The White Earth Land Recovery Project is based on White Earth Indian reservation. The people on the reservation make crafts and grow, harvest, process and package food – such as wild rice, maple butter, maple syrup, wild rice flour, and soups. These products are sold under the Native Harvest brand over the Internet, via catalog, and by select grocery stores. Proceeds from sales are used to buy back land to increase the size of the White Earth reservation.
My class visited White Earth earlier this year. We met with Robert, who talked with us about cultural issues in regards to sustainability. He said that for them, sustainability meant not just having fresh, local foods, but preserving cultural traditions and knowledge as well. For example, “wild rice” has a cultural and spiritual significance that it is important to pass on along with knowledge of how to grow and harvest it. Robert said that when the elders were asked why the rice crop was bad this year, the elders said it was because the tribe had not paid enough attention to the lakes and water in cultural and spiritual rituals.
What Robert told us about the connection between culture and sustainability reminded me of Wendell Berry's essays – and in particular “Three Ways of Farming in the Southwest.” When Robert said the elders cautioned that the wild rice crop was not good because the people hadn't cared for the water enough, it reminded me of the concept Berry describes the Papago people having towards agriculture: cropland is something the people make. In both of these cultures, the idea exists that humans should be stewards of the land and care for the soil and water. If the crops fail, it is not because of bad luck, bad weather, or bad machinery – it is because they were not careful enough stewards of the core natural resources that grow their food.
No comments:
Post a Comment