#and grow the food indigenous to the land

[muirneach]

algorithms seem to naturally push viewers towards right wing weirdness somehow. as such i’ve gone from interesting nature content to sustainable living and growing food to… ‘homesteading’ and stuff that is definitely almost a cult. anyways i find the idea i see with these people a lot that one must cut ties with ‘government support’ so strange. sorry to the weird progressive in speech but really genuinely a freak in practice who keeps showing up on my explore page, but i like it when i get like. electricity and medical care from the government. but yknow thats me maybe i’m the sheep

#somewhat related to prev. been meaning to make this post for a while now #like you CAN cut ur own wood for heat etc and i got nothing against that #but like girl be real. why specifically say that you do this to ‘not rely on the government’ THATS WHY THEYRE THERE IDIOT #there is a FINE fine line between ‘cool person who grows their own food etc’ and ‘this person genuinely may be a nutjob’ #its 1am i cant think of the word i want but whatever u get me #but like yeah if it were up to me my house would have solar panels cause its better for the environment #but not to like. stick it to the man #hydro is like the least offensive government sector it’s literally just electricians and engineers chilling #be mad that the feds refuse to switch to renewable energy and invade indigenous land! #but like why are you so pressed people like. enjoy clean running water #also yes i should delete instagram but whatever whatever idc i just like being a hater

[turtlesandfrogs]

What I was taught growing up: Wild edible plants and animals were just so naturally abundant that the indigenous people of my area, namely western Washington state, didn't have to develop agriculture and could just easily forage/hunt for all their needs.

The first pebble in what would become a landslide: Native peoples practiced intentional fire, which kept the trees from growing over the camas praire.

The next: PNW native peoples intentionally planted and cultivated forest gardens, and we can still see the increase in biodiversity where these gardens were today.

The next: We have an oak prairie savanna ecosystem that was intentionally maintained via intentional fire (which they were banned from doing for like, 100 years and we're just now starting to do again), and this ecosystem is disappearing as Douglas firs spread, invasive species take over, and land is turned into European-style agricultural systems.

The Land Slide: Actually, the native peoples had a complex agricultural and food processing system that allowed them to meet all their needs throughout the year, including storing food for the long, wet, dark winter. They collected a wide variety of plant foods (along with the salmon, deer, and other animals they hunted), from seaweeds to roots to berries, and they also managed these food systems via not only burning, but pruning, weeding, planting, digging/tilling, selectively harvesting root crops so that smaller ones were left behind to grow and the biggest were left to reseed, and careful harvesting at particular times for each species that both ensured their perennial (!) crops would continue thriving and that harvest occurred at the best time for the best quality food. American settlers were willfully ignorant of the complex agricultural system, because being thus allowed them to claim the land wasn't being used. Native peoples were actively managing the ecosystem to produce their food, in a sustainable manner that increased biodiversity, thus benefiting not only themselves but other species as well.

So that's cool. If you want to read more, I suggest "Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge: Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples of Northwestern North America" by Nancy J. Turner

[marxism-transgenderism]

What always gets me about learning about settler colonialism is how once you learn about it you cannot unsee the violence to the land itself. My home state was previously nearly 100% wetlands, apart of the wider Ohio river valley whose biodiversity supported such large populations of hundreds of different species that many contemporary source from settlers describe it as like the garden of Eden.

The Indigenous people who farmed and hunted here (and still farm and hunt in what land they have been able to keep and reclaim) were able to grow miles of upon miles of crops with multiple harvests a year, encouraging this biodiversity by creating forest gardens with incredible amounts of food from staples like corn and squash to local fruits like pawpaws to European imports like apples alongside controlled burns which allowed fields and buffalo ranges to expand.

Nowadays my state is known almost exclusively for its fields of nothing but corn and soy beans. Driving through in between the comparatively small cities you'll see nothing but fields where the plethora of different trees and plants were chopped down mile by mile, the remaining wetlands drained and flattened, and the rich black soils robbed of their nutrients through decades upon decades of monocrop agriculture now preserved through the life blood of petrochemical fertilizers which destroy the surrounding environment.

This process was done mile by mile as the tens of thousands of Indigenous people were killed and displaced by settlers and the US army, the land measured and sold acre by acre to white settlers who raped the land as described, filling the pockets of wealthy land speculators (like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) who bought the land directly from the government in schemes so corrupt historians have dedicated entire careers to mapping out their dramas.

It's like learning about commodity fetishism and suddenly seeing hundreds of strangers in the products that surround you. Once you learn how the land was destroyed for profit you'll never look at the miles of fields or the cracks in the concrete of buildings built on wetlands or the stench of now obsolete canals built solely for a once boat-dependent economy with no care for the environment the same.

[babydarkstar]

vegans are annoying !

#i also hate the way animals are treated in the food industry! #but also yall are so annoying abt how you find your protein #and also. do u ever notice that ppl who do it not for health reasons/allergies to meat/whatever always look emaciated #AND your lifestyle is equally as unsustainable as consuming animal products is if not more so #your lifestyle is actively harmful to native/indigenous species/land/biodiversity #and the farming structure rn is unsustainable as hell and horrible for the earth #so unless you grow and eat all your own food dont even pull the environment card

[decolonize-the-left]

is it possible to ever stop being a settler if u were born white in america? genuine question im sorry if this sounds stupid i just dont know and youre smart about this

This is actually a great question and one better answered if you can figure out what's makes a settler and a native so different.

The short answer: no. As long as the USA exists then you are a settler. Further, to continue defining yourself as an American is to continue claiming a settler identity. If you don't want to be a settler you need to stop identifying as such and seek to dismantle the USA in solidarity with natives.

The long answer:

Going back to what makes settlers and natives so different. Settlers have no connection to the land. They don't know what grows in it because they've never had to rely on it. They don't see it's worth because they can only see the value that destroying it brings.

They don't see the medicine or food or shelter or burial grounds that have brought people together for thousands of years. They don't see that it can continue to do so for thousands more.

And that's because settlers rely on their colonialist powers to provide for them.

So instead of seeing community and life in the land and people, settlers see things like parking lots and hotels and competition.

Their food will come prepared for them to use and they won't think about the animal it came from or the people exploited for it to end up on their table. They don't know where it came from either and the same goes for near everything else in their houses.

Settlers are defined by not only their complicity in this system & it's violence, but their resistance to make the same connections to the land. Settlers have dehumanized the earth and its inhabitants, reduced us to commodities. Respecting the earth is laughable to settlers.

So is it possible to not be a settler in America?

I can't tell you the answer is to be Ojibwe or Sámi or Taino, but the answer is certainly to live indigenously.

These New People will have to carve out their own cultures and ways and traditions. And as a people who exploited and displaced millions of people and created a 'melting pot', I feel like the first step should be dismantling white supremacy in the name of peace and tolerance. Wouldn't do any good to try moving forward without addressing the ideology that brought us all here.

It should be to learn about community, the people its made of, and actively loving them instead of passively tolerating them. Learn about their traditions, events, and/or holidays and see how they can be more included in community events and celebrations

The more you do this the more realize how often we're truly left out while others are centered.

Seek to change that.

Refuse to follow the current American values of bias, hate, and judgement.

#answered #asked #indigenous #native #ojibwe

[writingwithcolor]

Thanksgiving/Day of Mourning

Last year, I made a very quick, basic post about thanksgiving: Indigenous Day of Mourning aka Thanksgiving. if you want the sources for what I’m about to say, check there.

This post will be about why you cannot just go “fuck the pilgrims, we deserve a harvest festival no matter the origin” or anything else that tries to sanitize the holiday.

You Are Still On Stolen Land

As a result, you are still actively profiting off the genocide the pilgrims committed.

I don’t care how educated about racial issues you profess you are. I don’t care how you behave the other 364 days of the year. If you try to distance yourself from the origins of Thanksgiving simply because it makes you uncomfortable to see the blood under the tablecloth, you’re not practised in sitting with actually being anti-racist. You know what to say, but you don’t practice what you preach.

You Are Eating Our Food

Pumpkins/squash, beans, turkey, cranberries, potatoes, corn, sweet potatoes, pecans, maple syrup?

Those are all Native American foods that we taught you how to grow and harvest.

You wouldn’t have any of your traditional Thanksgiving foods without us. The ideal meal of Thanksgiving is ripped right from Indigenous practices and cannot be separated from it.

The fact that these foods have been taken out of Indigenous hands and appropriated by colonizers as the bounties they somehow deserve for landing here is a tragedy, and people need to remember where their food comes from and who had been growing it for thousands of years.

You Had So Much Because Of Massacre

Thanksgiving became an annual tradition after 700 Pequot men, women, children, and elders were killed, freeing up acres of land that colonizers promptly took over. The sheer amount of extra acreage that colonizers had because of their genocide contributed to the excess of food experienced during Thanksgiving. That land had been structured to support more people originally.

Colonizers had never, ever, deserved that much food. They were taking more than they needed, not leaving much behind for the animals that depended on a balance to be held with humans. They took far more than was needed, throwing the balance off in nature.

Maybe I’m reaching. But I think that if you suddenly had 700 less people in the area, after all of the growing and planting for the total population had been done, you’d have excess food? Or even before the growing, you’d have land set up to support 700, that I’d assume you’d still use, when you were a much smaller population?

Sit With Your Own Grief

If this makes you feel bad and that you shouldn’t celebrate Thanksgiving? Sit with that.

I’m not telling you that you have to give up Thanksgiving traditions. I’m telling you that you cannot divorce them from Indigenous people.

You are giving thanks for our massacre. You are giving thanks for stealing so much from us that you had this excess.

Yes, you can need a break; yes, you can need time with family and friends. None of this is inherently bad.

It’s not even bad to eat local food from Turtle Island! Part of having a sustainable diet is eating locally, in time with the seasons.

But remember, it is Indigenous people who first gave this to you—and then you stole far more than you ever needed from us, killing us to get what you felt you deserved.

Do not divorce Thanksgiving from Indigenous people for your own comfort.

We are still here. We must live with the aftermath of colonizers stealing from us every single day.

If you feel this way hearing about our history, imagine what we feel like living it.

Donate to a local org/Indigenous person this Thanksgiving

I (again) don’t have the spoons to compile a list of vetted charities, but look for local tribe language revival programs, COVID relief funds, and activism around the Indian Child Welfare Act currently in front of the Supreme Court.

Pay reparations for what you have taken, and remember. It is also Indigenous Day of Mourning.

Indigenous people, drop your links below.

~Lesya

#thanksgiving #native american #Holidays #ally #Indigenous day of mourning #genocide #cultural appropriation

[elliescoolerwife]

Nazi dumbfuck

Being against murder and genocide is not a nazi ideology but go off I guess.

If anyone is nazi, it’s zionists.

Lets take a look:

In particular, the Nazis embraced the false idea that Jews were a separate and inferior race. - Israeli politicians have called palestinian children the “children off darkness” and israelis “the children of light”. Also, they’ve called Palestinians animals and not humans and therefore should be treated as such.

the Nazis referred to Jews as a “parasitic race.” - there is posters around Israel and on the internet created by Israelis where they compare palestinians to parasites - saying that they’re parasites to the israeli soil and needs to be removed.

Nazis wanted to separate Jews and Aryan Germans. They tried to force Jews to leave Germany. Not only do Israelis see Palestinians as animals, they’ve displaced 2 million Palestinians. Do you have any idea of what’s going on in Rafah rn?

Those whom the Nazis identified as non-Aryans (including Jews) were persecuted and discriminated against. Israelis have murdered 700.000 palestinians and removed their access to water, food and medical care. Israelis have been protesting by sitting in front of vehicles with medical equipment so gazans don’t get help. Israel have been dropping white phosphorus for 10 years so Palestinians either 1. Get burned. 2. Get killed by the water they drink that contains that white phosphorus. PS! White phosphorus is illegal but not when israelis do it🤡

the Nazis carried out forced sterilizations of certain groups whom they considered inferior.. lets swich our focus from Palestinians and lets take a look at the black people in Israel, lot of them ethiopians, that have been forced to sterilize themselves because israelis don’t want “black” in their jewish line. They want to keep it “clean” and not let black genes, especially not when those black people have converted and aren’t “real” jews. Do you remember who also wanted to keep their race clean? Does it sound familiar?

The Nazis believed that races were destined to wage war against each other. For them, war was a way for the Aryan race to gain land and resources. Specifically, the Nazis wanted to conquer territory in eastern Europe. They planned to remove, dominate, or murder the people who lived there. They believed that Aryan Germans should control this land because they were the supposed master race. Israelis believe that they are Gods chosen people and therefore owns that land. They have removed, dominated and murderer Palestinians who live there to take that land from them, claiming they are the superior race because God chose them. Therefore, they have every right to take that territory from the indigenous people.

Nazis also falsely claimed that all Jews were an existential threat to Germany and that they had to be destroyed. Israelis claim that this “war” will not be over until total victory - meaning until every Palestinian is dead or removed. They celebrated when north gaza looked like a desert, because the “parasites” who was a threath to Israel is now gone. And now Netanyahu is telling these parasites to leave Rafah, the claimed “safe space” or else they get murdered there too. And lets remember that Israelis don’t discriminate. They murder all Palestinians! Muslims, Christians, jews. All of them. And anyone who supports them.

And don’t even dare to say the Hamas because Israel never cared about Hamas nor did Hamas exist when this started. They have claimed that they need to murder children in order to prevent them from growing up and joining hamas. Children. Women. Elderly.

Bold of you to ask this anonymously, though.

#palestine #free palestine #free gaza #israel #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #ellie williams #the last of us #free israel #Ew but it needs to find them #tlou #ellie williams x reader #i’m just putting lots of tags #genocide #antisemitism

[ghouljams]

same hozier anon from earlier!

i was rereading your viking au and couldn't stop thinking about soap and butchered tongue!? specifically:

so far from home have a stranger call you "darling" and have your guarded heart be lifted like a child up by the hand

of course, hozier is specifically discussing the treatment of indigenous peoples and the wexford rebellion of 1978. but it got me thinking, what was soap's transition into viking life like? what is it like to speak a different language with reader when it's something shared just between them? the first time reader calls soap a term of endearment in his own mother tongue?

imo, andrew made unreal unearth with the intent of forcing us through every circle of hell and then just keeping through it all on a loop. and i thank him for it (what does that say about me).

Viking!Soap and Butchered Tongue is such a winning combination. I absolutely adore that song, it makes me tear up each time I listen to it. We'll get to Soap's backstory, his trauma, in the official story line, but for now yeah I can talk about his transition to viking life.

Strange men speaking in strange tongues, their clothing so different from his own, but their rough hands are the same, the sadness in their eyes is the same. It's human, it's familiar in a way that stings more than the cuts along Soap's face. They don't understand him when he speaks, looking between themselves, talking in quiet tones. The language they speak is rough, like hearing his own sounds jumbled back to him, but Soap's always been quick. Certain words repeat themselves, certain sounds repeated between men questioningly. He can make assumptions.

He tugs the cloak one of them men gave him tighter around his shoulders. He doesn't want to seem weak in front of them, not when they're so clearly attempting to decide what to do with him. A different man pushes the conversation apart with his mere presence, leveling Soap with an icy stare. When he opens his mouth the words that come out are rough and mispronounced, but familiar.

"You want work?"

Soap nods quickly. Work, sure. He's strong, he's smart, he'd do anything to get away from the smell of death that carried him here, he can work. Even if it's hard, even if he hates it, he can work. Anything to get off this godforsaken rock.

What he thought would take months takes mere weeks. Weeks of living with the men that call themselves vikings to pick up enough of their language to converse. "Soap" they call him.

"Because ya needed a bath," Ghost grumbles over dinner one night. Soap laughs, not because it's particularly funny, but because he understands him. It's rueful, almost despairing. He understands him. No one will ever hear the words of the Mactavishes again.

Working helps him adjust. There are things to do to keep his mind off of everything, he learns the words for ship parts before he learns colors. He knows how to count money before he learns how to introduce himself. He knows Price before he learns the word for Captain, learns not to apologize for that. He watches the sun fall, watches it rise again. He teaches Gaz a few words, stops when it makes the ache in his chest grow too big and unavoidable. They get back to his new home and he's given a share of the profits, more money than he's seen in his life. He's given a bed in the long house, warm food, new clothes, he's given a sturdy iron band to wear around his arm, if he wants.

He learns the language, the culture. He adjusts. He translates the next time they're across the sea, trading with people he no longer feels familiar to. A viking wearing his tartan over his shoulders, speaking a familiar tongue, he feels like a stranger in his homeland. He leans against Ghost by the fire, toys with the iron band around his wrist. Strangers to every land but the one that took them in.

He misses his ma.

He doesn't mention it.

He meets you like a ghost of his past. He watches your village burn and sees his own in the smoke. He hauls you off kicking and screaming, in a familiar, painful, tongue. You sound like his memories of home. You sound like the place he's never been able to forget. You mean everything to him, and you hate him.

You won't speak to him, not the way he wants you to, and it's like losing his home all over again.

#cod x reader #x reader #john soap mactavish #soap mactavish #johnny mactavish #john mactavish x reader #soap mactavish x reader #soap call of duty #soap cod #soap mw2 #viking!soap #viking au

[rebeccathenaturalist]

The American bison (Bison bison), once numbering 60 million strong, was very nearly wiped out by disease and hunting in the late 1800s, and by 1889 fewer than 550 individuals remained. Their native range, which once stretched from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico, west to Oregon and east just shy of the Atlantic, was reduced to a few pockets here and there. This was a deliberate move on the part of both the U.S. government and the railroad companies to disempower Native American communities on the Great Plains, as the bison was the backbone of their food security as well as being culturally important.

The past couple of decades have seen an increase in bison herds being managed by indigenous people. While the Yakama Nation, based in Washington, was not one of the Great Plains communities, they would travel to where these animals could be found in great herds to hunt them and bring them home. They also received bison from other indigenous communities as part of massive trade networks spanning across the continent.

The Yakama have maintained a herd of bison since 1991, and a couple of years ago they added over two dozen bison from the Yellowstone herd, which lacks the large infusion of cattle genes most other surviving bison have. This crossbreeding will strengthen the Yakama herd's genetic diversity. And it helps the Yakama themselves maintain healthier diets based on leaner bison meat as opposed to beef.

We're a far cry from the 60 million bison that once roamed freely across the continent. But the Yakama's bison herd is just one example of where indigenous management of the land and its wildlife is making changes for the better.

#Bison #Buffalo #megafauna #charismatic megafauna #Yakama #Yakama Nation #Native American #indigenous #indigenous people #indigenous sovereignty #ecology #environment #conservation #endangered species

[noctivagantpodcast]

I Live On Stolen Land

Consider donating to one of these wonderful charities dedicated to preserving the cultures, livelihoods, rights, and dignity of Indigenous peoples.

First Nations Development Institute. Information taken from their 'Our Programs' page: Grantmaker dedicated to addressing financial inequality and its many, many negative impacts. In additional to financial aid, FNDI provides job training and participates in policy-making and advocacy, often focusing on environmental concerns, food insecurity, and tribal sovereignty. Some examples of current projects include "Fortifying Our Forests" AKA restoring and protecting sacred land in partnership with the Forest Service, Native Language Immersion Initiative AKA ensuring the survival of Native languages, and Native Farm To School AKA connecting Native youth with traditional means of growing and harvesting food.

Native American Rights Fund A registered non-profit that provides legal representation in matters of Native interest, be that a single individual or an entire tribe. Since their inception, they have won cases that made critical contributions to the advancement of Native rights in the United States. Their efforts have helped uphold tribal sovereignty, compelled museums, universities, and other institutions to return the remains of Native ancestors, and protected the voting rights of pretty much everyone.

Redhawk Native American Arts Council This organization's primary focus is on the preservation of Native American arts through educational programs. We can also thank them for granting scholarships to Native students seeking higher education, and for running a youth program which aims to help Urban Indigenous youth connect with their heritage through the arts.

Seventh Generation Fund A "fiscal sponsor" for smaller community groups that are run by and for Native tribes/individuals, with the focus of preserving heritage and defending tribal sovereignty, as well as continued survival post-genocide. One example of their work is the Flicker Fund, a disaster fund dedicated to supporting Indigenous communities during times of crisis, be that a pandemic, extreme weather, or a severe drought. Another is the Traditions Bearers Fellowship, which provides financial support to tribal community members who carry on pre-colonization traditions.

Quiluete Move To Higher Ground Stephanie Meyer committed a serious of egregious acts of cultural appropriation and exploitation, and made a very large fortune off a very real tribe. This very real tribe now finds themselves living in a tsunami zone and unable to afford a move to a safer area. As of 2022, the move of the Tribal School, the most important phase, is complete, but there's much more work to be done.

Indigenous Women Rising Abortion Fund A fund to provide Native individuals and family access to abortion care, menstrual hygiene supplies, and midwifery. Here are two separate articles verifying their status as the ONLY indigenous specific (and Indigenous led) abortion fund. For more information on how the destruction of Roe V Wade has negatively impacted Indigenous women, look here and here.

South Dakota Historical Society Foundation So, this isn't a Native led or Native specific organization, but, they work closely with Indigenous communities in South Dakota to preserve their heritage alongside the state's history. I recently had a lovely conversation with one of their representatives about the Ghost Shirt their society is sheltering until such a time as the tribe it rightfully belongs to can house it safely. Article about the shirt's repatriation with some cool info on the shirt's history is here.

#native american rights #indigenous issues #indigenous activism #native american art

[headspace-hotel]

a friend of mine said that the environment would be better if everyone lived in cities and basically left the rest of the natural world alone... i felt like there was something wrong with that argument but i really dont know enough about it to have a real point against it. i might be biased though cause i love being around nature and want to be able to live rural without killing the environment? idk im just wondering if she's right and how to live in a way that isnt negatively impacting the world

love your blog btw, it's been the thing that's helped me understand ecology for once

the idea that humans Are Bad for the ecosystem—not that particular activities or practices have particular negative effects, that just humans existing harms the environment—is in fact the worst idea ever

I mean, first of all, where does your friend think food comes from?

"Food" is one of the problems. It's one of a lot of problems. Some other problems include "all other natural resources besides food" and "human rights."

It's not just your friend, this kind of thing has been suggested in varying ways by self identified "leftists" a bunch of times, and I genuinely hope they're mostly random laypeople who can't really be expected to know more than they can learn from being terminally addicted to Twitter, because otherwise I will call them "dumber than a sack of hammers" in those exact words.

No offense to your friend. Your friend is a laypeople. And sadly, non-experts end up with ass-backwards ideas about how conserving the environment works, because of all this commonplace nonsense about humans being a cancer upon the planet. I'm not angry about those people, just sad.

But my serious answer is—The world's most intact and best managed ecosystems are found on land owned and managed by Indigenous people, who do what with the land?

LIVE ON IT.

And these groups of people learned to manage and care for the land how?

BY LIVING ON IT.

Conventional (white, Western) intuition holds that human management of an ecosystem should reduce biodiversity, but what science shows—I mean what study and observation and data and more study and more observation and more data shows—is that indigenous land management practices can do better than Nature can on her own.

I mean, for one thing, if you don't live in a place, you don't observe it every day. You don't see how the ecosystem and its inhabitants change over time. You can't learn about it, and therefore you don't know about it.

Disconnection from nature is ignorance about nature and ultimately apathy towards nature, and that's the worst and most disrespectful thing we can do.

And like I hope it's clear that even in the imaginary scenario where everyone lives in a city, even if this was possible (it's not), the city dwellers who are separate from nature are living a silly little lie. You're part of the ecosystem. Don't like it? Go become a rock in space.

The electrical signals moving through your brain right now are rays of sunlight that were soaked up by a plant that grew in dirt. Do you know fruit? Do you enjoy fruit? I enjoy fruit, I'm drinking a smoothie right now! That fruit y'all love so much was pollinated by a bug.

A bug did that for you! Because you're family! Because you're part of this world, because you belong to this intricate and ancient community of living things that need each other, that were shaped by evolution to need each other, and nature cannot abandon you.

But more on the cynical side of things, even if you don't know where the hell a berry grows or how, someone has to grow and harvest and ship that berry to you, someone who has to live somewhere, and you should care who is doing it and how they're being treated and paid, and ultimately you should want for them the same things you want for you.

Urban life is just rural life with extra steps my friend.

Like, @ all the "put everybody in cities" crowd, what is the plan here? Fancy ass indoor aquaponics systems notwithstanding, we're not technologically at a point where we can just, like, build giant multi-story factory buildings where we grow food under special lamps, and even being at that point wouldn't make it a good idea. With all the hype about solar power, you'd think people would look at plants (have been using solar power just fine for like a billion years) and think, "Neat how those things can just make food when you stick 'em in the sunshine."

I'm sorry, I'm never going to be psyched about technological innovations that are like "We took a plant and put it inside."

There is so much I could say here. The brainrot in the wake of "cottagecore" discourse where a bunch of well meaning white people got convinced that farming was racist. The idea that rural people are somehow more complicit in colonialism than urban people, and that rural land is, I don't know, landier than urban land, and the correct and moral thing to do if you live on stolen land is to....what? Live on land that has a protective layer of concrete in between it and your racist feet?

Land ownership is a whole fucked up beast, but you're not cultivating a non-exploitative relationship with land by living in a city. There's just extra steps in between you and the land.

"Homesteading" as seen on cottagecore boards on Pinterest has a lot of white supremacist wet dream mixed in, but listen: It is not only okay, but GOOD, to want to live in close relationship with the land, with the food you eat, with the trees and plants that fill your lungs when you inhale. It's IMPORTANT. It's VITAL.

What has to change is that this relationship can't be based on ownership and dominance. Ecosystem is community and that ain't it.

My ancestors were colonizers, the land I live on right now was violently stolen, the ecosystem that once was very carefully managed so that it flourished with life was ravaged, and I don't even know the names of most of the life-forms that ought to be here. What now?

You belong to the ecosystem that takes care of you. You can't wash your hands of this and run away.

I feel like I'm getting off topic, but it's very much on topic actually. What I hope for the future is that we would stop entertaining the silly little lies that imagine we can just...opt out of participation in something that is underneath our every footstep and in our every breath. It would make us feel pure, but it wouldn't be real.

I do think that forcing people off the land that is their home is bad, in general. I don't think those people have to be indigenous for this to be bad—and successfully claiming otherwise is a bit of conundrum, since as far as I know, the political and social phenomenon of indigenous identity has a lot to do with the being forced off your land thing.

Obviously people like me don't have the same deeply central cultural relationship to the land, but the "we should all just go live in cities and leave nature to itself" proposal implies that such relationships are unnecessary or even bad.

I've said this before but I find it weird when environmentalists accommodate indigenous ways of life in their visions of the ideal future as like...a special exception granted because it's like, the nice thing to do for a historically marginalized and violently oppressed group. Not because there is value or merit in those ways of life. Like "Oh I guess indigenous people should be allowed to hunt because it's part of their culture" ????? And it's part of their culture because...why?

Maybe because it's a sustainable way of doing things and has been for millennia???

Like don't listen to me, look at the research, indigenous folks participating in ecosystems and managing them worldwide know what they're doing and the rest of the world should be looking to them as examples. Key word here is participating, because you can't competently manage an ecosystem with your head all the way up your ass with the idea that you're somehow not part of it.

Humans aren't a cancer upon the planet. It's capitalism and colonialism. It's the practice of seeing the world as a disposable resource to be exploited.

Humans lived in the place I called home for 15,000 years. Within the past 200 years, almost every forest was razed to the ground, and almost every large animal extirpated or damn near to it.

"Humans" did that! These humans are so terrible!

But I have to remember.

There are descriptions of this place from before that, and they describe a lush, teeming heaven-like paradise that the adjectives provided by English trembled to capture, so perfect and bountiful that the observers assumed this land was never tainted by Adam's sin.

Humans did that, too.

#ecology

[elbiotipo]

My grandpa was one of the last to work for La Forestal. They came to the Argentine Chaco to extract tannin from the quebracho tree. He tells me that every time a huge quebracho was cut down, it fell on the new little trees, not giving the forest time to grow back. A job from sun to sun, on lands stolen from the native peoples of the Chaco, who, along with criollos and immigrants, were also forced into gangs to cut down trees so hard that broke down axes, with trunks meters in diameter, to be pulverized in sweatshop factories and sent as tanin podwer to European industries. La Forestal did not pay you in pesos; you had a coin (my grandpa still has his, it says "Obrero N° 14"), which you presented at the company store, and they gave you whatever (food, booze) they cared to give you, or what they said they had; after all, as my grandfather says, if you didn't know how to read or write, how would you know you were getting less than they said?

And if you went on strike? And if you formed a union? And if you wanted to resist, like the indigenous peoples did? Some boys with a blood-red cap, the Cardenales, criminals taken from prison, would come and kill you, in broad daylight if you were striking, in the middle of the forest if you were alone. Many books tell about hacheros yelling one last long sapucai before killing themselves, because they couldn't stand it anymore.

Who were the owners of this terrible company? English. In the La Forestal HQ in the north of Santa Fe, a beautiful mansion (I understand that it is now a ruin) while the workers lived in mud huts with roofs of palm leaves, every day, the Union Jack was hoisted over Argentine soil, and of course, at five o'clock it was tea time, while all the tannin, loaded on barges and on railways worked by Argentines but owned by the British, went to Europe, and the wealth, of course, to London.

My grandfather lived through the last of this. Perón already came by that time, with worker's rights, unions, rural schools and clinics, the nationalization of railways... Nevertheless, he still had to hunt to eat and work from a young age at the machines of the company, as the company was leaving the country and couldn't even bother to pay a pittance to its workers. It eventually closed most of its operations and came into Argentine hands. But don't think it was because the English had a change of heart. They just found a better source of tannin, the acacias in their African colonies. God knows what crimes they committed there, if this is what they did in the territory of a 'sovereign' country.

And this is the side of the story I know. I cannot yet speak for all the territories the British owned in the Patagonia, some of which are still owned by English millionaries today. Don't come to tell me that the poor innocent English had nothing to do with the genocide that was done to the indigenous peoples in this country.

#cosas mias #argentina #imperialism #history #I can't believe you braindead pelotudos actually think the British Empire is an innocent entity who had no influence in South America #and did nothing wrong they just had some sheep in some islands! well. #let's not forget: they would also have owned the whole of Patagonia if they could #in fact they tried to take over Argentina before it was even independent #do you think we dislike them just because of football?

[fatehbaz]

In the late 18th century, [...] Lahaina carried such an abundance of water that early explorers reportedly anointed it “Venice of the Pacific”. A glut of natural wetlands nourished breadfruit trees, extensive taro terraces and fishponds that sustained wildlife and generations of Native Hawaiian families.

But more than a century and a half of plantation agriculture, driven by American and European colonists, have depleted Lahaina’s streams and turned biodiverse food forests into tinderboxes. Today, Hawaii spends $3bn a year importing up to 90% of its food. This altered ecology, experts say, gave rise to the 8 August blaze that decimated the historic west Maui town and killed more than 111 people.

“The rise of plantation capital spawned the drying of the west side of Maui,” said Kamana Beamer, a historian and a former member of the Hawaii commission on water resource management [...].

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[S]ugar and pineapple white magnates began arriving on the islands in the early 1800s. For much of the next two centuries, Maui-based plantation owners like Alexander & Baldwin and Maui Land & Pineapple Company reaped enormous fortunes, uprooting native trees and extracting billions of gallons of water from streams to grow their thirsty crops. (Annual sugar cane production averaged 1m tons until the mid-1980s; a pound of sugar requires 2,000lb of freshwater to produce.)

Invasive plants that were introduced as livestock forage, like guinea grass, now cover a quarter of Hawaii’s surface area. The extensive use of pesticides on Maui’s pineapple fields poisoned nearby water wells. The dawn of large-scale agriculture dramatically changed land practices in Maui, where natural resources no longer served as a mode of food production or a habitat for birds but a means of generating fast cash, said Lucienne de Naie, an east Maui historian [...].

“The land was turned from this fertile plain – with these big healthy trees, wetland taros and dryland crops like banana and breadfruit – to a mass of monoculture: to rows and rows of sugar cane, and rows and rows of pineapple,” she said.

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The Great Māhele of 1848, a ground-breaking law that legitimized private land ownership, laid the ground for big developers to hoard water for profit, said Jonathan Likeke Scheuer, a water policy consultant and co-author of the book Water and Power in West Maui. [...] [T]he creation of private property allowed agricultural corporations to wield “political and ultimately oligarchic power” over elected officials. In 1893, a group of sugar magnates and capitalists overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom’s Queen Liliuokalani, paving the way for the US to annex Hawaii five years later. Sanford Ballard Dole, a cousin of Dole Plantation’s founder, served as the first governor of Hawaii.

When the last of the sugar companies closed in 2016 [...], Scheuer said, the farms were purchased by large investors for real estate speculation and left fallow, overrun with invasive grasses that became fuel for brush fires. Developers [...] took control of the plantations’ century-old irrigation ditches and diverted water to service its luxury subdivisions. In doing so, it left scraps for Indigenous families who lived downstream. [...] [O]n Maui, 16 of the top 20 water users are resorts, time-shares and short-term condominium rentals equipped with emerald golf courses and glittering pools [...].

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Text by: Claire Wang. "How 19th-century pineapple plantations turned Maui into a tinderbox". The Guardian. 27 August 2023. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

#abolition #ecology #imperial #colonial

[marxism-transgenderism]

That poll of midwestern dishes is so funny cause all the replies from people elsewhere are like "these cannot be real" but the actual food history of the midwest behind that is so interesting. When midwest what invaded and settled by the US, it was expanded principally as a commercial enterprise of large companies getting granted allotments from the government. It was done not only to fuel land speculation on a previously unheard of level but to create new markets for the eastern states to sell their goods to.

So when the midwest was settled its primary economy was what of farmers who grew crops primarily to sell back east to be able to buy goods that came east and to the growing industrial cities of the region, including food. People still grew crops that they would eat (corn on the cob is a classic), but that was by and large to supplement what was bought rather than subsisting on it.

So the dominant things you see in primarily white settler midwestern food is mass produced, commodities like ground beef, salted pork, canned beans, and macaroni. Well known sweets are generally things that can easily be whipped up with eggs, flour, and sugar like sugar cream pie and butter cookies. And this continues right up to today with many of the main recipes people learn to make are casseroles, stews, and hideous looking but unbelievably delicious mixes of processed foods. Most other dishes more complicated than that you can trace directly to Betty Crocker.

But the thing is, this food history is one primarily the white settlers who were able to buy land and committed the ongoing genocide that created the white midwest. On the ground, indigenous dishes both ones that existed prior to colonization and ones like fry bread from colonization still persist especially in the norther midwest. Black dishes are common across the region, especially in cities where Black immigrants fled to during the Great migration. Tex-mex and Central American food is incredibly common.

So when midwest food is talked about, it's primarily the simple, commodity based dishes of the white settler population that are acknowledged. Food from other cultures, despite being more common than the white food dishes in large parts of the midwest, is either ignored as not really midwestern or appropriated. To the point that even now corn is primarily associated in the US with the white dominated commercial farms rather than as one of the primary foods of the Indigenous population that made this region so prosperous before and during colonization.

#sorry if this is rambly im rather high

[homochadensistm]

The tweet about Palestinians “not altering the soil” to grow fruits and thus being The True Indigenous(TM) is pissing me off. It’s literally just the noble savage trope. Were the Incas not native to the Andes because they altered the soil (quite severely too, it often became unusable in certain zones for years) for their agriculture? Were the Spaniards who settled here and grew their own food organically here actually the true Deservers Of The Land? These people cannot go to hell fast enough bruh

Ngl being this stupid should be a crime

#israel #palestine

[plethoraworldatlas]

Avocados have exploded in popularity across the United States. And every year Super Bowl Sunday is the biggest day for avocado consumption nationwide, as millions of football fans gobble delicious guacamole during the game. But to produce all that guac, the avocado industry is gobbling, too — scarfing up vast swaths of Mexican forest, where millions of monarch butterflies migrate to spend the winter and other imperiled wildlife struggle to survive. Most avocados sold in the United States come from a single region in Mexico, where the industry burns forests and uses an enormous amount of water — 18.5 gallons to produce one avocado — in a region already suffering from extreme drought. Avocado production also brings land grabs, pollution, and violence to Indigenous and other local communities. Research from Climate Rights International has linked this devastation to importers that supply major U.S. grocery stores with avocados. Tell U.S. grocery stores to adopt avocado-sourcing policies that protect human rights and monarch habitat. ... Every day more than 10 football fields' worth of Mexican forest are cleared for avocado production. If the United States keeps consuming avocados at this rate, by 2050 the land destroyed to grow them will have increased by more than 70% — at the expense of even more forests, including those of the world-famous Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. Imperiled monarchs are plunging toward extinction already. Losing their winter home in Mexico could be the final blow.

sign with the link to urge Top US grocery Chains to adopt avocado sourcing policies

#ecology #enviromentalism #avocado #mexico