By Neenah Payne
Most people now realize that America and the rest of the world are in great trouble – regarding our economy, health, politics, environment, endless wars, etc. Is there a vision somewhere on the planet that unites the world in their imagination can and now create a better future for humanity?
When I was in college I knew that something important was being left out in the story I was taught. It wasn't until I joined the Columbus Quincentennial protest in 1992 and met Indians that I found out what was missing – the other side of the story! The 500 Native Nations are like Big Pink Elephants that America ignores to the best of its ability, despite the fact that many of our cities, states, and rivers bear Indian names.
Some of the people fled Europe to America to escape political, religious and economic tyranny. You learned freedom here. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin studied with the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois), whose system of government inspired our own and that of the United Nations. Cornell University held a 1987 conference on the relationship between the Iroquois Confederation and the US Constitution. The next year, the US Congress passed a resolution recognizing the influence of the Iroquois League on the formation of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
When the European colonists first came to America, they were known by their country of origin – Dutch, British, French, Spanish, etc. When the US founding fathers declared independence from Great Britain in 1776, they only adopted the name "American" until then referring to the natives of this hemisphere – to "Indians". In fact, we all became Indians!
Indian Donors: How Indians Changed the World by Jack Weatherford shows that much of our food and medicines are gifts from the Native Americans. Amazon says:
“After 500 years, anthropologist Jack Weatherford has finally examined the world's enormous guilt for the wisdom of the American Indians in all of its living drama. He traces the crucial contributions of Indians to our federal system of government, democratic institutions, modern medicine, agriculture, architecture and ecology, and takes a giant step towards restoring true American history in this amazing, groundbreaking book. ”
Dr. Vandana Shiva: Oneness against the 1%
Despite what I had learned from lectures by legendary Haudenosaunee professors like Chief Oren Lyons, I could not see how the wisdom of Native American cultures could be "translated" to save America and the world. When Chief Lyons reported the results of the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival to the United Nations in 2010, he summed up its conclusions in four words: "Values change for survival". However, this guideline did not specify which values should be changed and how.
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Westerners flock to the Amazon to drink ayahuasca with shamans to find their way back to our shamanic roots from which Christianity has cut the west off. While these experiences often offer deep personal insights, they also provide no clear guide to how economically, politically, or environmentally the West can be saved from its increasingly destructive path.
Fortunately, Dr. Vandana Shiva formulated a very clear alternative vision and comprehensive guide in her 2020 book Oneness vs. the 1%: Shattering Illusions, Seeding Freedom. It explains how the West can now get back on track just by changing its worldview.
FREE PDF: 10 Best Books to Survive Food Shortages and Famine
In the interview we can do this podcast: Healing through gardening with Dr. Vandana Shiva, Dr. Shiva says we are now witnessing the collapse of the unsustainable Western paradigm. She quotes Thomas Kuhn as saying: “Paradigm shifts never take place because you convince owners of old paradigms to give them up. Paradigms are never abandoned. They just become irrelevant ”. She explains that we don't have to try to change others or the system. We just have to change. Dr. Shiva explains that the dying Western paradigm is now becoming more tyrannical in order to maintain control as it is losing power.
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When most people think of power, they think of military power or economic domination. However, as legendary British author David Icke explains, the real power is the narrative that controls the minds of people (and therefore a civilization). People often fail to realize that entire civilizations are built on basic histories. The history of the West has been "Greed is good" for hundreds of years, as Gordon Gecko (played by Michael Douglas) told us in the 2010 film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. This philosophy is based on the insatiable demand for "more" celebrated every year by the Forbes Billionaires List, but which is unsustainable on a finite planet.
We change to change the world
Are Victory Gardens returning now? There are several people and families who have adopted Mahatma Gandhi's motto "Be the change you want to see in the world".
The article refers to the fascinating interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva and Rishi Kumar, a city farmer in Los Angeles. After Rishi spent seven months at Dr. Shiva had studied in India, he quit his job as a computer technician. He and his mother Manju converted their suburban home in Diamond Bar, California into The Growing Home in 2009 – featured in the film Urban Fruit.
The Growing House started out as a home garden with the idea that the way to change the world is to start in your own life. Rishi and Manju first created a small garden for vegetables, fruits and herbs. In 2011, The Growing Home opened as an educational demonstration site. The growing home on 5,000 square feet of farmland produces 1,500 pounds. Food a year. It is the largest permaculture designed suburban farm with 50 exotic fruit trees, ponds, wetlands, chickens, rabbits and beehives.
With a CSA, the Kumars now feed 15 families. They founded The Growing Club, whose YouTube channel contains over 70 videos and has inspired a variety of like-minded projects. The Growing Club now plans to bring organic products to health food stores across the country.
The article also includes links to the video interview Lynette Zang: Why You Must Leave the System; The Fed's master plan shown below. Zang explains that the US financial system collapsed in 2008 and has been life sustaining ever since. Zang lists her eight top priorities for a decent standard of living as shelter, food, water, energy, security, bartering (silver), maintaining prosperity (gold), and community.
Zang emphasizes the importance of learning to garden now! In 2010, she sold her apartment and moved to a house in downtown Phoenix. Though she had never been a gardener before, she turned her half-acre property into a food-producing urban farm raising chickens, ducks, quail, tilapia and freshwater shrimp! Zang has a wide variety of vegetables in her food forest, including peaches, plums, almonds and walnuts. She emphasizes the importance of community. Zang donates food to a nearby school for homeless children and sets up a program so that the children can now grow their own food.
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Urban Homestead: Path to Freedom
The article also features the notable Dervaes family, who have been working since the mid-1980s to turn their ordinary Pasadena, California town lot into a thriving organic garden that they and their "quoted" backyard livestock share year-round Food supplies. The Dervaes turned their home in the middle of densely populated downtown Pasadena into an urban homestead, harvesting three tons of organic food annually from their 1/10 acre garden, incorporating basic practices, solar energy, and biodiesel.
These modern homestead pioneers also run a successful business selling fresh produce to local restaurants and the community. Not only are they successful at growing their own food, but they have built a community too. Through their website, homestead events and tons of skills sharing workshops, they inspire people to take things into their own hands and be the change they want to see.
The Homegrown Revolution film was a collaborative family project by Jules, Anais, Justin, and Jordanne, with each member involved in the filming, editing, and structure of the film. The original version of Homegrown Revolution was filmed in three days for a lecture by Jules Dervaes at the University of California in Los Angeles in October 2007 on Slow Food. It received an enthusiastic response from students, attracted an enthusiastic fan base on YouTube, and attracted the attention of several local and global film festivals. Since its first press article in 2002, the Urban Homestead project has featured in thousands of blogs, dozens of TV appearances (Sundance, CBS News, ABC Nightline, Oprah and many more), and hundreds of articles in the LA Times, NY Times and The Times featured India, Germany Faz – to name a few.
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Jules Dervaes, who founded The Urban Homestead with his three children, said: “Growing food has become the most radical act in our society. It really is the only effective protest that can and will overturn existing corporate powers. By working directly in harmony with nature, we are doing what is essential to change the world – we are changing ourselves! "
In Power of One – Anais Dervaes, Anais says, 70 families subscribe to her Community Service Agriculture (CSA) program, in which they work with two other farms. The Dervaes give workshops for adults and children, teach in schools and give tours of the garden. Anais points out that there is a growing trend right now as more and more people garden to grow their own food. She recommends that people start small by growing just a herb or two. Anais points out that "small steps have big effects".
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The Million Gardens Movement
EARN $ 2K IN ONE WEEK Growing Vegetables in HIS FRONT YARD! shows that Jim Kovaleski's garden is half an acre in the front gardens of his and his mother's Florida homes. His CSA Buyers Club is now full of 50 people. Kovaleski points out how hard it is to get seeds right now. He says the fact that he makes $ 2,000 a week from his garden is an indication that other people can help feed their communities by planting gardens on small lots. Kovaleski also gardened his Maine home for six months.
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The growing return to the Garden of Eden shows that Modern Farmer's Frank Giustra and Big Green's Kimbal Musk created the Million Gardens Movement, a nonprofit project dedicated to mobilizing a million people to grow their own food. Whether in a community garden or in a window box, it is small collective actions that sow the greatest seeds for change. When you donate $ 20, the Million Gardens Movement is making a beginner-friendly garden kit available to two families. The website notes that 9.3 million Americans started gardening in 2020.
Buy a "Grow A Garden" t-shirt to support the Million Gardens movement and start a revolution in urban gardens in your neighborhood! The t-shirts are available in navy, red, royal blue, forest green, fuchsia and teal.
City gardens: the greatest revolution
Wikipedia says:
“Vandana Shiva is an Indian scholar, environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate, eco-feminist, and anti-globalization writer. Shiva is based in Delhi and has written more than 20 books. She is often referred to as the “Gandhi of Grain” for her activism in the anti-GMO movement.
Shiva is a leader and board member of the International Forum on Globalization (with Jerry Mander, Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin) and a figure in the anti-globalization movement. She has spoken out in favor of many traditional practices …
In 1982 she founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology. This led to the founding of Navdanya in 1991, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seeds, to promote organic farming and fair trade. Navdanya, which translates as "Nine Seeds" or "New Gift", is an initiative by the RFSTE to educate farmers about the benefits of conserving diverse and individual crops instead of accepting offers from monoculture food manufacturers. The initiative established over 40 seed banks across India to create regional opportunities for diverse agriculture. "
“Shiva and her team from the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology have questioned the biopiracy of neem, basmati and wheat. Her first book, Staying Alive (1988), helped change the perception of women in the developing world. In 1990 she wrote a report on women and agriculture for the FAO entitled "Most Farmers in India are Women". She founded the Gender Unit at the International Center for Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu and was a founding member of the Women's Organization for Environment and Development (WEDO). "
It balances the destruction of natural biodiversity with the degradation of traditional communities – those who “understand the language of nature”. David Wright wrote in a review of the book that Shiva "the village becomes a symbol, almost a metaphor for the local in all nations". Shiva has also served as an advisor to governments in India and abroad as well as overseas non-governmental organizations. She is a council member of the World Future Council. "
Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth
The World Economic Forum has proposed The Great Reset as a "new normal" in which by 2030 we will all be happy to have NOTHING and to rent everything. So the 1% will own everything – an unsustainable and undemocratic plan. Gates' plan to control the world's seeds, agriculture and food shows the West is on the wrong track. Our survival now depends on returning to a more holistic vision in greater harmony with the earth.
To make peace with the earth and end our separation from it – Vandana Shiva, reports Dr. Shiva on introducing the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, presented by Evo Morales, the former President of Bolivia and the first Indian President of the hemisphere. The declaration was presented in 2010 at the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Bolivia with more than 35,000 people from over 100 countries. It was presented to the UN General Assembly and over 800,000 people have signed that the UN should adopt the declaration. Watch the video and sign the petition. Ecuador incorporated the rights of nature into its constitution in 2008.
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THE SAMI PARLIAMENT SUPPORTS THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF MOTHER EARTH. Victor Hugo: "There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come."
Plant a Garden: Build a Community
Dr. Shiva says: "Urban Gardens are the greatest revolution!" She urges everyone to save seeds as seeds may be hard to come by – especially heirloom seeds, which unlike hybrid seeds, will grow again.
See Dr. Shiva on my Urban Gardens Revolution website. Even people who don't have land can grow sprouts and / or use an AeroGarden.
Plant a Seed – Miss Jamie Music Video
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