Yet, for the Haida this paradigm shift is not novel, but rather a belated recognition of the values deeply rooted in their culture and their traditional relationship to the land, and encoded in Haida law.

It is a rare sunny day in August 2007 in Old Massett. Children play in front of Haida artist Christian White’s handcrafted longhouse facing the beach, which is a mosaic of kelp, stones, broken shells and, occasionally, old trading beads and glass Japanese buoys. White has lent out his space for a special public event: one of a series of open houses hosted by the Council of the Haida Nation (the elected leadership of the Haida) and the Government of British Columbia throughout the villages of Haida Gwaii. The purpose of these open houses is to solicit community input on the Strategic Land Use Agreement before it is finally ratified. The land-use plan is a legally binding accord between both governments that determines how the islands’ resources will be used from the present into the distant future.

Distracted by the woes of the global economy and disintegra­ting Kyoto Protocol, the media has almost completely overlooked this historic step towards community-based sustainability. Yet it is one of the most innovative examples of an ecologically sound economic plan. In the years to come, it will stand as an inspiring example of successful ecological governance.

The highlights of the land-use plan, ratified in December 2007 by the Council of the Haida Nation and the Government of B.C., are impressive: an increase in protected areas from 23 per cent to 50 per cent of the total land base, all to be co-managed by both governments; a drastic drop in the annual allowable cut (the minimum rate of logging set annually by the Chief Forester of B.C. on a regional basis) for Haida Gwaii from approximately 1.8 million cubic metres to 800,000 cubic metres, including 100,000 cubic metres to be locally managed by Haida and non-Haida communities in a community forest tenure; a 1000-year old-growth cedar management plan; and the implementation of what promises to be a more sustainable form of “ecosystem-based” resource management, which seeks to balance community, economic and environmental well-being.

Following the signing of the Land Use Agreement, Guujaaw, the charismatic, elected President of the Council of the Haida Nation, stated that “after 50 years of intensive forestry without holistic planning, this land-use agreement now starts to bring cultural, environmental, and economic interests into balance.”

It is precisely this balance that has eluded national, regional and municipal governments around the world as they seek to respond to increasing environmental degradation while continuing to focus on economic growth.

At the open house in Old Massett, detailed maps cover the walls of the longhouse. The maps depict various types of land use, from logging operations to endangered species habitat. Thick research documents are laid out on the tables alongside display boards that explain the various stages of participatory planning and the proposed outcomes. These are just some of the results of the hard work of both governments, and community planning tables. What is so significant about this particular land-use planning process is that the Council of the Haida Nation insisted they co-host the process with the Government of B.C. on a “government-to-government” basis. This is in stark contrast with past land-use planning in which the Province ignored First Nations’ interests, or merely consulted First Nations as “stakeholders” in a competitive environment with other, much more powerful stakeholders.

Since contact, successive generations of colonial administrators and developers, privileging Eurocentric notions of progress, have denied the relevance of Haida systems of resource management and created immense political and economic challenges for Haida governance. Following contact, Haida population fell by over 90 per cent within one hundred years as a result of smallpox and other introduced diseases. In an attempt to extinguish Haida culture, missionaries established a residential school and the state banned the potlatch. Colonization brought intensified commercial fishing and industrial forestry, depleting resources and denuding land that had been stewarded under Haida governance for thousands of years.

Haida history

Long before Captain George Dixon named the archipelago after his ship, the Queen Charlotte, the Haida had mapped their own intimate relationships to this place. According to their oral history, the Haida emerged as a people on the northernmost point of the islands, where Raven roused the first slumbering Haida from a clamshell.Then, Haida Gwaii was known by another name: Xhaaydla Gwaayaay, “the Islands on the Boundary between Worlds.” Along this boundary, the intertidal zone that connects the land, sea, and sky, the Haida people thrived, understanding themselves as but one element amongst a vast interconnected web of natural and supernatural beings.

Haida oral history describes a vast network of villages, fronted by exquisitely carved houses and mortuary poles, alive with song and dance, carving and basketry, stories and poetry. It was a society supported by hunting, fishing and gathering, where Haida knowledge of what plants and animals were useful to them was complemented by their understanding of careful stewardship.

The Haida continue to see themselves as part of nature, and as such their ecological vision has focused less on the preservation of wilderness outside of human involvement and more on re-establishing the symbiotic relationships between humans and the rest of the living world. Ensuring the integrity of the ecosystems of Haida Gwaii means ensuring the continued flourishing of Haida culture – and vice versa. The Council of the Haida Nation states that “we have always used the land and ocean in careful, cautious ways that provided for present and future generations and protected the ecosystems that sustain us. We focus on what to leave, not what to take.”

This vision is reflected in the main goal that the Council of the Haida Nation brought to the planning process: “[To] protect and restore the land and ocean ecosystems of Haida Gwaii – the basis for Haida culture.”

Yah’Guudang: Practical implications

The Land Use Agreement was the hard-earned result of four years of negotiations between the Council of the Haida Nation and the Government of B.C., with input from a participatory Community Planning Forum composed of 29 representatives from interest groups that ranged from forestry to tourism development. The guiding philosophy for the entire process was the Haida principle of yah’guudang, respect for all living beings. The Haida Land Use Vision states that “a land use plan must adequately address certain priorities, beginning with the well-being of the land. We need to clearly understand the changes that have occurred to ecological conditions and our culture, and then provide directions for restoring and maintaining balance.“

The damage Haida Gwaii has endured is extensive. The Gowgaia Institute estimates that in the past century 168,750 hectares of old-growth forest – the equivalent of 101,033,929 telephone poles – have been cut. Many of these trees have been the 1,000-year old cedar trees central to Haida culture. In an effort to safeguard remaining cedars, the Haida have completed a sample inventory to estimate available and future Culture Class Five cedar trees necessary for pole carving, as well as Class Four and Three trees that will become suitable in time. Furthermore, they have mapped areas containing culturally modified trees, and sought to evaluate the health and future sustainability of all traditional and medicinal plants.

Beyond these stewardship initiatives, the agreement also deals with tough issues such as forestry, historically the prime engine of the island economy. Logging has long been a divisive and explosive issue in the local politics of Haida Gwaii, where festering tensions between differing values and economic visions have sometimes erupted into conflict amongst the island’s communities. While the Council of the Haida Nation are committed to slowing down and changing the approach to forestry, they recognize that it will continue to be a part of the economy. “There always will be people working with forestry extraction, but we want to do it sustainably and for islanders, by islanders at a rate that the land could bear,” says Kevin Brown, Assistant Land Use Plan Coordinator with the Council of the Haida Nation.

Frank Collison, the chair of the Council of the Haida Nation’s Forestry Committee, agrees: “Keep the land strong, keep it decent, keep the water clean, and make sure that there is habitat for the fish and habitat for the birds. Do what we have done traditionally – which is take what we need.” Collison recognizes that although the Haida live differently today than they used to, their philosophy is the same: “Right now we all have electricity and iPods and CDs. We all need a little bit more but it doesn’t mean that we have to take twice as much. . . . We don’t have to give in to corporate greed. . . . You can do [it] on a small scale that’s workable and sustainable for all of us.”

The Haida recognize that many aspects of the plan will be difficult to implement and that many new problems will surface. But they believe that, by reorienting the economic development of the island to bring it back in line with their traditional ecological vision and rich culture, the future will reflect the sustainability of the Haida past. That the Government of B.C. and the non-Haida islanders are supportive of this vision and willing to collaborate to enable major transformations in the island economy and resource management systems is exciting and hopeful. As the ecosystem-based management objectives and other outcomes of the land-use plan continue to be implemented, the rest of the world should watch this unprecedented social and ecological experiment and follow on the heels of its successes.

Through the plan, Guujaaw believes the Haida are “creating a future where our own kids would know that they could go out and experience the land the way our ancestors had.” And in a world that is changing so rapidly, this is no small feat.

By Erik Haensel and Justine Townsend
Briarpatch Magazine. July/August 2009

Photo by @popejon2, used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Sustainability is a word. Let it be a word, and let us act to sustain through our actions. What we sustain depends on what we want to sustain. Commodification involves applying a consciousness to apparent or invented needs, not on the part of each individual but in the interests of more abstract, innocuous entities we will never see or know. Actions that encourage us to see beauty, to feel life that are outside the systems of consumption, often seem to be at odds with the system we live in, which is sending us confused and sometimes overwhelming messages as to what we should or would need. Largely these needs are manufactured, and involve less of the human, more of the projected invented and unattainable. All of this has something to do with the animal spirits that are behind economy, and these spirits are quirky, mercurial yet they do involve that element that connects us tour primordial ancestors, for whom economy was a less constructed, more fluid part of the ecology of life. We were never truly great conservationists, as is witnessed by the collapse of so many civilizations in the past, but adaptability and that ingenious inventive quality are part of what make the human species quite special. Let’s go with that, when and if we can!

Each of us can find points of meaning in time, and each of these can add a human value to these points in time. Our actions can generate further actions. All this inside the sphere of nature. Art in a post industrial era has multiform layers of meaning, and the expressions often reflect fashions as to how, with what materials, and even what subjects and scale an artwork can be. The digitalization of technology has led to an atomization of the social identity. While we strive to find a new social culture, we are increasingly detached from the actual problems in society, and have the ability to avoid much of what we should as members of that society, deal with and try to assist with. A shock doctrine applies to the art world where simply stunning your public with scale, with whatever they do not feel, enables the artist to control the audience, artist relation. A mutual exchange is preferable, and respects the artist and a community alienated from its own resources.

Statement overrides integration into nature. Nature is the source of our sustenance. Somehow I am brought back to that age old axiom that an understanding of the limits to materials can bring about an understanding of transcendence and that which surpasses those self same materials. In a digital culture, materials are not mediated, nor indeed part of the mindset, but in the age old physical planet earth we do live on, and which supplies us with food and shelter, it is this desegregation of society from nature that will bring the positive change. Decentralization of resources, a fluid and multi-faceted food and energy system will decrease dependence on the vulnerable, centralized systems that we have worked with the the age of oil, a history at best that is transitional, where humans believed they could be self-created gods.

By manipulating nature through art we have treated it not as an equal partner, the fundamental facet of any economy, and a true source for expression but instead as something to be framed.

Artists have a choice as to how they wish to interpret their lived experience which includes all time from birth to death, not just significant, edited time or what Platonists would call the conscious facet of experience. An art of the future needn’t follow precedents from the art of industrial and post-industrial society. It could find its new impetus from a new relation to nature where material is seen as a part of a living ecosystem. Bio-mimicry, and eco-design encourage the change we need, but all this in the scale of life, not just to repeat the past’s economies out of scale with life, while re-labelling them green. We can redesign it all with a basic respect for self and other, within the scale of the life we are a part of. The dominance of machines over humanity and over nature has created human-made landscapes and environments whose scale is staggering, and is still more pervasive than when we were born.

Art can guide our society towards a regenerative view of life, and bring us closer to the instinctive life force and physical energies that are part of our universal experience. The artist can direct their energies towards a re-souling of art, where integral values are based on real communication, between self and environment, between humanity and the ecosystem will raise the spirits. Let’s invest in new systems of transport, in new systems of food production that are bio-regional and less oil dependent. Let’s invest our energies in a way of living that involves wisdom, and a certain joy in the sharing of experience!

Nature should be allowed to exist in its own unnamed context.

Simultaneously occupying real space and being a creation, art can integrate almost invisibly into a given environment. It may seem almost secret, camouflaged, an anathema to our current obsessive approach to artistic production. At any moment in time there are thousands of exhibitions taking place in the world. How can an artist construct a meaningful identity if it is seen exclusively in terms of individualist achievement in an economic marketplace?

Recognition in these terms is now virtually meaningless. Values of reintegration of economy into ecology will become more marketable in the future. The current “big sell” commoditization of all facets of our lives which empties us of any true feeling and causes value crises, loss of identity in the name of materialism can no longer be supported by a responsible, survival economy. Art of the future could represent a modest reintegration of man’s spirit into nature. By not being the central feature of a given environment such an art would be an unexpected discovery. It could express a return to the soul. Nature is an open system. The world’s life forms – ourselves included – will not survive, nor will our ecosystem if we do not base our collective culture on integration into nature’s open system.

]]> http://roerichproject.artefati.ca/emergence/how-to-be-in-time-with-time/feed/ 0 http://roerichproject.artefati.ca/open-cities/727/ http://roerichproject.artefati.ca/open-cities/727/#comments Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:32:19 +0000 Frederik Froument http://roerichproject.artefati.ca/?p=727 On pourrait s’étonner de la popularité actuelle de la formule «démocratie participative». Non pas qu’elle soit l’expression d’une modernité politique récente, mais au contraire en raison de son caractère universel quelque peu oublié au cours des dernières décennies. En effet, il semble que les deux termes se soient progressivement éloignés l’un de l’autre, comme un couple en instance de divorce, et que leurs retrouvailles tiennent à présent du miracle. Pourtant, comment imaginer sérieusement qu’une démocratie, toute balisée d’échéances électorales et de sondages divers, puisse s’affranchir d’une participation quotidienne des membres qui la composent?

Pour revenir à l’étymologie, la définition même de la démocratie (du grec dêmos, peuple, et kratos, pouvoir), devrait avoir depuis longtemps aboutie à une interprétation moderne de l’exercice du pouvoir en adéquation avec nos sociétés contemporaines. Il semble pourtant qu’une dérive progressive de notre vision commune de la politique (du grec politikè, science des affaires de la cité), nous ait conduit à délaisser trop longtemps le champ de la citoyenneté au profit de nos seuls intérêts individuels immédiats, et que notre participation à son bon déroulement se soit affaiblie dangereusement. Nous avons lentement et passivement délégué à une toute petite élite professionnalisée le pouvoir décisionnel qui nous revient légitimement.

En se réappropriant progressivement l’espace politique et physique, en se choisissant des représentants plutôt que des chefs, les citoyens font plus que réclamer que leur voix soient entendues par la caste supérieure. Ils affirment la position centrale qu’ils occupent dans l’organigramme du pouvoir. Sans eux, rien de possible, ils ne composent plus un simple corps électoral, mais redeviennent les acteurs privilégiés du bon fonctionnement de l’ensemble de la communauté.

Nos villes sont des structures organiques complexes, régies par de nombreuses lois et règles communes, mais aussi par une multiplicité d’expériences singulières, à l’échelle d’un trottoir, d’une rue, d’un quartier. Ces appréhensions minoritaires échappent bien souvent aux pouvoirs centralisés et sont difficilement quantifiables. Ce sont néanmoins elles, délestées de toute obsession de rentabilité, qui composent l’âme de nos citées et dessinent l’identité de nos quartiers. On aurait tort dès lors de sous-estimer l’apport des actions citoyennes ponctuelles, car c’est ici que se joue une grande partie de l’avenir de nos villes. Les urbanistes, qui ont longtemps considérés le territoire urbain comme un théâtre à aménager en faisant parfois abstraction des acteurs qui l’animent, ne s’y trompent plus et accordent de plus en plus d’importance à ces micro événements participatifs qui façonnent de nouveau nos villes.

A l’heure de la prise de conscience collective des problèmes environnementaux, conséquence d’un développement irresponsable basé sur la productivité et le consumérisme, il serait absurde de se passer de cette expertise citoyenne si riche et diversifiée, la plus apte à émettre des propositions pertinentes quant aux futurs directions à suivre. L’expérience menée dans le Champ des Possibles depuis quelques années est à ce titre révélatrice et emblématique des innovations que peut apporter un processus participatif. En passant de l’étape de la consultation à celle de la conception, les citoyens prouvent qu’ils sont non seulement capables de concevoir un projet novateur pour l’aménagement de l’espace public, mais se revendiquent aussi comme les principaux acteurs politiques de leur quartier. En donnant une forme concrète à des aspirations que certains qualifieraient d’utopiques, ils proposent d’inverser la pyramide décisionnelle, et renouent avec une certaine logique: la sève remonte toujours des racines vers la cime.

Last Spring, the city’s project to revitalize St-Viateur Street East and the creation of the Sprout Out Loud! gardening project helped perceive this vacant lot in a totally different way: I suddenly realized how important the space is to our community. Keeping this green oasis is essential to the Mile End’s environmental equilibrium, which is mostly composed of brick, asphalt, and cement.

Last summer, while in the vacant lot, I saw ground hogs, hares, and fireflies. Yes, folks, fireflies in Montreal! Isn’t it wonderful? Then, when you start paying attention to the trees and plants, you can discover so many beautiful, different varieties there! It’s a chunk of paradise for us all and for the dogs that roam the terrain freely.

Now that I’ve gardened in this space, that I’ve cleaned it up, and that I’ve got to know more about its trees and flora, the lot is part of my life and I hope that we can preserve and maintain its wildness.

Diane Boyer is a resident of the Mile-End and a member of the Sprout Out Loud! gardening collective. Photo of Emily Rose Michaud in the Roerich Garden by Diane Boyer.

Le groupe se veut un centre pour l’éducation et le partage de ressources et de connaissances, un foyer d’énergie, d’idées et de motivation. Conformément à la nature urbaine du groupe, nous sommes particulièrement intéresséEs par la recherche, le développement et la promotion de pratiques écologiquement régénératives adaptées à l’environnement unique de Montréal. Notre but est de permettre à tous ceux qui le souhaitent de rendre leurs communautés aussi autonomes que possible alors que nous entamons une ère de déclin de ressources, grâce notamment à la production de nourriture, d’énergie, d’eau et à la gestion des déchets.

Nous travaillons avec l’organisme communautaire MUCS (Montreal Urban Community Sustainment, www.mucs.ca) en produisant des légumes pour leur cuisine collective, et nous organisons des cours et ateliers hebdomadaires sur la durabilité en milieu urbain basés sur les principes de la permaculture. Allez sur notre site internet pour voir la liste d’évènement que nous offrons!

Courriel: montrealpermacultureguild@gmail.com

Site web: www.montrealpermaculture.org

The Montreal Permaculture Guild is an active group dedicated to learning about, promoting and practicing sustainable living, inspired by Permaculture principles, in and around Montreal.

We are quickly becoming a centre of education, of resource- and skill-sharing, a gathering place for energy, ideas and motivation. As an urban-based group, we are particularly interested in researching, developing and promoting earth-regenerating practices that are suited for Montreal’s unique environment. We seek to empower people to make their communities as self-sufficient as possible, so that they are better able to provide adequate food, water, energy, and waste-management systems, as we enter an era of declining resources.

We work with the Montreal Urban Community Sustainment project (www.mucs.ca), providing fresh produce for their dining coop and offering weekly classes/workshops on urban sustainability based on Permaculture principles. Check out our web site for our current events.

Email: montrealpermacultureguild@gmail.com

Web site: www.montrealpermaculture.org

]]> http://roerichproject.artefati.ca/emergence/montreal-permaculture-guild/feed/ 0 http://roerichproject.artefati.ca/emergence/a-theory-for-weeds-as-catalysts-for-social-change/ http://roerichproject.artefati.ca/emergence/a-theory-for-weeds-as-catalysts-for-social-change/#comments Sun, 11 Apr 2010 21:14:01 +0000 Sara Torrie http://roerichproject.artefati.ca/?p=611 So here we are, alive and finding our way, on a planet where, for the most part, humans are wrestling and fighting with all life forms…other humans, plants, animals, ocean, the earth itself. And I am not advocating never cutting trees down, never using machinery to turn and move soil, never killing any creatures, etc etc…but rather I’m saying that the way we are in relation with the world around us is much like wrestling. I am advocating for a different more appreciative way that makes wrestling appear backwards and evolutionarily-regressive…and so: A Theory for Weeds as Catalysts for Social Change.

As with most things, weeds have names and when you put a name to a face it adds a layer or two of recognition and understanding that wasn’t there before. And like getting to know a new human in your life, learning the name is just the starting point…the possibility of discovering new things within the world of plants, and in this case “weeds”, is real and somewhat inevitable.

So if you learn of a new plant or two that is edible, highly nutritious and growing all over your garden or lawn, it might evoke a different response in you than the usual distaining frown…or consequent wrestle with it from its growing place. You might now consider carefully harvesting it to be a special ingredient for your dinner party or to dry for tea in the winter.

By association the seasons begin to take on significance in a new way…you may start to look forward to the appearance of Stinging Nettles in the Spring and Purslane in the height of Summer. What starts as a simple identification exercise can evolve into a new way of relating to what is happening right around you. The weeds offer this….for free virtually everywhere. Enough of the bullshit: you-gotta-buy-your-way-to-freedom and you-gotta-have-someone-save-you. The revolution of heart and mind, individually and collectively, is inside all of us like a seed and cannot be had for money. To extend the metaphor of the weeds a little further: The soil of our Selves needs a little turning, needs us to get in there and create some movement, so that what is lying dormant can grow and nourish us. And so: A Theory for Weeds as Catalysts for Social Change! Help yourself to superior nutrition right under your nose and watch for what happens.

High five to the Weeds !

This is an introduction to five of these edible plants. That said, I must offer a disclaimer: You must learn to properly identify these plants and be cautious as to where you forage. Everything growing along railway tracks, for example, is not only very dirty but also heavily sprayed with pesticides. Before ingesting, check with someone who really knows their stuff. Like I said, this is just an introduction.

Lamb’s quarters // Chénopode blanc // Chenopodium album
Chenopodiaceae family

Also known as pigweed, goosefoot, and wild spinach, this weed is a member of the same family as garden beets and spinach. Only young, tender plants, less than 30cm high, should be collected. While the leaves of young plants are excellent both raw and steamed. The seeds of mature plants are excellent ground up and mixed half and half with wheat flour for baking. It makes the end product darker, similar to buckwheat flour.

Chenopodium album can range in height from 20 to 200 cm. The first two to four true leaves are opposite but later leaves and branches are distinctly alternate. The leaves are broadly rectangular with irregular, shallow teeth. They are green with a covering of white mealiness or powderiness, sometimes with a reddish undersurface. The flowers and seeds are very small and densely grouped together into thick, granular clusters along the main stem and upper branches. Chenopodium album is a very good source of fibre protein, calcium, potassium, copper, manganese, sodium, and vitamins A, B1, B2, B6, C, and K. It is a also good source of niacin, folate, iron, magnesium, and phosphorus.

Purslane // Pourpier potager // Portulaca oleracea
Portulacaceae family

Originating in India or Persia, this succulent plant has been eaten for more than two thousand years. It is a prized garden vegetable over much of Europe and Asia, where several varieties have been developed. It is also known as wild portulaca, little hogweed, and pusley. The entire plant, stem, leaf, and flower bud are good to eat. It can be used raw or cooked and should always be washed thoroughly, for it is apt to be gritty. It has a mucilaginous quality, which adds consistency to soups and stews.

Purslane is a ground cover similar to chickweed. Its stems are very fleshy, smooth, reddish-green to purplish-red, repeatedly branched, and often form circular mats 30 to 60 cm in diameter. Leaves are flat but thick and fleshy, deep green to reddish-green, broadest near the rounded tip and narrowed towards the base. This plant is hairless. At the tips of the branches, leaves crowd together. The flowers are small (5–10 mm across), in axels of stem leaves or near the tips of branches. They open only on bright, sunny mornings with five small pale yellow petals, which soon fall off. Portulaca oleracea is one of the most common garden weeds. It is found in row crops, waste areas, and edges of driveways. It does not survive under heavy shade.

Portulaca oleracea is a very good source of calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, copper, manganese, and vitamin A, B2, and C. It is a good source of niacin, vitamin B1 and B6, and folate. It is reputed to be excellent for refreshing the digestive system and cleaning the blood.

Chickweed // Mouron des oiseaux // Stellaria media
Caryophyllaceae family

It is next to impossible to get rid of this weed, which is why it is such a good idea to put it to good use as food. The leaves and stems can be added to anything you might add greens to. When harvesting for eating, pick only the last 5 to 8cm of each tip.

Chickweed is a ground cover, horizontally spreading leafy stems that root at the nodes. Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of common chickweed is the single, lengthwise line of fine white hair on one side of the stem, but switching sides above and below each node. The leaves are opposite, oval with pointed tips and smooth or slightly hairy. The flower is small with five two-lobed white petals, which give the appearance of ten tiny petals.

Stellaria media is very high in vitamin C and mucilage. It also provides rutin, gamma linolenic acid (an omega 6 fatty acid derivative), magnesium, iron, calcium, potassium, zinc, phosphorus, manganese, sodium, selenium, silicon, niacin, and vitamins A, B1, and B2. Externally, chickweed relieves itching and inflammation and is generally soothing and moisturizing.

Shepherd’s Purse // Bourse à pasteur // Capsella bursa-pastoris
Brassicaceae family

Capsella bursa-pastorius is edible in the early spring, while the basal leaves are still young and tender and before the plant flowers. It can be added raw to salads, simmered in soups and stews, sautéed, or steamed. If you find that the leaves taste too strong, or if you discover this plant only after it has flowered, just harvest the flower tops for a tasty addition to any salad. The seeds have also been used to limit mosquitoes. In the early spring, sprinkle the seed on water where mosquitoes breed. The mucilage of the seed will kill the larvae and reduce the number of mosquitoes in the area. One pound of seeds destroys ten million larvae (though it may cause a proliferation of shepherd’s purse).

Capsella bursa-pastorius has deeply toothed basal leaves similar to Taraxacum officinale (dandelion). Both species also form basal rosettes in the early spring but shepherd’s purse leaves have no milky sap and the teeth point outward, not toward the leaf’s base like dandelion. Like its mustard relatives, it has tiny, four-petaled flowers. The flowers are arranged like a cross and appear in long vertical clusters. While some mustards have yellow flowers, shepherd’s purse flowers are white. They give way to tiny, flattened, triangular seedpods. Capsella bursa-pastorius can be found on disturbed soil, in unmowed meadows and lawns, and along roadsides and trails. It is high in vitamins C and K, and a good source of protein, sulfur, calcium, iron, sodium, and potassium.

Stinging nettle // Ortie dioïque // Urtica dioica
Urticaceae family

Urtica Dioica provides one of the best sources of minerals (its iron is easily absorbed because of its vitamin C). But, as its name suggests, stinging nettle STINGS! Proper handling is essential; use scissors and a bag, or gloves. Use the scissors to snip off the top part of the plant (5–20cm) and pick up the clipping and drop it into the bag. Alternatively you can wear gloves — but sometimes the hairs pierce through. Whatever way you choose, part of Urtica dioica’s medicine is to slow you down and demand your full attention. To ingest stinging nettle you must “deactivate” the venomous hairs by cooking or steaming, infusing in vinegar, or dehydrating.

Urtica dioica is an erect, weedy perennial, growing up to one metre tall and covered with tiny stinging hairs. Its leaves are alternatively arranged, long-stalked, and coarsely toothed. Stinging nettle is an excellent source of calcium, iron, silica, potassium, manganese, sulfur, and vitamins A and C.

Recommended readings

The Secret Life of Plants, Peter Tompkins & Christopher Bird

Sacred Plant Medicine: The Wisdom in Native American Herbalism, Stephen Buhner

Stalking the Wild Asparagus: Field Guide Edition, Euell Gibbons

A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants, Lee Allen Peterson & Roger Tory Peterson

Source: 5 Weeds Plants: A Theory for Weeds as Catalysts for Social Change

The garden was named after a prominent Brooklyn environmentalist who was instrumental in planting over 1500 trees in Brooklyn. The organization was formed in 1991 and has since been a place that is multigenerational and multicultural for a little under two decades in Bed Stuy Brooklyn. Our community garden site sits on what was originally the site of St. Augustine church and school which caught fire and burned to the ground. The lots lay vacant for many years before the Magnolia Earth and Tree center, which was also started by Carthan, who took possession of the land and began working to restore it back to life.

In the mid-90’s the garden was targeted to become a local police site and the gardeners worked with local politicians (councilwoman Mary Pinkett) and local residents to rally and distribute petitions which halted the sale of the property. The garden received preserved landmark status as a result of the garden’s organizing efforts and became an Operation Greenthumb site.

The Hattie Carthan garden currently has 60 members on the books, 45 individual plots, a large herb garden, a host of flower beds and islands, fruit trees (fig, peach, apple, plum, sour cherry and apricot) Within the last six years, our garden has expanded its food security/environmental justice programming in order to advance community resilience to the issues of food insecurity and health disparities evident in the Bed Stuy neighborhood by adding nutrition awareness and food security workshops, wellbeing workshops, intergenerational community councils, an international food and film festival and cooking demonstrations with youth and senior populations. The garden is a solution to the problem of food insecurity and increases healthy food access to members in a district considered a “food desert”.

Last year, the Hattie Carthan was recognized for “best agricultural practices” in the Northeast region and was chosen as a model urban agriculture site for the U.N urban farm tour. The garden’s members led a community based building project in collaboration with Magnolia Tree and Earth center’s Project Green initiative to construct a professional hoophouse which will increase our capacity to grow more fresh food and is the second community garden in NYC to embark on building a compost dry toilet for our community use. The garden donates a percentage of locally grown fresh food to neighborhood senior citizen centers .

The Hattie Carthan garden has recently reclaimed an abandoned land parcel which was used to dumping toxic materials for over twenty years. We are currently converting that blighted property into a thriving farmers market which will increase the neighborhoods limited access to fresh food while simultaneously connecting neighborhood residents to local farmers and their food.

Community background

Across the United and States, rates of obesity and diabetes are increasing dramatically, particularly within lower-income, African-American, and Latino communities. In New York City neighborhoods like Bed Stuy in Central Brooklyn where a third of residents live in poverty, more than 12% of adults have diabetes, compared to 8% nationwide. In these settings, a growing body of research points to the intersection between low rates of consumption of healthy foods – such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains – and limited access to healthy choices as driving disease rates. Less than 8% of the primarily African-American and Latino residents in these communities report eating the recommended five or more servings of fruits or vegetables per day; twenty percent report eating none at all. The mix of food retail options in these neighborhoods is dominated by small grocery stores (“bodegas”) selling mainly processed foods, and residents have less access to fresh foods than in wealthier parts of New York City.

About Yonette (Reign) Fleming

Yonnette Fleming is a visionary, musician and food and environmental justice activist who currently lives in Brooklyn. Fleming was born in Guyana, South America and migrated to the U.S at age sixteen. Her community service work in New York began in 1996 as a volunteer at domestic violence shelters and food pantries in Brooklyn and has expanded exponentially since. Her service work range from conducting feminine empowerment, social and economic justice, fundraising, health & nutrition, food security and advocacy workshops, community councils to building community through rhythmic entrainment in communities across the U.S.

Fleming’s leadership style is highly transformational and democratic. As a community leader and advocate she spends her time helping community members to gain an understanding of the big picture of agriculture and ecology issues. Her goal is to utilize the strengths of the gardens’ membership to create a thriving urban agriculture project which offers solutions to social and economic issues of the surrounding neighborhood.  This approach is sustainable and inclusive.

Over the last year, Fleming has worked with neighborhood schools to cultivate health and sustainability from the impressionable years by creating a garden based curriculum which promotes science, social studies, art and music and using the garden as an outdoor learning center for elementary school children in the Brooklyn community. This sustainable partnership will help the garden to not just grow food and adults but to also create a new network of little people who are passionate and committed to the environment, sustainable living and community activism.

Size: 1.42 acres

Location: Lafayette & Marcy avenues. Brooklyn NYC

Current Principal organizer’s name: Yonnette Fleming

Email: hattiecarthangarden@yahoo.com

Jurisdiction: NYC Parks & Recreation Operation Greenthumb

Leadership style: Transformational/participative

February 2009.

]]> http://roerichproject.artefati.ca/emergence/hattie-carthan-community-garden/feed/ 0