[Scpg] The Indigenous Science of Permaculture by Juliana Birnbaum Fox

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

The Indigenous Science of Permaculture
http://www.cultureofpermaculture.org/blog/

Permaculture as Peaceful Revolution:indigenous 
science builds a bridge between traditional and 
modern worldviews
by Juliana Birnbaum Fox- first published in 
Cultural Survival magazine, Spring 2009
Photos by Louis Fox

Global warming, widespread species loss and other 
ecological crises have forced the world to wake 
up to the necessity of a systems-level change in 
order to avoid large-scale environmental and 
social catastrophe. As the limits of 
industrialization come to be more widely 
acknowledged, there are signs that contemporary 
culture is beginning to recognize the value of 
indigenous science and its capacity to model 
solutions to the world's most urgent problems. 
Permaculture is a philosophy and design system 
that integrates traditional knowledge with 
appropriate technology, linking ancient and 
modern approaches. As an indigenous science, it 
can reconnect traditional people with ancestral 
knowledge, as well as giving industrialized 
societies a framework to meet their needs in a 
more sustainable way.

Modern and traditional green technologies at Torri Superiore ecovillage, Italy
In New Orleans, experts contending with the 
erosion suspected of weakening levees that failed 
in Hurricane Katrina are turning to permaculture, 
exploring a technique used for centuries by 
traditional farmers in South India: vetiver 
grass. Historically planted to mark borders and 
help maintain moisture and nutrients in soil, 
this ancient technology has been utilized 
successfully over the past decade to clean up 
toxic waste and prevent erosion in dozens of 
countries. This is just one of thousands of 
examples, from medical to social and ecological, 
of indigenous science solving contemporary 
problems.

Permaculture is a holistic, practical design 
system that can be applied in a multitude of 
ways, including food production, housing, 
appropriate technology, and community 
development. As a term it is relatively 
new-developed in the 1970s by Australians Bill 
Mollison and David Holmgren, whose work focused 
on perennial farming practices that make use of 
nature's patterns and relationships- yet the code 
of ethics at the heart of permaculture is 
timeless. Evoking permanent agriculture as well 
as permanent culture, it is about cultivating a 
regenerative relationship between people and the 
earth, using techniques both old and new. Its 
principles can be used to restore degraded 
landscapes, create self-sustaining food 
production cycles, and even significantly combat 
global warming through soil building and no-plow 
farming methods.
From its roots as an agro-ecological design 
theory, permaculture has grown a large following 
that continues to expand on the original ideas 
through a network of trainings, publications, 
permaculture gardens, and internet forums. With 
projects in at least 75 countries around the 
world, it has become both a design system and a 
lifestyle ethic.

Indigenous Permaculture: "A Way of Cultural Resistance"

Pine Ridge, an Oglala Lakota(Sioux) reservation 
in South Dakota, has long been associated with 
intense native resistance-and violence. From the 
atrocities of the Wounded Knee massacre to the 
decades-long controversy surrounding Leonard 
Peltier, it holds a unique place in the history 
of indigenous struggle. Today Pine Ridge is 
notorious for being the most impoverished 
reservation in the United States, with an 
adolescent suicide rate four times the national 
average, unemployment around 80%, and many 
residents without access to energy or clean 
water. Although there is a good deal of 
agricultural production on the reservation, 
according to the USDA only a small percentage of 
tribal members directly benefit from it.
Guillermo Vasquez, a Nahuat and Mayan activist, 
leads Indigenous Permaculture, an organization 
that is partnering with Pine Ridge residents to 
develop a local food security project using 
ecological design principles. The organization is 
a cooperative of indigenous groups, including 
Nahuat, Lakota, Shuar and Maya, and non-native 
people. Its mission is to share indigenous 
farming practices and apply environmentally and 
culturally-appropriate technology, in a way that 
builds capacity within the community.
"We see that people lack holistic support to 
design and implement community food security 
projects," reads the Indigenous Permaculture 
mission statement. "The goal is to share 
information, build relationships and establish a 
local, organic food source for residents, 
inspired by indigenous peoples' understanding of 
how to live in place."
At Pine Ridge, Lakota project leader Wilmer 
Mesteth has been leading the development of the 
Wounjupi garden and of systems such as water 
catchment and greywater recycling, seed saving, 
and composting. The initiative sees local food 
security as a path to confront poverty and health 
issues such as diabetes, and is creating a 
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. A 
greenhouse has been built, medicinal plants are 
being cultivated, and workshops are held for 
residents on perennial agriculture techniques. 
Last year, there was an excellent harvest, with 
enough produce to give to families and elders in 
the community, and even bring to share with an 
elders gathering in Montana. While grasshoppers 
destroyed many other crops on the reservation, 
the Wounjupi garden saw little damage, probably 
as a result of the permaculture technique of 
planting flowers that attract beneficial insects 
that prey on pests.
"We're seeing a major change in the soil due to 
the addition of organic matter," Vasquez 
reported. "It's much darker and richer, and the 
vegetables are starting to grow really well." The 
Pine Ridge project mirrors a program Vasquez 
pioneered in his native Nahuat community in El 
Salvador, both of which are also developing 
reforestation initiatives, solar power, and water 
purification systems.
The potential of soil building as a means to slow 
global warming is an exciting aspect of 
permaculture in practice. As a "carbon sink," 
soil holds carbon as organic matter, reducing 
levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (the 
cause of global warming). Allan J. Yeomans writes 
in Priority One that if the soil fertility of the 
Great Plains that was destroyed in the past 150 
years were to be restored, atmospheric levels of 
carbon dioxide would be reduced to close to 
pre-industrial levels. On a global scale, the 
same results would be achieved if organic matter 
levels of the world's agricultural and grazing 
lands were increased by 1.6%.
Vasquez spoke about permaculture as a new form of 
activism and a healing process, describing the 
movement as not just indigenous, but universal, 
and educational, rather than political.
"Up until now, educators, universities- they 
don't recognize indigenous science, and what 
we're talking about in this program is indigenous 
science," Vasquez explained.
"So what we're trying to do here is to share a 
little about how people can make change, create 
their own positive solutions to live."
Vasquez sees the potential of permaculture as a 
universal philosophy that builds bridges between 
contemporary and native cultures through 
indigenous science. It also has the capacity to 
strengthen alliances among native groups, both 
through its network for traditional 
knowledge-sharing, and as a common term for the 
environmental ethic shared by aboriginal cultures 
worldwide.
"Permaculture is a way of cultural resistance," 
he said. "Perhaps the way I plant trees or grow 
food for my family is the way to create a real 
green revolution and make change."

Permaculture in Israel: "We work the land 
together instead of fighting about it"


Jews and Arab Bedouins learn permaculture together
Often described as a quiet revolution, 
permaculture trainings have been held in hundreds 
of countries worldwide. An innovative program in 
Israel, called Bustan, directed by Bedouin 
activist Ra'ed Al Mickawi, brings Arabs, Jews, 
and Bedouins together for sliding-scale 
permaculture courses. The course combines 
teaching practical techniques in natural 
building, water catchment, and traditional 
agriculture with peace building.
"It is connected to peace, in that we work the 
land together instead of fighting about it," said 
Petra Feldman, a resident of Hava ve Adam, the 
permaculture center that hosted the training, 
where Israeli youth work for a year as an 
alternative to military service. Her husband 
Chaim Feldman, began a collaboration with 
Palestinian farmers on traditional agriculture. 
They have shared irrigation techniques , 
drought-resistant heirloom seeds, and other 
permaculture practices that allow farmers with 
restricted access to land to grow more 
intensively in smaller spaces.
"The closest thing in the world to the principles 
of permaculture I'm learning in this course are 
the principles of traditional Bedouin culture," 
said Haled Eloubra, a Bedouin community leader 
and green architect attending a Bustan course in 
May 2008, speaking through a translator. "The way 
that you approach nature, in a practical way. 
Unfortunately, since we were moved to cities, it 
has been difficult for us to continue in the old 
ways. In winter in Bedouin culture, you sit by 
the fire, cook, make tea, tell stories, and use 
it for many things. Each family had a well that 
collected rainwater and used it for the herd. 
Near the house you'd have chickens, a dog, 
camels, all living together as a system."
Eloubra plans to work on building a "green 
kindergarten" when he finishes the permaculture 
course. After getting his degree in architecture, 
he decided he was committed to creating a 
building that would be truly useful for his 
community. He focused on what he felt was most 
needed in the Bedouin settlements- educational 
facilities- and realized kindergarten would be 
the best place to start.
"I wanted to build using natural materials and 
realized that mud building made the most senseŠ 
In a community without power, it makes sense to 
build with mud, whose natural insulating 
qualities helps keep buildings cool in summer and 
warm in winter. The building will be solar 
powered, the water will be collected rainwater 
and there will be a greywater system-it will be 
an efficient, ecological building."
Bustan , the group that is partnering with 
Eloubra to build the kindergarten, has organized 
a number of successful projects involving 
permaculture and indigenous empowerment over the 
past ten years. They brought together five 
hundred Jewish and Bedouin volunteers to build an 
entirely sustainable, solar-powered medical 
clinic, transformed a school dump into a 
fruit-producing orchard as an educational 
project, and founded a center for Bedouin 
medicine which cultivates traditional herbs. 
There is no doubt in Eloubra's mind that this 
approach offers real answers to the environmental 
and challenges faced by his Bedouin community, 
and the planet as a whole.
"The solution for the world's problems today and 
the diseases within it is to move in the 
direction of permaculture," he asserted.

Avoiding Perma-colonialism

Indigenous Permaculture also offers its trainings 
on a pay-what-you-can basis, open to any 
participant who is willing to take the 
information back home and put it to use. Through 
networking with a variety of native communities 
worldwide, the aim is to train a cadre of local 
permaculturists who can share skills with their 
neighbors.
"If you bring people from the outside the 
community, they may not accept a 'permaculture 
teacher.' People may come and take plants, 
intellectual property, they never give back," 
Vasquez said. "This has gone on for too many 
years. Indigenous people need to decide their own 
destiny."

The issue of awareness of histories of 
imperialism and traditional knowledge 
appropriation is addressed by permaculture 
teacher Robyn Francis, who has led trainings for 
25 years in communities worldwide. She writes 
about her experience in Indonesia teaching a 
permaculture design course in 1999, where there 
was concern among participants about whether "it 
was just another kind of colonialism - an 
Australian concept taught by an Australian 
teacher."
"The risk is greatest when the teacher sees 
permaculture as a kind of formulaŠ When this 
happens then - yes - it's a new 
perma-colonialism," Francis admits. "What I see 
as being the most valuable thing about 
permaculture, and the greatest challenge for a 
permaculture teacher to teach, is the process of 
lateral thinking and questioning, of developing 
the art of analytical observation."

Cultures throughout the world that developed 
stable, sustainable relationships with nature did 
so through observation-a primary principle in 
permaculture. This is the indigenous science 
Vasquez speaks of, a deep integration with the 
local ecology and awareness of natural patterns 
and relationships.
Observation is the first step in the permaculture 
design process, which suggests spending at least 
year in careful examination of a landscape 
through its seasons before making any changes to 
it. Bill Mollison, often called the "father of 
permaculture," worked with indigenous people in 
his native Tasmania and worldwide, and credits 
them with inspiring his work.
"I believe that unless we adopt sophisticated 
aboriginal belief systems and learn respect for 
all life, then we lose our own," he wrote in the 
seminal Permaculture: A Designers' Manual. In a 
more recent interview he spoke about how 
permaculture bridges ancient and modern 
worldviews.
"If I go to an old Greek lady sitting in a 
vineyard and ask, 'Why have you planted roses 
among your grapes?' she will say to me, 'Because 
the rose is the doctor of the grape. If you don't 
plant roses, the grapes get ill.'Š. [Then] I can 
find out that the rose exudes a certain root 
chemical that is taken up by the grape root which 
in turn repels the white fly (which is the 
scientific way of saying the same thing.)"
Mollison's perspective and the permaculture 
movement connects old and new, lending a detailed 
Western scientific understanding to traditional 
agricultural practices developed through 
indigenous methods, and proven by the test of 
time. Can this "scientific gaze" function in a 
way that does not colonize or appropriate 
traditional knowledge for profit, but to spread 
these practices for the benefit of many?
Histories of empire and forced assimilation into 
industrial economies have alienated native people 
from their culture worldwide, creating poverty 
and environmental destruction. The irony of 
'teaching' permaculture to people who 
traditionally lived its principles is not lost on 
Vasquez, who points out that when he teaches, he 
doesn't always use the term. "We don't talk about 
it as permaculture in the indigenous community 
because we are talking about a way of lifeŠThey 
practice it, and it works, that's it."
Francis is excited by permaculture's capacity to 
reconnect people from traditional societies with 
practices endangered by legacies of oppression. 
"I have foundŠ that my students are exhilarated 
with their awakening awareness of process and 
creative thinking, and by having a framework of 
principles of sustainability by which to look 
afresh at their culture and measure the relative 
sustainability of remaining traditions and 
introduced practicesŠ. [There's] a fresh 
enthusiasm to rediscover the traditional 
practices, knowledge and wisdom that are rapidly 
being lost."
"This is where permaculture has such a potential 
to make a difference," writes Craig Mackintosh of 
the Permaculture Research Institute in Australia. 
"Part of what permaculture is about is getting 
the greatest productivity from the least land and 
labour. Traditional knowledge can be supplemented 
with proven, applied designs that can improve 
lifestyles whilst also building soil and natural 
habitats. Giving youth a vision in this regard, 
as well as educating them about the follies and 
pitfalls of a westward highway, could see lives 
being improved whilst maintaining culture and 
ecology."
The Ka'ala Center has been practicing this type 
of regenerative permaculture since before the 
term was widely circulated, starting in 1978 as a 
youth movement for water rights . Located in 
Wai'anae on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, the area 
has one of the largest native populations in 
Hawaii, and was once a thriving, self-sufficient 
community-the "poi bowl" or breadbasket, of the 
region. Today it's nearly impossible to find any 
food that's locally grown, and poverty and health 
problems are rampant. Ka'ala receives 4000 
visitors a year, mostly young people, teaches 
traditional canoe and home construction skills 
and has restored pre-contact kalo (taro) 
pondfields. Founder Eric Enos sees this as a 
revolutionary act essential to the survival of 
his people, since according to the Kumulipo, or 
creation chant, kalo is the elder brother of the 
Hawaiian people.
Kina Mahi, an organizer at the center, described 
it as a kipuka- a place of regeneration. "When 
Pele, the goddess of the volcano, unleashes, she 
goes down the mountain with her lava trails and 
everything in her way is destroyed. The fingers 
of lava often go around little spots of green, 
and they remain. That's what a kipuka is," Mahi 
explained.
"A couple of years ago, our State legislature 
actually passed a resolution, where they coined 
the term "cultural kipuka." Our people and 
culture have been bulldozed by a lot of different 
thingsŠ. The disconnection of people from land 
has been the destructive course it's gone. But we 
have pockets of hope and regeneration like this, 
we've got our people. So our vision is that 
someday there will be a kipuka in every 
community."


Kalo (taro) growing at the Ka'ala Center, Oahu


Sacred Reciprocity

The vision of a kipuka in every community is 
exciting not only from the perspective of 
indigenous empowerment, but as a means to connect 
non-native populations to indigenous wisdom.

"Everybody can trace themselves to an indigenous 
culture; everywhere you live there is an 
indigenous culture that can guide you," Mahi 
pointed out.
"I think that permaculture is carried inside the 
body," Vasquez said. "We are all born with this 
knowledge."

Permaculture offers an opportunity for all people 
to bring the core principles of this wisdom into 
practice in their daily lives, benefiting not 
only themselves, but the planet. Martin Prechtel, 
an activist and shaman in the Mayan tradition, 
was raised on a New Mexico Pueblo reservation by 
his Canadian Indian mother. The hybridity of 
contemporary society is embodied in his story, 
and his perspective on "re-indigenizing."

"Every individual in the world, regardless of 
cultural background or race, has an indigenous 
soul struggling to survive in an increasingly 
hostile environment created by that individual's 
mind. A modern person's body has become a 
battleground between the rationalist mind - which 
subscribes to the values of the machine age - and 
the native soul. This battle is the cause of a 
great deal of spiritual and physical illness," 
Prechtel said in an interview.

Permaculture's focus on symbiotic relationships 
is informed by the concept of ayni, a Quechua and 
Aymara word for sacred reciprocity, an ethic 
shared by many traditional cultures and sometimes 
translated as "today for you, tomorrow for me." 
If the permaculture movement can successfully 
integrate and spread indigenous science in a way 
that truly benefits both traditional and modern 
cultures, perhaps this exchange- this sacred 
reciprocity-has the power to help guide the 
future of the planet.

"We have not stopped because we have seen 
positive resultsŠ food, increased biodiversity, 
greywater systems, community gardens, sustainable 
energy. These have made the program move ahead," 
Vasquez said. "I swim in the rivers, I smell the 
pure air, so why shouldn't our children have the 
right to do these things? We must consider the 
next generations. That's why we do this work."
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