decolonizing permaculture

Permaculture is ecological design aimed at creating systems that meet human needs while regenerating and healing the environment around us. ARTY: What are the differences between an indigenous perspective of agriculture and a non-indigenous perspective? To find out more. Please consider your needs and resources to determine what might be a stretch, but not a strain. 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 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. Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature. 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.". 4/7/21 - Decolonizing Permaculture. 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. 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. Amakiasu has been an educator for over 30 years. All permaculture design begins with 'Observe and Interact', but even this step doesn't taking into consideration the history of the land, its peoples and the. But because we have the extra barrier of food access through money, food no longer is that indicator. 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. )[xii] [xiii]. In an indigenous community, food shortages mean something within that society is awry and has to be fixed. 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. Each session runs from 11 am to 1 pm on these days: This is an introductory level workshop. A-DAE: One of the major components I hear consistently in regenerative agriculture is this idea of carbon sequestration. 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. And I am asking you to check that luggage at the door, to open your heart and mind to the possibility that these actions will benefit not just you as an individual, but also the global community, in ways that avoiding change and hoarding your privilege wont. 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. This framework would help us discern between solidarity projects and green-missionary projects, both here and abroad. Indigenous communities embrace the environments that were in. ARTY: In the webinar you hosted as part of a First Nations Development Institute series on land stewardship, you said that agroecology is a non-indigenous term; its an interpretation of an indigenous way of farming, but not an interpretation by Indigenous People. 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. Its important to keep in mind that food is an indicator of the health of a society. I dont have any firm answers, but I know that asking these difficult questions causes an uneasy and unsettling feeling. The only way to truly balance the scales is by actually, physically redistributing wealth. Decolonizing Permaculture . 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. 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. 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. We should respect in reverence and allow those unknowns to happen. Friendships ask for justice, equality, non-violence, respect, and communication. The conversation about decolonizing agriculture is about examining the agricultural system and concepts that allow for those injustices to happen. As Moore (2015) points out, "all life rebels against the value/monoculture nexus of modernity, from farm to . I grew up with my sister and our single mom. 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. Agriculture is usually the delineating line where people talk about civilization and non-civilization or hunter-gatherers and yeoman farmers. Think of it as regenerative design that heals and repairs ecosystems while at the same time producing beneficial yields. Faculty and SOIL Co-Founder Decolonizing permaculture also means building relationships with extra-human nature that acknowledges the ways in which they, too, resist the hegemony of corporate capitalism - and this means also acting in solidarity with them. EarthShine also includes her Eco-Hood Design-and-Build Project along with Soulstice, which introduces young folks to careers theyve never heard of. We need to be relevant. 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. So, this idea of a fence is just antithetical to the way we view the world. She served as garden educator and camp director at the Truly Living Well Center for Urban Agriculture for eight years. In Edible Forest Gardens, Dave Jacke talked about the generative or degenerative potential that disturbance plays in ecosystem dynamics. It doesnt include indigenous people because only colonizers and settlers are considered farmers in America. Ferguson points out that the mostly homogenous demographic makeup of the permaculture movement is a weakness. 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? It leaves the common farmer and the common Indigenous person outside of understanding, and thats a problem. The biggest difference in contemporary agriculture versus indigenous agriculture is the idea of money. 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 we dont want you to feel bad about it. But the federal agency said, Theres a fence there, and it says no trespassing. The Caldera in the Jemez Mountains in New Mexico is surrounded by a fence; its in a National Preserve. 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 . Permaculture allows us to design productive loops of synergies between our technologically built environments and the surrounding ecologies within which we live. I dont have any answers, but I do care deeply about being a good neighbor and a good ancestor to my descendants. 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.. Judge me if you must, but I did what I had to do to survive. Cherokee) earth-based (non-European) language, and the common uses at Earthaven Ecovillage. 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 Through observation and gathering information about the site, its nearby surroundings, and the people who utilize or will utilize the site, we identify zones of use and sectors of energy that influence or affect the site. We are a very young society and nation. [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. Why should permaculture designers care? 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. In this sense, there is broad overlap between movements for social justice and anti-racism. In this important book, Linda Tuhiwai Smith meets a formidable challenge. Many of these other disciplines take practices of Indigenous People, but dont include the people or dont include their stories. I have been on my own since then, and have been generally self-reliant, unless you count student loans, which I accepted in order to access an education that was unavailable without them. Native people continue to live and many continue to tend their council fires, which have been maintained for hundreds of continuous years. No portion of the original content on this website may be reproduced, in any language, without express written consent. permaculture.co.uk/articles . 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. She served as garden educator and camp director at the Truly Living Well Center for Urban Agriculture for eight years. Is it possible that we can subvert patterns of abuse and oppression by forming honest, lifelong friendships across the divides? These behaviors discredit the permaculture movement at large, and unless we can overcome them, our ultimate goal of sharing a true and authentic sustainability will remain far out of reach. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples 9/15/20 - Turning Fire Into Water: Fire Preparedness through Forest and Watershed Restoration. Faculty We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website. : Episode 95 Geneen Marie Haugen. But its a fallacy to think that we can imitate a system that has been in existence for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years. You serve on the National Organic Standard board. Faculty Or perhaps its designed to function exactly as its functioning now: to keep the poor and disenfranchised firmly separated from the elites, and to maintain this oppressive distribution of power. 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. 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. Accurate and contemporary information about Indigenous science, media, and curriculum for social change, Free eBooks packed with wisdom and insights from visionary voices in the Bioneers community, Our newsletters provide insights into the people, projects, and organizations creating lasting change in the world, Visionary Plant Consciousness & Psychedelics, The Fight Against Climate Change in the North, Farming with the Wild: An Interview with Jo Ann Baumgartner of the Wild Farm Alliance. Decolonizing Permaculture 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. For example, you talked about growing corn for the deer. 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. 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. A-DAE: There is an assumption that man has command of everything around us, or we are on a higher plane than the living things around us. When we talk about decolonizing regenerative agriculture, we are looking at that initial definition. My own history is of extreme poverty, marginalization, and struggle. ARTY: Ive always felt like one of the big problems with agriculture is that it needs more biology, it needs more life, not less. Its almost like the idea of wilderness being healthy if nobodys in it. 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. A-DAE: Yes. If responsibility falls to the intervenor, how does that affect contemporary land ownership for those who can afford it? I think we learn that through our relationships with other humans that not everything is meant to be sold. Decolonizing seeds and the feminine side of things a conversation A-DAE: Absolutely. 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. One of the design methods used in permaculture that takes place early on in a site design is Zone and Sector Analysis. Its a very broad term. I dont have time to deal with people criticizing me. The Earth is dying. We want to create systems that are rebirthing a healthy environment. 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. Decolonizing Permaculture - We got this! - Lenape Union Land Trust Watson, Jesse. 2016. "Decolonizing Permaculture." , February 20. Indigenous People need room to tell those stories. In this article we will seek to answer the following questions: What is decolonization? 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 seek to learn from it, adapt with it, and collaborate, rather than to control, manipulate, and abuse it. 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. When we write about decolonization, we are not offering it as a metaphor; it is not an approximation of other experiences of oppression. First Nations provides grants and technical assistance to strengthen native communities and economies. Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences! Bioneers 2023: Transformation, Regeneration, Celebration, Bioneers Statement on 2023 Conference Dates, 30+ years of leading edge/inspiring talks, conversations and shorts. Alas, it doesnt seem as if people who own land will start signing deeds over to sovereign nations anytime soon, and in my most candid moments, I would probably say that theres not much point in continuing a discussion about equality until people are willing to do way more than just talk about it. How do Native voices become authentically included in the regenerative agriculture conversation? Podcast: Decolonization & Sudden Oak Life By Melissa Ott Fant February 15, 2021 Education broadacre permaculture, decolonization, permaculture design course, Sudden Oak Life, traditional ecological knowledge Current PDC student Danielle created two podcast episodes from audio recordings at our Broadscale Permaculture weekend in February 2021. 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. For me, it is a process of working through my grief over the crimes my ancestors may very well have committed. Decolonizing permaculture June 2, 2022 Public domain The dreamcatcher is one of the most widely appropriated symbols. Producers That Are Decolonizing Agriculture. 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. Decolonizing Permaculture Information Session - School of Integrated Living Rather than being burdened with that task, the idea that we respect the unknown helps people deal with it. On a deeper level, permaculture is about the conscious design of ecological cultures. Marina Nobre: Reforestation is more than plantingtrees. In that sense, I think there is some awareness that there needs to be more inclusion of non-white people in the organic community. 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. On the surface, permaculture is often about designing eco-groovy, perennially edible landscapes, gardens and farms. 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. 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. 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. Copyright 2023 Permaculture Women's Guild & Heather Jo Flores. So instead of making a statement like Permaculture allows us to remember how to be indigenous to place, we should choose other language. I have work to do, wrote one permaculture teacher who is known to be especially abusive. ARTY: How would you define regenerative agriculture? What is Permaculture Design? 5/7/22 - Our Permaculture Community Comes Together - A Reflection on Weekend One of the PDC. Decolonizing . Have you been able to provide some indigenous perspective to that process? Permaculture certainly appears to have been assembled from toolkits from all over the world and throughout history. Decolonizing Permaculture Workshop Series - YouTube This matters because an injury to one is an injury to all. 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? 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. 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. We need small, steady change built upon strong, healthy connections. 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. Those stories are the guideposts that need to be laid out before we even start digging into the soil. The same goes for traditional ecological knowledge. Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website. Decolonizing Permaculture - School of Integrated Living And so when somebody with money, land, and privilege seems eager to help the oppressed, I will bring it up. Those stories are just as important as the practices or the l hoe that I pick up. EarthShine also includes her Eco-Hood Design-and-Build Project along with Soulstice, which introduces young folks to careers theyve never heard of. 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? Call me a socialist, but isnt socialism at its heart just a community coming together? They identify any person who owns land in a place to which they are not native as a settler (a.k.a. 3 (2011): 54-70. http://libjournal.uncg.edu/ijcp/article/view/249/116, Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why Its So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism, The Good Men Project, April 9, 2015: http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/white-fragility-why-its-so-hard-to-talk-to-white-people-about-racism-twlm/. There are a lot more specialized skills in the individual land plot scenario. Magali Merkx-Jacques LinkedIn: 'Beating heart' of Concordia's Life is not just an idea that lives in the head, or a feeling that lives in the heart. Recently the Pueblo of Jemez had a lawsuit against the forest service. Fair Shares, anyone? So, this idea that science is objective is kind of a fallacy to me because I think science is very much subject to political whims more than anything else. Nobody should feel like a slave. As Published in issue #98 of Permaculture Design Magazine, November 2015. Is regenerative agriculture a place where traditional indigenous knowledge and science can complement each other? Think about the friends you currently cherish. Decolonization is not a swappable term for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools. [xi] Daniel Quinn, Ishmael (Bantam/Turner, 1992) and Beyond Civilization (Harmony, 1999). Amakiasu has been an educator for over 30 years. Jenn Meilleur on LinkedIn: Decolonising Permaculture with Principle Decolonizing Permaculture. - LinkedIn 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. For this program, there will be no barriers to entry for people who identify as BIPOC. A-dae Romero-Briones (Cochiti/Kiowa) is the Director of Programs: Agriculture and Food Systems for the First Nations Development Institute. A-DAE: Invite them to the table. 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. She is now focusing on her writing and on EarthShine, a business that exposes children and teens to the wonders of the natural world. Wikipedia; Wikipedias Plastic shaman entry; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_shaman, FreeFactFinder; FreeFactFinders Pretindian entry; http://freefactfinder.com/definition/Pretindian.html. We need people to understand why its important to have healthy soil and why its important that you have a healthy root system that sequesters water. Decolonizing Permaculture: Bridging the gap between privilege and 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. It was a topic whose initial catalyst came from Rafter Sass Fergusons article, Critical Questions, Early Answers, which is an overview of the permaculture movement. Nothing is separate from the other. Decolonizing Permaculture The Eco-Institute at Pickards Mountain 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. I recognize that these issues need to be studied and dealt with through an intersectional lens. What I found is there are not a lot of non-white people in the organic community. We understand that BIPOC experience more financial and institutional barriers to participation, and this is one way we are able to create more access. Each of these peoples have their own practices and stories that go along with these practices. 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. So, I sit on the board and it helps that Im a brown face in a very white community. ARTY: What needs to happen to make the regenerative agriculture community more inclusive? It needs to rip through the Permaculture Community worldwide. Perhaps this article already has you feeling triggered, frustrated, defensive? 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. 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. 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. 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. Micmac girl and her grandmother working on a herb spiral built during a permablitz in Micmac country near Presque Isle, Maine. ARTY: What does it mean to decolonize agriculture and how does that pertain to regenerative agriculture? Full Profile Page. 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. It is offered so that we may think critically and philosophically about sustainability and our role in our culture as designers of novel ecosystems. Wouldnt you do just about anything for them? There are processes in the trees that grow, in the animals that migrate that we just will not know. SOIL is the educational branch of the Earthaven Tree.