“Native Americans ran the continent as they saw fit. Modern nations must do the same. If they want to return as much of the landscape as possible to its state in 1491, they will have to create the world’s largest gardens.”

Source: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

From an oversea’s show, spliced to view the message from one elder (Floyd Red Crow Westerman)…how america has come and is destined to go. .. added the Elders Speak to the title, only because more clips will follow….

Source: MadRazorRay

Thanking Indigenous People for the Food We Eat

Seventy-five percent of the food and fiber we grow today was discovered and cultivated by the native farmers and hunter-gatherers of North, Central and South America.

These indigenous varieties include corn, beans, peanuts, cotton, potatoes, tomatoes, chili peppers, avocados, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, squashes, black walnuts, pecans, chocolate, tobacco, rubber, sunflowers, and medicinal herbs and plants.

Today, every one of these varieties is threatened by Monsanto, Big Pharma, and industrial agriculture, among others, who are privatizing and patenting seeds and the gene pool, eroding biodiversity, degrading the soil and water, contaminating the food chain, and destabilizing the climate.

A CULTIVATED EDEN DESCRIBED AS A WILDERNESS

In “Pristine Nature: The Founding Falsehood,” Steven H. Rich explains that what European colonists mistakenly described as wilderness was actually a human-created and nurtured landscape, providing food, medicinal herbs, bountiful wildlife, healthy, living soil, and clean water.

Native Americans “managed” the environment “organically,” producing and/or maintaining for themselves and the future generations native animals, birds, fish, berries, nuts, greens, fruits, bulbs, corns, mushrooms, roots, basketry and cordage materials, firewood, hunting and building materials, herbal medicines, and plants for ceremonial use.

Many “wild” or commercial plants or varieties that exist today are in fact derived from ancient Native American seed saving and cross-breeding that produced better-tasting, climate adapted, and nutritional varieties.

Source: Thanking Indigenous People for the Food We Eat, Organic Consumers Association

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus is a 2005 non-fiction book by American author Charles C. Mann about the pre-Columbian Americas. The book argues that there is evidence accumulated over the last several decades suggesting that human populations in the Western Hemisphere — that is, the indigenous peoples of the Americas — were larger in number, had arrived earlier, were more sophisticated culturally, and controlled and shaped the natural landscape to a greater extent than had been previously thought.

Mann concludes that Indians were a “keystone species,” one that “affects the survival and abundance of many other species.” By the time the Europeans arrived and settled in the Americas, the “boss” (Indians) had been almost completely eliminated. Disease ran rampant and killed off the Indians, disrupting their control of the environment. When Indians died, animal populations, such as that of the buffalo grew immensely. “Because they (Europeans) did not burn the land with the same skill and frequency as its previous occupants, the forests grew thicker.” The world discovered by Christopher Columbus was to begin to change from that point on so Columbus “was also one of the last to see it in pure form.”

Mann concludes with the idea that we must look to the past to right the future. “Native Americans ran the continent as they saw fit. Modern nations must do the same. If they want to return as much of the landscape as possible to its state in 1491, they will have to create the world’s largest gardens.”

Source: 1491, Wikipedia

The Indigenous Environmental Network Canadian Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign and the Aboriginal Round Table came together to do an action camp in the area of Fort McMurray First Nation/Anzac, we were joined by the Athabasca Keepers of the Water on the final days.

IEN Alberta based organizer Heather Milton-Lightning and Ottawa based Clayton Thomas-Muller provided facilitation support at the gathering with back up from Rainforest Action Network and Greenpeace Organizers Ereil Deranger and Melina Lubicon-Massimo.

Over the 6 day camp participants learned about dry fish, dry meat, tipi building, sweatlodge, community organizing, medicines in the bush, how to set fish net, bannock making/bannock on a stick, wild game preparation, Tar Sands 101, Banner Making/Arts and Crafts, Beading, traditional story telling and non-violent direct action strategy. We will be working with this group on a ground water conference in Fort McMurray this fall.

Source: ienearth

Indigineous Permaculture

Indigenous Permaculture’s (IP) mission is to revitalize rural and urban communities through sustainable development, traditional farming, and appropriate technology.

Our goals are to:

• Re-establish wellness to Mother Earth and her people.
• Create community food security and self-sufficiency
• We conduct this work in an affordable way that builds capacity within the community.

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THE PHILOSOPHY

Indigenous Permaculture, or Cosmovision, is a way of thinking and living by following the original instructions we were given to live in balance with the world.

These teachings assist people in achieving a symbiotic sustainable life within their environment by utilizing indigenous agricultural practices.

Permaculture reconnects human beings and the natural world in an effort to restore balance and natural law that will heal the earth and its people. Indigenous Permaculture is not new, it is wisdom from the past that tells us how to follow our original instructions from the Creator. By doing this we ensure our existence and a future for generations.

Source: Indigineous Permaculture