Full Profile Page. And we dont want you to feel bad about it. 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. I come from a background of union activism, art & philosophy, direct-action environmentalism, public school education, and building trades. 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. How do Native voices become authentically included in the regenerative agriculture conversation? Those stories are just as important as the practices or the l hoe that I pick up. 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. Faculty 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. It seems to me that the unequal distribution of wealth and opportunity, while often connected to the other -isms, is at the core of many of the bad (poorly designed) dynamics in our community. 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. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this issue. Please consider your needs and resources to determine what might be a stretch, but not a strain. Special thanks to my dear friend Kiarna Boyd for holding me accountable to a high standard and compassionately aiding my evolution in this area. 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. 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. How do we incorporate righting this egregious, unresolved, and ongoing historical crime into our culture jamming work? I serve the larger Northeast regional network by being an active participant on the board of PINE, the Permaculture Institute of the Northeast. 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 . How do we remember that we are all indigenous to this planet, our Earth Mother, our Gaia? To what extent is permaculture practiced as a form of green missionary work throughout the world? Each of these peoples have their own practices and stories that go along with these practices. There are a lot more specialized skills in the individual land plot scenario. And when I see nasty, divisive behaviors like interrupting, shaming, slandering, disregarding, plagiarizing, avoiding, condescending, taking advantage of, jacking up the rent and calling oneself King, Duke, or Benevolent Dictator, they are coupled with rationalizations about how doing the work is more important than how others feel about the way that work gets done. 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. For this program, there will be no barriers to entry for people who identify as BIPOC. Decolonization matters because of mountaintop removal, water mining and fracking. 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. Its a tall order, but I hope that you will embrace the challenge. To me its weird because in indigenous epistemologies people are a part of the environment, and its the same with the microbiome. 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. 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. He operates Midcoast Permaculture Design (midcoastpermaculture.com), serving residential and farm clients. Decolonization matters because it is the right thing to do in a moral sense. )[xii] [xiii]. What is my experience with this topic? ARTY: What needs to happen to make the regenerative agriculture community more inclusive? 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. Have you been able to provide some indigenous perspective to that process? Judge me if you must, but I did what I had to do to survive. 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. 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. The middle of the scale reflects the value we believe the program holds and the low-end offers a more accessible entry point. 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.). We will attempt to make a clear critique of settler colonialism here in industrialized North America, and demonstrate how we can simultaneously be both victims and perpetuators of settler colonialism. 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. Dear Friends, A school on the Standing Rock Reserve surrounded by a garden of traditional foods and healing herbs, where students can learn immersed in nature The easy absorption, adoption, and transposing of decolonization is yet another form of settler appropriation. We dont kill the natural systems in order to ensure that we survive, which is what food safety does. 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. This matters because an injury to one is an injury to all. All participants are welcome. Friendships require vulnerability, compassion, patience, and most of all, effort. In an indigenous community, food shortages mean something within that society is awry and has to be fixed. Copyright 2023 Permaculture Women's Guild & Heather Jo Flores. The conversation about decolonizing agriculture is about examining the agricultural system and concepts that allow for those injustices to happen. Its a very broad term. 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. 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. As Published in issue #98 of Permaculture Design Magazine, November 2015. These are a few thoughts Im left with. Perhaps this article already has you feeling triggered, frustrated, defensive? Recruitment is disingenuous. 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 Because (and this is especially true when dealing with the permaculture community) I have consistently locked horns with the beasts enumerated above. Scientific inquiry and the scientific field is fairly young compared to the natural systems that were trying to mimic. 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? Recently the Pueblo of Jemez had a lawsuit against the forest service. We are probably the youngest species on our planet and in our environments; the trees and the plants and the animals are much older. I dont have time to deal with people criticizing me. ARTY: Ive always felt like one of the big problems with agriculture is that it needs more biology, it needs more life, not less. 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 In that sense, I think there is some awareness that there needs to be more inclusion of non-white people in the organic community. We have really strong seeds. In a literal and legal sense, decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life.[iv] It is important to note here that Native American peoples are not mythical relics of the precolonial or pre-Columbian Americas. 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. And this is a metaphor for what we, the permaculture community, are attempting to do with nature. We understand that BIPOC experience more financial and institutional barriers to participation, and this is one way we are able to create more 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. As a principle for ecosystem design and care he talked about shifting the burden to the intervenor.[vii] So that when we decide to fall trees or sheet mulch so that we can plant forest gardens, the responsibility of managing the consequences of that disturbance falls to the gardener who intervened. That was my choice and I dont regret it, but the burden of those loans is crippling. Sylvia DiBlasio wrote an article with this title. However, it seems to me that there are ripples of injustice coursing through the permaculture community, manifesting as a pattern of landowners and/or self-proclaimed leaders doing things that hurt, offend, oppress, and devalue others. This is known as the tangled triad of settlernativesettler of color. 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. You have to replace that societal indicator with something else. 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. 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. 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.. 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. 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. My lineage of permaculture teachers includes Charles & Julia Yelton and Lisa Fernandes of the Resilience Hub. Photo by AB Brand As Published in issue #98 of Permaculture Design Magazine, November 2015 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)? When youre trying to move an entire community of white people and as a non-white person, it is really, really hard and tiring. The biggest difference in contemporary agriculture versus indigenous agriculture is the idea of money. To find out more. 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. colonizer). Decolonizing Permaculture Workshop Description. Shes been living in rural, land-based community since 1995 and at Earthaven Ecovillage since 2000. Recently, a friend and colleague pointed out that decolonization is not a metaphor. That stunned me. To me, again, thats a fallacy. The only way to truly balance the scales is by actually, physically redistributing wealth. We need small, steady change built upon strong, healthy connections. I consider this principle when recognizing how I passively benefit from the actions that my ancestors probably took to help construct this oppressive and exploitative system. The list below offers tangible suggestions for how to cultivate real friendships and alliances. 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. Onward to regeneration of healthy systems! . And if we have privilege and agency within that unjust and atrocious system, we must commit to using that access to dismantle that system. It requires different skill sets when youre managing collective resources versus individualized land plots. Full disclosure: I did not buy this one, or a photograph thereof, from an indigenous person. On the surface, permaculture is often about designing eco-groovy, perennially edible landscapes, gardens and farms. SOIL is the educational branch of the Earthaven Tree. Document access and instructions can be found here. And imagine what I could do now if I had a piece of my own land instead of 80 grand in student debt. We should ask how we can be relevant to their lives, and ask for permission and endorsement of our activities and events. She is now focusing on her writing and on EarthShine, a business that exposes children and teens to the wonders of the natural world. ARTY: What are the differences between an indigenous perspective of agriculture and a non-indigenous perspective? You need to adjust to them. First Nations provides grants and technical assistance to strengthen native communities and economies. If its under your house and the machine needs it, it cares not who you are. Why didnt I just market my seeds, produce, and skills as a professional, and make ends meet that way? Is it possible that we can subvert patterns of abuse and oppression by forming honest, lifelong friendships across the divides? Dont use the ethics and principles for excuses to avoid difficult conversationsuse them as tools for navigation. 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. We offer partial scholarships (50% off) to black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) who otherwise would not be able to afford to attend. We need to be aware of white fragility if we start feeling defensive during racially charged conversations. 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. Decolonizing permaculture June 2, 2022 Public domain The dreamcatcher is one of the most widely appropriated symbols. If responsibility falls to the intervenor, how does that affect contemporary land ownership for those who can afford it? She is now focusing on her writing and on EarthShine, a business that exposes children and teens to the wonders of the natural world. More information about our Privacy Policy can be found here. We all have indigenous ancestors, and they were once colonized too. I think we learn that through our relationships with other humans that not everything is meant to be sold. It is offered so that we may think critically and philosophically about sustainability and our role in our culture as designers of novel ecosystems. Celebrating some of the best moments of the Bioneers conference through the last three decades. of the critical dialogue around permaculture, including its ties with cultural appropriation and white dominance (Watson 2016). Think of decolonization as another form of enlightened self-interest. In our fields, there are no fences. Saturdays, May 22 - June 19 11am - 1pm EST Online. Youre part of that system. How can we expect to be designers of ecological culture if we dont have a clear understanding of our past? 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. You can find out more about which cookies we are using or switch them off in settings. Think about the friends you currently cherish. When we talk about decolonizing regenerative agriculture, we are looking at that initial definition. 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. Articles covering the people, projects, and organizations creating lasting change in the world. I help to facilitate and teach Permaculture Design Certification courses (PDCs) here in Maine and sometimes in Boston, partnering with the Resilience Hub. 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. It gives the ethic of People Care teeth. The Navajo people do different things than Kiowa people. A podcast series featuring deep and engaging dialogue with Native culture bearers, scholars, movement leaders bringing Indigenous voices and solutions to global conversations. My teacher pulled my paper because I had all the houses together like a pueblo, which I grew up in. I reached out to my close friends and eventually we found an article titled Decolonization is not a metaphor.[iii]. A-DAE: One of the things that comes to mind is food safety. The interactions between climate change, energy peak and economic contraction mean that the stakes are very high. 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.. Call me a socialist, but isnt socialism at its heart just a community coming together? Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website. Remember the permaculture principles: Respond to feedback; Designer limits the yield; Problems are solutions; Mistakes are tools for learning. We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website. We should respect in reverence and allow those unknowns to happen. For example, she These are things we cant see unless you have a microscope and unless you know what a carbon atom looks like. This lack of discernment is a blind spot. See inside The Nook at Gateway Neighborhood, The Butterfly House in the Hut Hamlet Neighborhood, and The Hummingbird Apartment at Village Terraces Cohousing. 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. 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. Friendships ask for justice, equality, non-violence, respect, and communication. 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. I was like: What is this? And so the Hero comes blasting into a project, sure that others will fail without his almighty guidance, and proceeds to insult, alienate, and/or disregard the people who are doing most of the work. 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. Id like to think we can err on the side of survival, however temporary it may be in the big picture. 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! We are a very young society and nation. 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. 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. There are many reports that say carbon sequestration is happening in indigenous stewarded lands. : Episode 95 Geneen Marie Haugen. Im also here because I dream of a world free of the industrial nation-state. 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. 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. Working at the permaculture edge and to provide information useful to people working on the ground. 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. 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. As I reflected on how I could be relevant to communities of color close to where I am located in rural Maine (which is mostly white), I started thinking about making bridges with Native American communities to the north. The World Needs an Anti-Harassment Movement: So Does Permaculture. Permaculture is a process of understanding, analyzing and designing systems. How do we organize for that kind of vision or dream? A-dae Romero-Briones (Cochiti/Kiowa) is the Director of Programs: Agriculture and Food Systems for the First Nations Development Institute. In order to better understand the concrete ways in which permaculture can be colonizing and generally problematic within the context of social justice, it is important to get the facts from a reliable source i.e. 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. [xi] Daniel Quinn, Ishmael (Bantam/Turner, 1992) and Beyond Civilization (Harmony, 1999). Instead we can deploy an alternate sentence, such as Permaculture allows us to remember how to be in right relationship to place. This phrase contains a subtle but profound difference, one that relinquishes the settler colonial replacement strategy. 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. 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. permaculture.co.uk/articles . 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.
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