Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Though I started out writing about agriculture and culture, I quickly realized that you cannot talk about crops without talking about the land, and you cannot talk about the land without talking about why the original people of this country have so little of what they once held.
This International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, August 9, is an opportunity to celebrate the ecological and cultural value of indigenous foodways.
The organization’s Ark of Taste initiative is cataloging indigenous species of fruits and vegetables all over the world. And every 2 years, Slow Food brings members together to celebrate Terra Madre, or Mother Earth, at Salone del Gusto in Turin, Italy.
We’ve forgotten that we are all healers. We don’t have to go to school or memorize names in Latin; we all have access to plants and can comfort ourselves with our plant ancestors, Just as the Intertribal Canoe Journey has revitalized our culture, we hope that plant medicine will be one more pathway to connection and community healing.
Saturday’s rally was only the latest manifestation of the indigenous-led resistance to the Trans Mountain project, which has grown in size and boldness this year.
I like giving the example that we humans can behave like cancerous cells. Working out of a disconnection from nature, as if we are separate from other natural aspects is similar to when cells stop communicating with the whole system.
As a scholar of environmental history and Native American religion, I have looked at how indigenous people find religious meaning in the natural world and traditional foods. This latest Supreme Court case coincides with a resurgence of interest among a new generation of scholars and activists who are learning about and reviving indigenous food systems.
Many traditional cultures prove that it is possible to sustain locally adapted, place-based communities for centuries and even millennia through prudent and ecologically and socially responsible resource management and sustainable ways to meet human needs within the limits and opportunities set by the natural conditions of their particular region.
It had been 10 long years of fighting, but even a decade wouldn’t age or persuade the women to put down their stones, or to keep Amelia’s tongue in her mouth, to silence her words in a language that wasn’t her own.
Since the fall, indigenous women of the Secwepemc Nation—calling themselves the Tiny House Warriors—have been constructing tiny houses that they plan to strategically place in the pathway of the proposed Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
As a travel tale the book is first-rate. But Weymouth’s keen interest in the Chinook – aka King – Salmon, and his listening skills when he meets dozens of river-dwellers whose cultures have been shaped by the migrations of this fish, combine to fascinating, awe-inspiring, and often heart-breaking effect.
The GREEN Foundation is working to slow the rate of farmer suicides in India and improve conditions for farmers—especially women—whose traditional agricultural methods were stripped away by the Green Revolution.
