Our land was taken. But we still hold the knowledge of how to stop mega-fires
As wildfires rage across California, it saddens me that Indigenous peoples’ millennia-long practice of cultural burning has been ignored in favor of fire suppression.
indigenous knowledge
What Indigenous Wisdom Can Teach Us About Economics
Just as Indigenous wisdom is rooted in a myriad of complex and reciprocal interactions with the community, the land and water, the animals and plants, localizing makes visible the threads of interdependence that hold the living world together.
Why we need racial justice in farming
We need all the support we can get to build this movement locally. In the spirit of “a high tide raises all ships”, racial justice in the progressive farming movement will benefit everyone.
Decolonizing ecology
Protecting and restoring Indigenous Peoples’ lands is the fastest and most readily available way to sequester carbon and mitigate the impacts of climate change, a result of the optimally efficient relationships between fungi, plants, animals, and people in a given bioregion, which Indigenous cultures have coded into their knowledge systems over millennia of human-environmental interactions.
Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples Face a Triple Threat from COVID-19, the Dismantling of Socio-Environmental Policies, and International Inaction
The wilful jeopardising of indigenous peoples’ lives is particularly grave when you consider that the death of each elder represents the “burning of a library“.
Indigenous Tribes are at the Forefront of Climate Change Planning in the U.S.
As other North American tribes have begun to experience the effects of climate change over the past decade, they too have started to adopt climate resilience and adaptation plans. According to a database maintained by the University of Oregon, at least 50 tribes across the U.S. have assessed climate risks and developed plans to tackle them.
Crossing the Threshold
To cross this threshold is to become vulnerable: one way or another, you can be changed by what you come to know, and that change may come in the form of loss. Perhaps the loss of who you thought you were, the stories you liked to tell about yourself.
How First Australians’ Ancient Knowledge can Help us Survive the Bushfires of the Future
Many of those commenting on the current bushfire crisis in Australia argue about fuel reduction, hazard reduction, use of aerial incendiaries, drip torches, ancient Indigenous techniques and western forms of fire management.
But to me, these fires suggest we urgently need a new dialogue and paradigm for living in a rapidly changing world.
From Sunset Strip to the Sierra Madre to a Nobel Nomination
Susan Eger was more adventurous than your average UCLA anthropology student in 1975 – even for a psychedelic-savvy follower of Carlos Castañeda. But a chance meeting with a fellow adventurer would set her life course in ways she could never have imagined. Nearly half a century later, with three grown indigenous children, a Mexican nonprofit that’s become a living institution and a Nobel nomination to contend with, Susana Valadez, as she is now known, is on fire with the certainty of one who is living her destiny.
Regenerating the Human Story
“You know, what’s really wonderful about this is that it’s not just about regenerative agriculture, It’s about regenerating the human story; it’s about regenerating the way that we look at health, food, economics, human relationships — even our own history.”
Consuming the Anthropocene
In the basic conception of the Anthropocene, there are two actors: mankind and the environment. This sweeping and seemingly compelling divide at once highlights the separation of the two categories and collapses it: if humans are geologic force, we can no longer imagine ourselves outside of nature.
Climate Change is Fueling Wildfires around the World. Can Indigenous Knowledge Help us Manage Them?
Combining traditional knowledge with modern science and technology could reduce loss of property and human life from out-of-control blazes.
