Week 4 Reflection 

Winter is manifesting physically in the plants, their leaves bundled tightly in their buds. Soon we’ll be at the cusp of winter and they will make there slow journey into the world. The buds on the red alders are already almost bursting, their catkins beginning to fall to the ground.

            Spring is making it’s slow journey now, like the sun before dawn. The Pacific tree frog is out calling – a little less than a month late – but at least they’re back again for this year. I still have yet to hear the red-legged frog, who is also a month late. Maybe this is the year the die-off happens.

            My days have been quiet and reflective. My classes have focused on stories, and I have been reading and writing many. However, just like the buds on the red alder I am ready to burst forth and be active. There is so much that needs doing. 

            I have been going on many walks and have learned so much from and about my surroundings. Yesterday I sat under a large cedar listening to hoot owls call back and forth. I watched a seagull crack clams against the rocks and the clouds roll over the hills. I’ve been letting the land permeate my skin and seep into my bones.  This has done two things. First, I have fallen completely in love with where I live. I have learned many of the plants and animals as individuals and many have become my friends. Secondly, however, my love is also a heartbreak because the land is bleeding and not being respected. Trash litters the roads and can even be found deep within the woods. Open spaces where I have learned and loved are under the constant threat of development, or are on death row waiting for that faithful day. So I have a great urgent feeling. I want to fight like mad to help and save what I can. The buds aren’t the only things the come with spring. Where will coyote and deer go? Or raccoon? As the bulldozers and roads come and divide more and more, they are pushed in smaller and smaller places. How can I honor what the land teaches and gives me if it is constantly being leveled and subdivided? So my journal in a sense is trying to hold on to peaces of the earth just incase they are lost. So in that sense the journal is very important to me. The land is my medicine, the land is my garden.

Week Five

Keeping It Living Chapter 2: Low-Level Food Production and the Northwest Coast by Bruce D. Smith

Summary:

            The article is broken into three sections. The first part spoke of the lack of an adequate definition of who the First Peoples of the Northwest are.  Anthropologists have typically defined the Northwest cultures as being “complex” hunter-gatherers due to the fact they lived for extend periods of time in sedentary villages and had a complex socio-political culture seemingly lacking in any form of agriculture –a prerequisite for a classed society. The instead article places Northwest peoples in a “middle ground” between hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists. 

            Smith begins to speak of a “continuum of domestication and plant use between foraging and domestication. Foraging has very little modification of the surroundings while domestication is the genetic modification of species through human interaction.  There has been a lot of debate about the hierarchical notion of foraging eventually gives way to agriculture and how it should be viewed more in terms of a continuum. Cultures can have a varying range of domestication. Some cultures can be vary dependent upon it while others can be slightly dependent.

            However, once again, domestication of plants in the Northwest is hard to prove due to the use of perennials and lack of adequate evidence, so we can never truly know how much of a diet is based on domesticated food crops.

            The article focuses heavily on the inadequacy of terminology with the “middle ground”, due to the varying words and cultural assumptions behind the words used to describe these cultures. Smith proposed instead of calling Northwest peoples horticulturalists or gardeners to call Northwest food practices “food production” and even more precisely, “low level food production economies without morphological domesticates”.

Response:

            I found Smith’s article really alienating -more specifically his language.  I feel his language choices totally detached the essence and power of Northwest peoples relationship with the land that I had learned through Teachings of the Tree People and The Earth’s Blanket. I almost forgot I was reading about the same people. 

            Smith’s language was so economical, scientific and rigid that I forgot we were discussing the same people.  It is important to acknowledge and appreciate the true extent that Northwest cultures have lived within the land –but I feel the true essence and spirit of that living is lost in translation between what they practiced and his language. I felt I was reading an economics book. Where was the acknowledgement of the spirit and wisdom of the plants? It was almost as if he was saying, “look! These people acted in a western manner too! They had ‘economies’ and ‘production’!” All those words have very loaded cultural meanings and Smith falls within the same trap he is critiquing in his article.

            Again I think this is all so hard and alienating because we are trying to classify and categorize a living vibrant community. There are going to be contradictions and enigmas, but that’s the mystery and beauty of life! Why is it so important to define and categorize everything? Wouldn’t it be just as enriching and informative to simply explain what the culture was and not try to fit it into this or that?  Its like we’re missing the bigger picture. When I finished I felt uninspired. I wish he had described the cultural contexts of “food production” what were the stories behind each plant or animal? What were the stories behind this or that cultural practice?

            I also disagree with his statement, “domestication has been present to a greater or lesser extent, in all cultures and at all times.” There really isn’t any proof to that, or any way of proving it.  I went for a walk in the woods and sat and asked the forest this and this is what we came up with: Every living thing effects every other living thing. Living creatures enter into relations and those relations affect the way in which beings engage in the world. Eventually those changes are reflected in genes and DNA. Deer will forage certain plants in certain ways just as Giraffes will eat certain plants in certain ways. Some birds can only eat out of this flower or this fruit. Some bees can only pollinate this or that flower. This does not mean that the deer has domesticated the plant or the plant the deer. This does not mean bees domesticate flowers or the other way around. They are in a relationship and through daily action beings are affected. If we were to use smiths definition the whole world is domesticated by itself. Eventually as any eco-community reaches maturity and complexity things become dependent on others. Panda’s are dependent on bamboo, but are not domesticated, they are in a certain relationship serving the health of the over all community.

            I would go one step more and say domestication doesn’t happen only when there is a genetic change and dependence happens, I would say domestication happens when it is only for personal gain. Civilization domesticates plants and animals only for the use of this specific person or people. There is no being part of a community and giving back to that community. There is no part in being part of the world. It is taking something and manipulating and controlling it for sheerly personal ends. Burning berry bushes helps the whole community non-human and human. Row crops dependent on pesticides and fertilizer don’t help the over all community. Domestication involves a cultural awareness of this is only for me. Historically domestication doesn’t last. Eventually the earth and land take back the species that is being controlled exclusively, either through drought or disease. Every Civilization that has existed has collapsed, how often due to intense domestication?

How does this chapter relate to my garden site?

Well the chapter gives insight into the nature and full extent of some of the relationships with the plants Northwest peoples have. It would be interesting to be able to know the manner in which each plant was used and how it was collected within different cultures. This could play an important part in the sister garden. In the book the Sister garden could show how the plants were harvested and how much –something very important when considered with sustainability issues. Northwest peoples harvest and lived in this bioregion for thousands of years without denuding the landscape –it’d vital to know how we can also do that.

It might even be interesting to put up signage talking about the true practices of Northwest Peoples somewhere within the sister garden. The main thing the article did was make me want to always ask, “can I take and consume you?” To always be aware of how I am treating the plants and always respecting that I don’t own them. That it’s okay if other animals eat “my” plants. In the end it’s the plants decision.

Week 6 Reflection

This week’s reading made me think a lot about how western cultures relate with plants, and how often it is viewed in a one dimensional view.  This is one of the reasons why I disagree with Bruce D. Smith so much on his analysis of domestication and the view that domestication is, “cultural selection for useful phenotypic characters” or that domestication is, “a degree of dependence on human actions for the plant’s survival.” What these definitions are saying is that humans only act and change the earth, and that the earth does not actively change humans.  It says that humans aren’t dependent upon the earth and that the earth must be dominated for it’s own survival.  I wonder if this comes from the Judeo/Christian view of human beings in a state of permanence.  That since we were made in God’s image, we cannot physically change and we are thus at the pinnacle of our evolution, what globalist liberals like to call the “end of history”. Our whole culture, physically, spiritually, and mentally is based on it. How else could we create plastics and other items that don’t decay for thousands of years?

Anyways, if plants are indeed conscious then why is the possibility of plants “domesticating” us out of the question. Could it not be that just as bees and pollen have evolved together, so too do humans and plants? That salal wants humans to burn them periodically, because not only do more berries help humans, but it helps the salal reproduce. Camas is another example  If Douglas Fir forests like to “invade” meadows and prairies, but camas can only grow in a meadow or prairie habitat, then wouldn’t it be convenient to form a relationship with humans who need carbohydrates that camas just so happens to provide? This turns into a mutually beneficial relationship between the camas and humans. Humans are given a stable supply of carbohydrates, while the camas is given protection from the Douglas fir. There is no one-dimension. The camas needs humans just as much as humans need camas. Again this isn’t a form of domestication because the “control” is mutually inclusive.

I think it is childish to only see relations from a point a to point b prospective, that ultimately has its basis in industrial/civilized culture, how can this be converted into that. How can this camas be converted into food? Instead of how does this help me and how do I help it? But not in a linear sense of the word help. How do I exist with this, and how then does it exist with me?

So in the Rigoberta Menchú’s essay “Maize”, to ask how do these people control corn is the wrong question. It’s looking in the wrong place. Just as culturally, to ask how we control things is to look at the wrong question, and it’s looking in the wrong place. The relationship between maize and the people is mutual. How do the people exist with maize and the maize people? When we call a people, The People of Corn, we are saying that the identity between who is corn and who is people is gray, that they are both the same but different. Just as it is said that during sex people come to be one, the act of eating is just as intimate. When do the corn end and the people begin? Where do you end and I begin?

Week 7 Reflection

The notion of a weed is immature and so often arbitrary. Dandelions are the vilest of the weeds, the bane of the immaculate lawn. But, the notion of a lawn is flawed. I see the dandelion as a reminder of where a lawn should be going. The label “weed” is just as similar as any racial slur you could say, because it is based on denying the plants own character. The character of the plant is ascribed from an outside source instead of the plant itself.  Weed has the same connotations as pest, in the way,  or useless. We’ll if we look at the European expansion over the world, that’s how indigenous peoples were treated - as a weed. The world over, indigenous peoples were just in the way of the divine master plan. Or the indigenous are on our land or under our oil or they are living in our forests.

“God gave the World to Men in Common; but since he gave it them for their benefit, and the greatest Conveniences of Life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed that he meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the Industrious and Rational (and Labour was to be his Title to it).”-John Locke

A ‘weed’ filled lawn is a lawn against God because that which is common and uncultivated is not being used to the divine potential given to the “Industrious and Rational”. Well if God only gave this benefit to those who labor, and my culture only views the world one-dimensionally as in this is turned into that. Then all those who live in a non-linier fashion are in the way. What better justification than divinity? Indigenous people hold no title to the land because the land looks “virgin” (or not utterly destroyed).  For the mainstream American what could be better than a perfectly trim, green, bug free lawn? For the industrialist, what could be better than an empty continent?  When people were colonizing the Americas progress was in number of Indians killed and trees cut.

Thinking in terms of weeds and not weeds is damaging and immature for another reason. For the longest time red alder was considered a weedy tree that got in the way of more marketable trees like Douglas Fir. Well after spraying forests with pesticides killing the Red Alder they were having the hardest time growing back the forest. Well markets are a really, really stupid thing to base a culture on, because when your allegiance and responsibility is to the market than fuck anything that sells, it’s a weed.

Red alder are vital to the health of the forest because they fix nitrogen into the soil. In the Northwest biome, nitrogen is the limiting nutrient and with out it you will have a hard time getting anything. This culture treats the indigenous the same way. We commit genocide thinking they are nothing more than stupid lazy savages taking up our space, but then when we realize that our culture is meaningless and destroying the planet, we look at them for help, just like a child who has realized he was wrong and his parents are right. When will this culture of weeds swallow their pride and admit they were wrong, because we won’t make much progress till we get towards that point.

A green manicured lawn is a wasteland, more petroleum products than anything. I we don’t change our relationship to the earth it too soon will be come a wasteland. A green lawn is to a happy landowner as a sprawling city is to western culture.  

Week 8 Reflection

            When ever I allow myself to flood my mind with the images and reality of living in a culture of occupation, and a culture of colonization I have no idea how to come to grips or terms to it.

            The imposed reality of colonization runs deep to the core of modern society, to go again to  Locke, himself an architect of modern, “democracy” really said the problem (though he did not see it as such) with horrific clarity:

       “God gave the World to Men in Common; but since he gave it them for their benefit, and the greatest Conveniences of Life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed that he meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the Industrious and Rational (and Labour was to be his Title to it).” 

Nancy Turner says this deeply embedded sense of private ownership and western concepts of, “cultivation” were almost religious. I would say the relationship was in every aspect of the word religious. Religion, from the word religare, “to bind fast”, related to the word rely, as in the notion of having a placed obligation. Or more simply to be bond tightly to obligation. It’s not as hard to destroy a people if they are in the way of you and heavenly glory. It’s not as hard to destroy a people if it divinely ordained –regardless if thou shalt not kill is a tenant of that religion.  It’s not so hard if it’s an obligation to kill those in the way, so that the earth can be turned into God’s Divine Plan.

This also works from the bottom up. One of the hardest reasons it is to get out of abusive relationships, is the false promises we are given, or that we make. He will change if I treat him better, He only hit me because I was out of line. That can be translated one to one. My place in society will change if I work harder. I was only beat because I wasn’t working as hard as I could. I was only hit because of me. If I just wait he will change. Abusive people (and cultures) justify their behavior by transferring responsibility to the victim.  I only hit you because I love you. I hit you because you hurt me. They are amazing liars and at transferring guilt. As long as they can make the victim believe that everything is in their hands, and that in reality the victim is the problem, the fundamental relationship will change.  You want to save this piece of land, but what about our jobs? God gave us dominion over the earth, do you hate God?

            This changes the dynamics of the situation, and a dynamic we see all the time.  We need to clear cut so we can have jobs. I hit you because I love you. I have heard and been told this all the time when it comes to wilderness protection. We can’t protect wilderness because then people are denied access to the land.  But, what it doesn’t account for is this cultures inability to treat the land it takes in any semblance of a respectful manner and thus should not be given land till they understand how to live with it.  I’ve gotten in arguments with people over how they think wilderness advocates are anti-human because they take land away from people. I then ask how destroying the land is pro-human, how clear-cutting or mining is pro-human? I ask how a dying land-base is pro-human? And I usually get the same response. We need to have jobs, and we need to cut down trees and mine so people can have work.  They totally deny the question and go straight to that  response. This is the crux of what Locke was saying. He gave it to the use of Industrious and Rational (and Labour was to be his Title to it).  Land ownership is a divine enjoinder. Destroying land is the gateway to heaven. Whether that Heaven is up in the clouds, or a mansion and 4 car garage, either way the motivation comes from the same place.

            Rational thought has a blind spot, and that is the relation of people to land.  If we were to look at the physical reality and history of the rise of industrialism, and weigh the benefits to the costs it doesn’t work out. The evidence and history shows that industrialism is killing the planet and degrading relationships and quality of life for the majority of humans and non-humans. But Rational thought –for all its touting of being based in reality- is based in abstraction. It is intimately tied with the divinity of God and Christianity.

            This is the culture I have inherited and Keeping it Living was sad for me to read, because it shows that people need to write so much about something that was so obvious, that the hatred of people and land is so engrained into this culture.

--- For my Personal Project I am going to be sharing some books that have helped me immensely in understanding the world and helped me find my own identity. I will talk about how cedar has been a majority gate way between two realities and understanding. And lastly I will talk about what I am doing for my personal garden project.

Weekly Reflection 9

Parts of The Sweet Breathing of Plants have been really great and inspiring, other parts have been painful and angering, and some I felt were frustrating. The first chapter that really spoke to me was Naomi Shihab Nye’s essay, “Mint Snowball”. It made me think about my Grandmother before she passed away, and the blueberry foods she’d make for me when I was a young child. When my grandparents lived in Maine they had twelve acres in Belfast. The back yard was a great sloping hill that went all the way down to the rocky ocean. My brother and I would go out in the morning to pick wild blueberries to bring up to my grandmother, who would make us blueberry pancakes, muffins, pies anything. But they always tasted like she had made them. When she died a couple years ago so did her cooking and that is one of the things I miss most, were the smell of blueberries cooking. The essay just brought back all the smells and tastes and how I won’t ever taste them again, or be able to sit next to my grandmother again and do the morning jumble. Of all the essays in the book, this one hit home the hardest.

I’ve loved Teresa tsimmu Martino’s work since Meg got me one of her books a while ago. Her poems show such an intimate relation she has with her surroundings and they have definitely inspired some more my poetry as well as interactions with the land.          Brenda Peterson’s “Killing Our Elders” hurt the most, because I felt the same when I first drove to the coast and saw the clearcuts. I didn’t understand and I still cannot understand how a culture can just plow through forests far older and wiser than any human. It is so arrogant and really unjustifiable. The land is our first teacher, and if you kill the land then who teaches us? How do we truly learn then?

In the end the book gave me a deeper insight to the cultures incapacity to understand the land and the cultures hatred of women, because both women and land are so intimately tied. I would also say that men too are just as intimately tied, but it seems that we have forgotten out connections more deeply than women.  The essay’s on the hatred of women who used plants really gave me clarity in the nature of colonization and earth hatred.