with it, and collaborate, rather than to control, manipulate, and abuse it. 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? Oct 25, 2021 -- Delaware Teachers Institute learn about Decolonizing Permaculture Share Watch on Since then, we've found this message from 10+ Indigenous leaders and organizations stating that regenerative agriculture and permaculture offer narrow solutions to the climate crisis, when compared with indigenous values. This is the work. In Edible Forest Gardens, Dave Jacke talked about the generative or degenerative potential that disturbance plays in ecosystem dynamics. Scientific inquiry and the scientific field is fairly young compared to the natural systems that were trying to mimic. Cochiti people do things differently than Pomo people. 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. Something to think about. You have to replace that societal indicator with something else. So, my definition of regenerative agriculture is one that includes a true history of land and the environment and peoples health that starts prior to contact. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak outBecause I was not a Jew. 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. Indigenous people, in general, dont use pesticides. There are many reports that say carbon sequestration is happening in indigenous stewarded lands. We have to remove the empire from our heads before we can remove the empire from any land base. 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. As such, I spent much of my childhood either homeless, living in a van, or being dropped off at a relatives house for a few months, to lighten the burden on my mom. Shes been living in rural, land-based community since 1995 and at Earthaven Ecovillage since 2000. Download a sample from the Decolonizing Permaculture issue here (19MB). It is offered so that we may think critically and philosophically about sustainability and our role in our culture as designers of novel ecosystems. Faculty and SOIL Co-Founder Have you been able to provide some indigenous perspective to that process? 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. To what extent is permaculture a product of a settler people? What is my experience with this topic? Another view, Front Yard Gardens: Rules for Growing Food Out Front, Gaining Ground: 8 places to grow food if you dont have access to land, Regenerating Our Reality through Circular Economy. 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. But because we have the extra barrier of food access through money, food no longer is that indicator. How do we remember that we are all indigenous to this planet, our Earth Mother, our Gaia? Special thanks to my dear friend Kiarna Boyd for holding me accountable to a high standard and compassionately aiding my evolution in this area. 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. Those stories are the guideposts that need to be laid out before we even start digging into the soil. My grandpas response was: Were farmers. Arty Mangan Food and FarmingIndigeneity Article. These are things we cant see unless you have a microscope and unless you know what a carbon atom looks like. How To Decolonize The Permaculture Movement | HuffPost Impact This matters because an injury to one is an injury to all. We understand that BIPOC experience more financial and institutional barriers to participation, and this is one way we are able to create more access. Indigenous People need room to tell those stories. 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. Decolonizing Permaculture Information Session - School of Integrated Living And if we have privilege and agency within that unjust and atrocious system, we must commit to using that access to dismantle that system. But for me, the central problem that divides the permaculture community is class. The reason this matters is because the industrial systems we are embedded within and dependent upon are often deeply flawed and corrupt, in addition to being quite brittle. Decolonizing Permaculture: Bridging The Gap Between Privilege And On a deeper level, permaculture is about the conscious design of ecological cultures. In regenerative agriculture, the science needs to follow healthy systems. 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. Full Profile Page. We now approach a closely related topic that, while important, is big enough that it warrants a separate article. She is now focusing on her writing and on EarthShine, a business that exposes children and teens to the wonders of the natural world. Thats exactly how I see indigenous food systems. More information about our Privacy Policy can be found here. I welcome your feedback and look forward to the conversations that will come of this article and others in this pivotal issue. 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. 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. Pomo people do different things than Navajo people. Understanding our place in the universe requires us to actually look at those time frames. would love to hear your thoughts on this! . 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. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.Name *FirstLastEmail *NameNEWSLETTER SIGNUP. We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website. I reached out to my close friends and eventually we found an article titled Decolonization is not a metaphor.[iii]. Well explore how the concepts of colonization, power-over, and dominator thinking have pervaded modern culture and offer suggestions about how to move towards a more holistic, equitable, integrated, and life-centered mindset. Exploring the Permaculture Principles through an Equity Lens. Copyright 2023 Permaculture Women's Guild & Heather Jo Flores. 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. Clearly were doing important work with permaculture, so I want to separate the baby from the bathwater. In an indigenous community, food shortages mean something within that society is awry and has to be fixed. If we genuinely care about the regeneration of ecosystems and culture, we should talk more openly about this tension of owning stolen land,[viii] especially when seeking relationships with contemporary Native peoples. 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. As a bridge to the challenge of bringing a decolonization framework into permaculture practice and pedagogy, I would like to start by mapping those same questions onto permaculture itself. When we talk about decolonizing regenerative agriculture, we are looking at that initial definition. We take the cues from the natural systems, whether that be deer, whether that be insects, whether it be water shortages. The reason for this relates to a concept in the article Decolonization is not a metaphor, which the authors call settler moves to innocence. A move to innocence is a diversionary attempt by a settler person to absolve themself of the guilt of living on stolen land using some form of catharsis, without actually addressing the difficult societal structures involved. We should respect in reverence and allow those unknowns to happen. By using this lens of understanding, you can look at these systems and choose your leverage points. In places like the Amazon or here in California where the Mono people are still doing traditional burns, or places along the rivers where Indigenous People are stewarding the salmon and the salmon burial grounds, those are some of the healthiest soils. Permaculture Womens Guild by Heather Jo Flores As Published in issue #98 of Permaculture Design Magazine, November 2015 First of all, I want to say that I do not represent anyone but myself, and though I have vetted this article with several peers and mentors, I do not presume to know the needs and desires of anyone else. How can we expect to be designers of ecological culture if we dont have a clear understanding of our past? Lee Warren colonizer). Decolonizing Agriculture & Our Understanding of Biodiversity Third, Trauger's suggestions for food-sovereign gov-ernment could have been developed better, including a more careful and strategic reflection about scale. My response to that? Decolonizing Permaculture Workshop Description. To decolonize regenerative agriculture, we have to go back and think about the times before European settlement and contact to the times when there was more of a balance in the ecological environments that were trying to correct now. Permaculture Design Magazine Issue: 98 - Decolonizing Permaculture Im here to learn how to be a good ancestor. My family and I currently reside in occupied Penobscot territory, known as Midcoast Maine in the industrial nation-state known today as the United States (and this too, shall pass). 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. Also, places that have been stewarded and kept by California indigenous basket-weavers, those are the places where carbon is probably its most healthy. 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. Celebrating some of the best moments of the Bioneers conference through the last three decades. So, that means, I need to plant more. Were adjusting to our environment rather than trying to keep everything out. The first being the idea of collective resources. We can observe it knowing that we can probably aid in the health of it, knowing that there is something just beyond our reach, and knowing that there is something greater out there that we must respect. We have really strong seeds. We dont need a Hero. How can we expect to design a regenerative legacy for our descendants if we havent yet made peace with the ancestors? Full disclosure: I did not buy this one, or a photograph thereof, from an indigenous person. 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. I think one of the most important lessons in indigenous epistemology is that natural systems have unknowns, and that man cannot know everything. On the surface, permaculture is often about designing eco-groovy, perennially edible landscapes, gardens and farms. It gives the ethic of People Care teeth. In 200 pages she presents a cogent critique not only of anthropology, but of the cultural evolution of the entire Western concept of research. 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 Im also here because I dream of a world free of the industrial nation-state. [xi] Daniel Quinn, Ishmael (Bantam/Turner, 1992) and Beyond Civilization (Harmony, 1999). Id like to think we can err on the side of survival, however temporary it may be in the big picture. Think of decolonization as another form of enlightened self-interest. Nothing is separate from the other. Many of these other disciplines take practices of Indigenous People, but dont include the people or dont include their stories. A-DAE: Yes. Think of it as regenerative design that heals and repairs ecosystems while at the same time producing beneficial yields. Wilderness Skills - Santa Cruz Permaculture Shes been living in rural, land-based community since 1995 and at Earthaven Ecovillage since 2000. No portion of the original content on this website may be reproduced, in any language, without express written consent. We cant sell everything. Currently, Tyson is cultivating an apothecary for ethnobotanical accessibility and developing a broader collective to support traditional ecological knowledge. 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. As Published in issue #98 of Permaculture Design Magazine, November 2015. ARTY: What does it mean to decolonize agriculture and how does that pertain to regenerative agriculture? Recruitment is disingenuous. She served as garden educator and camp director at the Truly Living Well Center for Urban Agriculture for eight years. Though there isnt enough space to properly tackle the subject in this article, it still warrants a brief mention here. I see an agenda of decolonization coupled with land use based on permaculture design as a positive way forward toward a time of greater ecological and social health, in which we may rediscover how to live in right relationship to a place while simultaneously repairing and healing historic crimes against humanity. The bread and butter of the permaculture movement is the PDC, or permaculture design course. Our award-winning radio and podcast series highlighting diverse voices of grassroots leaders. And this is a metaphor for what we, the permaculture community, are attempting to do with nature. Sovereignty means being free to pursue your dreams, to follow your chosen path, to share, speak, and teach your truths without fear of poverty and persecution. SOIL is the educational branch of the Earthaven Tree. Decolonizing Permaculture - We got this! - Lenape Union Land Trust 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. The body-mind this go-around happens to be in the form of a cis-male of northern European ancestry (from the British Isles and Scandinavia). [vi] And while settlers of color may experience systematic oppression at the hands of the currently designed economic-political system, they are also settler people and not members of the First Nations. Agriculture is usually the delineating line where people talk about civilization and non-civilization or hunter-gatherers and yeoman farmers. My lineage of earth skills teachers includes Mike Douglas and Mal Stevens of the Maine Primitive Skills School. How did fences disrupt indigenous food sheds in New Mexico and other places? We just want you to do something to change it. And as you describe, the thrust is to kill off the pests, kill off the weeds, destroy and kill and create the monocrop. Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature. 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. An example of a novel ecosystem with forest garden polycultures and a diversity of plants and flowers. Im here to help make the world a more just and sustainable place for my daughter and all the other children in the world, those alive today as well as those of future generations. 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? 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. If the deer are coming, its because theyre hungry. 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. 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. In the 1930s and again in the 60s, The National Resource Conservation Service came in and put in elk and deer-proof fences. The industrial machine is genocidal because it kills off whole nations and peoples. However, because I grew up with such an unusual set of resources, I learned to be extraordinarily resourceful, and that is precisely what makes me such a good designer, teacher, and community organizer. Faculty Its also important to remember that no group of people is monolithic, whether we are talking about the permaculture movement, people of color, or Native American peoples. These are a few thoughts Im left with. 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. My economic forms of production include designing, teaching, gardening and construction trades (carpentry, painting). In another sense, a cultural sense, decolonization is about the process of removing colonizing thoughts from your own mind and colonizing behavior from your own lifeway. Tuition includes instruction and lifetime access to the class recordings. Sylvia DiBlasio wrote an article with this title. Decolonization matters because of mountaintop removal, water mining and fracking. ARTY: What needs to happen to make the regenerative agriculture community more inclusive? Saturdays, May 22 - June 19 11am - 1pm EST Online. decolonization Archives - Santa Cruz Permaculture 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. Micmac girl and her grandmother working on a herb spiral built during a permablitz in Micmac country near Presque Isle, Maine. In historical terms, science has been used to dispossess a lot of Indigenous Peoples of land. Maybe human extinction is whats best for the Earth, maybe not. 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. Decolonizing Regenerative Agriculture: An Indigenous Perspective Decolonizing seeds and the feminine side of things a conversation At the same time, the permaculture principles carry important messages that encourage us towards right-awareness, right-relationship, and right-consciousness with both the human and more-than-human world. I wrote about sovereignty in my work on the Heroines Journey, in relation to the age-old question, what do women want? I discussed the possibility that a womans heroic journey might have less to do with slaying the proverbial beast, and more to do with understanding, befriending, and co-existing with it. Indigenous people are stewarding healthy systems. The industrial nation-state is an omnicidal machine, and it eats everything. Friendships are the building blocks of community. 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. Sometimes its public benefit; sometimes its through actual cash economy transactions. The conversation about decolonizing agriculture is about examining the agricultural system and concepts that allow for those injustices to happen. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this issue. Watch keynote addresses, panel discussions, performances and more from visionary innovators. 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. Full Profile Page. 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 I could go off on politics and science, but Im just going to end there. Donate your tuition to support our continued work, 90% refund for cancellations prior to 30 days before the start of the program, 50% refund for cancellations prior to 10 days before the start of the program. 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.
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