Standing firmly for our future

When you look at me…
What do you see?

Do you form boxes or pyramids or spheres
Around your experience of my existence?

Do you label, tag and file
Your perception of my experience?

Do you interact intending to
Listen and learn, hear and teach to or with me?

When you look at me…
Do you see my endless transformations,
Translations of time, space and place?

Do you see my endless imperfections,
Perfectly timed choices to bridge the next leap?

Do you see me changing?
Because life and time are motion!

Do you see me listening, hearing and learning
With you?

We are
Inside and out – outside and in

We are
WE ARE
Together & Apart

We are
Wrong and Right

WE ARE
I am because WE ARE
WE ARE
WE ARE Finding a Path
To the Future
In Balance
Together

We ARE exploring the
Basics of life
In Balance

We ARE asking the critical questions
Of why and how and what and who

We are
Together
Finding our way
Through the chaos
Of uncertainty
To the firm footing in the bedrock of
Our unshakeable foundation of
Core values

We belong to the Earth and Sky
Our duty here, on our brief stay, is to remember
And act accordingly.

The Earth is our Mother
We must each learn again
How to live a life
Of Respect
And Integrity

We begin NOW
(And again every day)

Let us respect our Mother
(and each other)

We begin from within our hearts and homes
Cleaning, clearing, cutting loose and letting go
Of those thoughts and patterns that no longer need
Space in our surroundings…

Within that most sacred of spaces we call “home”
Is where the truth of our existence dwells…

Our struggles there reflect those of our family,
Community and nation.
Our battles won and lost is the stuff of our life journey.

The love that is shared – or absent – here is our best answer
To how to survive, to live, to thrive and to restore
The health and balance between us humans
And the rest of the plant, animal, animate and inanimate beings
On this water drop spark in the universe…

Exploring Roots of Entrepreneurship... (part 2)

Now, in the midst of this head on collision I feel between past - future, right - wrong, ideal - real… Regardless what analysts, bankers, or my high school civics instructor Brian Flaherty say, economy to me is the ability of a person, a family, a community, a nation, and an ecosystem to maintain long term relationships of symbiosis where all survive, thrive, flourish and replenish the resources they used during their lifetime; death giving rise to the renewal of energy that will fuel the next generation.

A strong economy to me means that the renewable resources available from the land support the total number of its inhabitants (plant, animal and otherwise). So, what are the elements that encourage each part of the system to grow, perform and produce at maximum levels of sustainable capacity?  And are there current or historic models that help to inspire creative problem solving?

Our solutions are many and varied and are likely not appearing in the textbooks that guide our teachers and students gently into a tiered caste future run by the existing corporate oligarchy.  Our humanity will not be preserved and maintained by drones or robotics or by militarizing everything…. But rather by seeking to restore our ever fleeting compassion – by seeking to instill in our children the fearlessness required to stand up and share our own stories… by building in each other the determination and discipline needed to chart our own strategic initiatives, laying a course to a future of our own varied design and vision.

To me economy is food (local), housing (green), health (lifestyle) and a quality of life that is shared with everyone - where our individual, community and collective happiness takes root to motivate, guide and inspire us to survive, thrive and set a path to a future where equality and liberty are real and lasting.

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Mother Nature Chronicles

Exploring Roots of Entrepreneurship... (part 1)

Chatting with a group of friends about land, time & economy

In my mother's town every November 19, there is a sunrise ceremony on the banks of the Stann Creek River.  It is a ceremony that commemorates the arrival of the Garifuna People to the safe shores of what is now Belize.  Central to the commemoration are:  song, oratory, canoes and the plants.  Specifically, the food plants that are brought from the distant homelands, to be re-planted, making this new shore "home".

Working our borrowed Minnesota Milpa

Meso-American People have a tradition of economic development that is highly integrated into the concept of community.  Among many Maya communities in Southern Belize, for example, when a new couple formalizes their commitment to move through life as a nuclear family unit, the entire community mobilizes to gather the materials necessary to build their new home together.  A home that is comprised of the natural elements obtainable from their surrounding environment.  A home that is measured using units that are comprised of the male partner's own unique hand and height measurements.  A model that truly demonstrates the harmony that can be achieved between humans, nature and our environment.

Milpa in the foothills of the Maya Mountains, Belize

These types of highly integrated practices - which have sustained thriving, vibrant communities through the rise and fall of more than one empire - are of great importance and relevance to our current human task of regaining balance and equilibrium between each other and our first, natural environment - Mother Nature.

----

Clip from a soon to be released documentary on the Indigenous Youth Freedom Project

Happy Autumn!

Here it is:

• the fledgling results of my deepest soul searching
• a summary of the things I really enjoy filling my life with
• an almost shameless effort in self promotion

Your brand new comprehensive guide to services available from yours truly! If you know of anyone who shares our values and has an interest in or need for any of the offerings I can provide, I deeply appreciate connections assistance.  I'm still working on the references and testimonials section - so if we have worked together before, I would love to see your thoughts in the comment section!

Thank you so much for your good thoughts, work and inspiration.  May we all move forward together!

Tara

On the cusp....

Helper, assistant, associate, manager, teacher, driver... for 28 years now, I've advocated - like a good doula or midwife - in the planning, birth, growth and development of the programs and projects of many super-talented, gifted, visionary leaders.

It's been an incredibly fulfilling journey for me - always learning, sharing and receiving endless inspiration from the tenacity, determination and resilience demonstrated by the babies, children, youth, adults and elders of the communities I've had the honor and privilege to live and work among.

In so many ways, this year has been a completion of another one of my life circles... teaching my children to grow roots in the ecosystem that nourished me, through hardship and love... like the indigenous flora of our bioregion... our "roots run deep."  I am happy that my compassion for the well being of my extended nuclear family unit has brought us back home - to the outer rim of the tropical lowland forest.  This heat is in our blood and it feels good learning how to eat with native perennial vegetables.

Today I realized that in my time of relative recluse from the bustle of community building, teaching and organizing, something has formulated itself within me - something I've been without for the major part of my "adulthood:" to my surprise, I suddenly have a new life goal.

It will take as much discipline and determination as I can possibly muster, I'm certain.  And like all goals, will need the coddling and care of anything precious and new - be they seedlings or babies.

I have come to the realization today that after 28 years of helping visions become reality, I wish to gain the skills and support necessary to learn how to see my own vision and bring that into reality.

Simple, maybe even obvious - but it took some major work to get here - and a lot more to get there.

I feel ready to take on the challenge to be true to myself, while building a road to "everything for everyone..."

Watch out, second half of life - here we come!

One year and a day

Why do I?

Why do I care about kids, borders and bombs…?

Why do I keep friends when I don’t even see them…?

Why do I get by when I could be getting down…?

Why do I keep trying when perseverance seems futile…?

Because.

Because to care is to love.

Because to know is to never give up.

Because only values PLUS logic can lead the way.

Because the blood boiling in my veins never lets me rest for very long.

It’s been a year now since my family and I took one giant leap and left the comfy nest of work, friends and community we had made for ourselves over the past 13 years.

I had done this once before, when I was about to start 7^th grade… I’d left for my annual summer sojourn with my grandparents and decided to stay – that year was the hardest and best year of my life – I learned Latin, algebra and how to dance like a Ukrainian.  I even got to mentor a class of first graders and taught them the alphabet in sign language.  That year I turned 13. I cut my hair. I started to wear makeup. And I got a job babysitting two little kids across the street from my aunt and uncle’s house where I spent the weekdays.

This year is very reminiscent of that - leaving one nest - to go find and make another. New roots, new shoots. Still holding fast to the love, teachings and experiences we left behind – not knowing truly if or when we might ever return… it is a journey so many have taken, and yet one others cannot even imagine.

Following one’s life path is not for the feint-hearted – that much is certain! So many guts and books and boxes and things to sort out in endless attempts to organize… Not much glory in finding the many prize items 10 or 20 or 30 years later left wrinkled, weathered and definitely worse for the wear.

Lots of guts to get through as we examine and re-examine what all the baggage is we’ve acquired in these short young lives… and what on earth compels anyone to commit the ludicrous act in this day and age of purchasing a printed ink book, much less three bookshelves full?

Relocating is definitely an act of comparative analysis, more than slightly colored by one’s pre-existing personal preferences.  The first year was all about coming to an understanding of where we’re not. Only from this somewhat dismal realization can we begin to appreciate all the opportunities that abound where we are.

Where am I?

Home because here is where my heart is.

Home because we’ve made a place to hang our hats.

Home because this place needs us and apparently we need it.

Home because the miracles of love and life sprout from everywhere.

Midsummer Dreaming

Photo of daily work in process by Adrienne Chadwick

The road to our individual and collective 'promised land' is not easy by any means. But it is strewn with petals of love, signs of encouragement and signals of inevitability. We must each use our human gifts and free will to accomplish exactly what we envision for ourselves - to do anything otherwise is to jeopardize the interdependent trajectory to our shared desire for a safe, abundant, sustainable future.

TheSecretGarden

Back to the Basics

As a mom of two young boys, I invest a lot in their future.  Today, at the dawn of this 21^st century, I often wonder: what will they truly need in order to live a healthy, happy, fulfilled life to its fullest? (As visions of ad logos dance in my head.) More space, money, cars…? Does more lead to fulfillment? Happiness?

Of course, as a mom, I want my children to always have what they need to live a full and productive life.  And now, more than ever, I think and worry about how our basic building blocks of life – air, water, earth – seem increasingly in peril.  And so, part of the investment I make in my children’s future is feeding them with food that is as safe and nutritious as possible.  But I also think about how far that food has traveled and how much water and energy was used to produce it.

We are hearing much about drought and water shortage these days, I know that we are going to feel that too, before the arrival of rainy season here in South Florida.  Did you know that throughout the US, a good 50% of our national water supply goes into the food we eat? It can take 200 gallons of water to produce a pound of beans.  A pound of beef can take over 2,000 gallons of water to produce.

Another thing that we feel here in South Florida is the real need for clean air that is cooled down to a liveable temperature. In the US almost 50% of our energy use is in heating and cooling homes and buildings.

But we have structures available to us to build our homes, businesses and public buildings in ways that use less than ¼ of that heating/ cooling energy.  And there are farming systems that grow food with minimal inputs of energy, water and chemicals. We just need to utilize them!

Climate change is happening, no matter how many $$$ you put into denying it.  Our temperatures overall are rising, ice sheets are retreating, and we have only one choice: ADAPT.

So that is what I teach my children – creativity, adaptation, and the importance of observing and considering the cycles and patterns of nature in all our actions and decisions.  It is what our ancestors have done, and it is the only way we will successfully navigate the changing times ahead.

We – our whole planet – are an ecosystem.  And yes, we are diverse, competitive, and at times, ruthless.  But we are all interconnected, bound together by our commonality and our dependence on the air, soil and life blood of our first mother – Earth.

Tara Chadwick works as a community outreach consultant for Earth Learning and would like to invite you to the 2014 Local Food Enterprise Summit in Miami May 31-June 2. Registration information is available at www.financialpermaculture.com, spaces are filling quickly.

   

It is time for us ALL to rise!

Climate, drought, floods, storms, damage, rebuilding, resilience, adaptation. It is time for us to rise!

A very
urban
bald
eagle
came
over to
look
for fish
in the
lake
as I
began
to
write
today.

Throughout the years of my teenage-hood, I carried within me a vision of “what I want to be when I grow up.” And despite the fact that I am a born and raised city girl, I knew from a very young age that my life desire was to learn about who I am as a part-Maya woman, and to work toward a time when I would have the skills, capacity and connectedness to sustain my own life using materials and resources that occur naturally on the Earth.

It seems a very practical and noble vision today, but in the progressive days of the 1980’s, a life goal of self-sustainability, self-sovereignty (though I could not describe it that way in those days) was seen as overly humble, too modest, and even today is often regarded as unrealistic.  And yet, one cannot undo one’s vision.  It can be designed, planned and implemented, even tweaked or reformatted, but that underpinning image, the reality with which it is emblazoned in one’s soul, and the memories of recalling it over many years of reflections just simply cannot be undone…

And so, I continue to move along on my life path, carrying memories of learning, experiences of doing, relationships (at least some of them anyways), and I realize, to my surprise, that I am on a journey toward the completion of a great circle!  Watching carefully how the weather patterns are changing, how our food and access to it is being modified, I wonder where the other 99% were when I was sitting in 9^th grade geography class listening to Mr. Thompson teach us about the two possible scenarios that would occur due to the increasing greenhouse effect… I am so confused by climate change skepticism.

But I am also more certain than ever now that my choices to live a humble life in pursuit of happiness, freedom and harmony with Mother Nature are more than responsibilities, these footsteps are my legacy…

April 28, 2014

Pinelands Park

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or follow my daily tweets @wabigun

Spring 2014 - The season of regeneration has arrived!

I spent the day of the equinox sorting corn soup corn seeds thanks to George & Syd Martin's kind sharing of their precious seeds, instructions and memories at winter ceremonies 2012

It’s a beautifully cool and grey morning here in South Florida, the spring season has arrived and with it the excited sounds of the birds whose beautiful songs seem to reach new heights of pitch and melody…

I can’t say that I miss the raw wind, snow and cold that so easily penetrate one’s final layers of resistance to the winters of the northern latitudes, especially this year where the average daily temperatures reached far below any recent human memory.

But I do miss the beauty of the snow, the intricate interplay of geometry and light we see reflected on a single snowflake, I miss the warm coffee stops on cold days, and I especially miss feeling the comraderie of people working together to keep their families and communities intact even in the face of such bone chilling environmental realities… the fridgidity of the weather I think helps to cultivate the warmth of people’s hearts…

In many ways, I have found Minnesota and Florida polar opposites, in terms of much more than the obvious weather patterns. There are so many people here, four times as many at least.  And the social disparities while they are obvious in Minnesota, are as amplified in South Florida as the temperature difference on an average early spring day.

The bio diversity of plant, insects and humans is incredibly rich and beautiful, but the relationships that exist between us all seem as fragile as the scanty layer of subtropical topsoil which, fertile though it is, takes 1000 years to produce just one inch of fine, silty soil over the porous limestone that is our area’s bedrock (hence the litany of sinkholes that seem to be opening at an increasingly rapid rate).

Getting to know and understand a new geography is a daunting, seemingly lifelong task.  But the exercise in trying leads to the realization that our parents and grandparents, wherever they are from, were grounded in the knowledge of how to best utilize the gifts of the land and its processes, in a way that also preserved and ensured their continuity in perpetuity.  This regenerative use philosophy, I am now coming to see, is encoded in our cultural, family and community values, traditions and the teachings we pass on to our children and loved ones.  Many of the things we don’t do anymore because we don’t have to, are the very things that contribute to our success in sustaining the ecosystem that we depend on. (Think of the things our grandparents make fun of us for not knowing or doing anymore… walk to school, haul water, chop wood, empty the chamber pot, keep a compost…)

For the few who remember and find ways to replicate and share these treasures of knowledge that others have cast off as “old,” with the connotation of no longer useful or valuable, our future generations of human beings will be eternally grateful to you.  For those who can, LISTEN, LEARN & PRACTICE!  Our grandparents do not stay with us forever, so spend time with them when you can, ask questions, and above all, remember what stories of nature they tell you… OUR grandchildren will have many questions about the world and our place in it and they will need to hear us tell them the stories from the land of our grandparents.

Happy Spring!  Wherever we are right now, let's plant seeds that will feed our minds and bodies with nutrient dense soul food… and milkweed… please plant extra milkweed for our friendly neighborhood pollinators.

Corn boy exploring the permaculture plantings

Links:

Free milkweed plants, seeds and monarch larvae

Microbiology of subtropical karst soils 

Amazing how many of our grandparents used these foods! 

A Plug for Earth Learning and the Financial Permaculture Institute

EL 3.0.2

A blog by T.A.Chadwick

2.25.13

We are now at the midpoint of the winter season, and regardless of one’s relative geographic location, nature is relentlessly reminding us: you know what to do… you know you can do better… you must take another step… the wind whispers our instructions, blue jays never let us forget, butterflies, bees and hummingbirds gently enforce Earth’s patterns and cycles.

Our growing collective human realization that we must do our part to regenerate Earth’s biosystems is an awareness that’s fostering a renewed focus on sustainability and a closer examination of the intersection of economy, finance, business development and an ancient concept with a pointedly contemporary potential for innovation:  permaculture.

Permaculture, in a nutshell, is designing human systems that replicate and regenerate Earth’s natural processes.  Financial permaculture is “working with local communities to create holistic and regenerative economic solutions for local and international sustainability.”

On May 31 – June 4, Earth Learning and the Financial Permaculture Institute are hosting the 2014 Local Food Enterprise (LiFE) Summit in Miami to continue building local food infrastructure here in the Greater Everglades bioregion. This is an open call to participate as a trainee, investor or food lover!  Our objective is to engage entrepreneurs and consumers in growing the local ecology of “a life sustaining culture” to expand access to delicious food grown safely and sustainably right here in the Greater Everglades.

Four local food enterprises will serve as this year’s design clients.  Everyone who registers as a LiFE Summit participant will have the opportunity to join one of four design teams who will work together to develop real-time, case-specific permaculture business/ farm/ enterprise models for each design client to implement.

Registration is open now for the week-long Summit or the keynote lectures only, including the final evening’s unveiling and launch of the newly designed Local Food Enterprises!

Sign up today and refer a friend to get rooted in “growing a life-sustaining culture here in the Greater Everglades bioregion.”

--- END----

www.earth-learning.org

www.financialpermaculture.com

www.financialpermaculture.org

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Earth-Learning/90916298638

https://www.facebook.com/events/629828743747455/

View from the rearview: on gardening, environment, health and remembering Grandfather Bob from the Elders' Lodge in St. Paul

  

      Cone Flower

Squash blossom

Ahsayma

… as I stooped over wiping salty sweat from my brow, a grandfather sauntered over, assessing my work, and engaging me in banter:  “So you think you know something about gardening, eh?  You think you know something about growing tobacco?”  With a smile, I denied knowing anything about anything, and replied that I was doing my best to tackle the task at hand, pulling weeds.  Kindly, the grandfather shared a little bit of his personal history as he instructed me to be sure to pull the weeds out by the root, so they don’t come back.  He shared that he had grown tobacco “about forty years ago” and recounted how indigenous gardeners would always weed from the root.  He contrasted that with the gardening techniques used by European settlers, which require much more repeat weeding as well as the use of herbicides and fertilizers.  By pulling the weeds out by the root, and letting them dry around the garden, the naturally occurring vegetation provides a natural source for fertilizing the soil once the garden’s productive season has come to completion.  “Burn all the weeds and other plants once the growing season is over, and then turn it all into the soil.  That will make the plants more healthy the next season,” he instructed. 

There were other things as well.  “Mound up the earth around each plant to protect the roots.  Do this each time you weed, before you water.  That way, the nutrients in the soil stay with the plant.”  Grandfather Bob brought the tradition of gardening that he learned as a young man growing up on the reservation to the urban youth of today and shared that knowledge again with a mom and her toddler at the Elders Lodge garden planted and tended by multi generational members of the community who are working to ensure that our methods of subsistence, physically, mentally and spiritually are remembered, practiced and maintained for the generations of the future.

  

 

Grandmother Emma Gurneau

Grandmother Eileen Hudon and her helpers

The Indigenous Peoples Task Force (IPTF) started out as a task force to monitor and take action against the growing epidemic of HIV and AIDS that is rapidly plaguing the American Indian community in Minnesota (American Indian heterosexual women represent one of the fastest growing demographic groups in acquiring new HIV cases, slightly more cases per population are being reported in the African American and Latino/a communities).

In the first few years, IPTF’s activities were centered largely around issues of HIV transmission reduction, and counseling people living with HIV about dealing with a terminal illness.  There were many losses of family, friends and colleagues in those early years.  Then the medical establishment released new regimes of chemicalized plants, animal parts and minerals which have resulted in huge increases in the lifespans of people living with HIV and AIDS.

Consequently, there are more clients, living longer lives, despite their immuno-compromised state.  A longer lifespan has given rise to a host of new community needs and desires in this post HIV antiviral drug era.  People living with HIV/ AIDS now live long enough to notice that smoking has a drastic negative impact on their health.  And because the life expectancy is longer, though still much more fragile than the average non-immunocompromised individual, health impacts such as environmental toxins, air pollution, soil contamination and water quality and safety have become a major factor in discussions and daily decision making surrounding lifestyle choices for optimal healthy living.

The acceptable safe levels or TMDL’s of toxic and carcinogen substances that are allowed by government regulatory agencies cannot be accurately measured for people living with HIV.  Nor can the impacts of unregulated toxic emissions and unsafe disposal of harmful chemicals into the air, soil or water.  Hence the City of Minneapolis Drinking Water Quality Report notice that “Immuno-compromised people such as people undergoing chemotherapy, …organ transplants, … HIV/ AIDS… elderly, and infants….should seek advice about drinking water from their health care providers.” (2005 & 2006)

As indigenous people, we are still struggling for our very survival, still seeking to ensure that there will be a place and a way for our future generations to emerge and take root in the rocky soil that is our world today.  So we seek out the elders, and do our best to tease out the helpful teachings, guidance and snippets of useful wisdom that they may offer.  We use our technology and our teachings to try to ask the questions that our children will need answered years hence.  And we ask for information to be forthcoming from the scientists and policy analysts who know by measure what is happening, but are too often reverted to silence or unintelligibility.

As we engage in this game of strategy, of wits or apathy, we find that our many paths do, in fact converge and cross at many places, not just one.  Our health department warns us, do not drink this water, while our traditional teachers remind us how to make our own filters.  Our surgeon general proclaims smoking a health hazard; our elders tell us to snip  the flowers off three times and let the fourth set of buds go to seed.  The environmental government agency tells us that our soil is contaminated so much that playing in it poisons our children; our traditional gardeners show us how to mound up the soil around plants that will form new soil and burn the pulled weeds at the end of the growing season to fertilize in a way that protects our children from harm.

As we struggle to live our lives, however long or short they may turn out to be, in a way that is consistent with the values and instructions that we each maintain out of our desire and free will as independent human beings, we learn by our experience, and we remember just how pitifully interdependent we are with everything that lives, breaths or moves.

As our water becomes more and more contaminated through the air, on the land and under the earth; as we search the databases for lakes whose fish are not contaminated with mercury and pcb’s; as we wonder what to feed our children with every new outbreak of mad cow, brucellosis and avian flu; we know that we must pray, and that praying alone is not enough.  We must learn, we must know and we must act.

Our surgeon general reminded us that smoking causes premature death.  We remembered the Onkwehowe tobacco growers and sought out 600 year old seeds that had been passed down from generations through our history of migration, trade and commerce.  We were warned that it is our responsibility alone to ensure the health and vitality of our water.  Our grandmothers are beginning to stand up and teach all of the women whose mothers were not able to teach them about the relationship of women to water.  Our food is being altered by scientific experiments that have yet to be proven into laws.  Our children are reminding us how to reduce our household waste by choosing what we buy carefully, composting at our homes or apartments and using the new soil to grow healthy greens, herbs and vegetables.  And, of course, tobacco.  Sacred tobacco.  Planted next to the tomatoes and peppers who are their family members in the world of zuyawgikeeg.  Hang them to dry before the first frost so the leaves don’t get mushy.  And don’t forget that the seeds will fall out of their little cases, so collect them ever so carefully for post-winter planting once the sun warms enough to heat a southern window for the whole afternoon.

Whatever happens, we will always have the knowledge, the wisdom and the technology to do what we need to; as long as we make sure we have the faith, the desire and the discipline to seek and carry out tasks and instructions that we receive.

Bawshkeeng Wabigun

text c. 2006

photos c. 2011

Epilogue:  Grandfather Bob left us some years ago, and the text only version of this post originally appeared on the IPTF website when I was working there back in 2006, but after finding and reading it again today, this piece seems to have gained a new currency in light of the recent chemical and oil spills.